Doctor Who Mind of Evil

The second episode in the Third Doctor season that is completely dedicate to stories staring The Master the mind of Evil isn’t exactly a lost story but till now it’s only ever been available in Black and White and so possibly for that reason this is the story that the BBC have decided to release last of all the Jon Pertwee stories. This version has been colorised and though it looks ok it also looks extremely “soft” compared to other releases from the same time period clearly the original source tapes were not in good condition. Also the colours are vaguely reminiscent of the bold Technicolor of the 1950’s rather than the correct coloration of video.

So what’s the story about then?

Ahh the life of a scientific advisor. When your not thwarting invasions or reversing the polarity of the neutron flow you get to go to prisons and watch demonstrations of innovative techniques for the mind control of violent prisoners. And this is where we find the Doctor and Jo Grant at the beginning  of the Mind of Evil. The Doctor is there to watch a supposed revolution in rehabilitation the Keller Machine a machine designed and built by Emiel Keller the machine supposedly removes all violent or anti-social impulses from the brains of prisoners. Suspicions are aroused when the Keller machine turns itself on and someone dies of being eaten by rats (the mans biggest fear) and then Professor Kettering who is in charge of the Keller Machine drowns in a dry room (drowning being his biggest fear).

At the same time UNIT is in charge of security at the first World Peace conference (note they don’t say annual because no-one is naive enough to think it will happen again). Where delegates are causing problems by being murdered by dragons and such and its obvious that the Chinese delegate is being mind controlled because otherwise there would be no incentive for the Chinese to murder a US diplomat.

Then there are riots and explosions at the prison because it’s hard to fill up six full episodes with things that happen and sometimes equally hard to watch it. Eventually the master realises that he can’t control this alien monstrosity that he has bought down onto the earth (an unfortiunatly recurring motief for the master) and he has to team up with the doctor to get rid of it sort of…. But not before he steals some missiles….because….the production team realised that the army would lend them some missiles. So we get lots of shots of the missiles, the only thing we don’t get is Sgnt Benton standing next to the missiles with a plackard that says “these are REAL!!!à” In the end the Keller machine is destroyed and the  Master calls the Doctor to taunt him because the Doctor gave up the Masters D-mat circuit in exchange for the Missiles and the Doctor is still exiled on earth.

In the end the mind of Evil is a bit of a mess an enjoyable mess but you have to have the hours to put into it.

Audio: Audio is ok, understandable.

Video: Video is soft and sometimes a little hard to watch.

Special Features:

Notably the biggest disappointment with this disc the special features are woeful, there is basically nothing here. Really makes you miss 2Entertain who used to at least do their best to cram everything they could onto a disc. There is a fairly short documentary of some of the key players whilst they were alive wandering round the castle that served as the prison in the story but the reality is that they don’t have much to say about it.