Mind Robber!

[auroracloud]

Oh, I just finished watching Mind Robber, which is a fabulously weird Second Doctor serial from 1968. I love it. So much. I watched parts of it during the Twitch marathon in the summer, but it was one of those stories which aired either in the middle of the night or during a work day for me, so I wasn't able to see all of it - but I loved it already then. And now I've been able to see it in full and it's so wonderfully strange and trippy and out there and meta and everything imaginable. I'd just like to watch it all over again at once.

And just how amazing is the Zoe and Karkus fight?? I bet I was squealing and squeeing out loud. (And Wendy Padbury does rock that glitter jumpsuit. Where's all that 21st century fashion the 1960s promised us now?)

For those who know nothing about the story, the basic idea is that for reasons, the TARDIS ends up outside reality, and then things start getting strange.

I do hope anyone who checks out Classic Who will include this in their viewing because it's amazing, and a good example of just how weird Doctor Who can be. Also, all the three leads are utterly fabulous in it. Even if poor Frazer Hines fell ill during the filming and had to be replaced for some time - I can't imagine any other story in which they'd have been able to "turn a bug into a feature" quite like this! (That was so weird.)

(Incidentally, I thought there were a couple of tiny allusions to Mind Robber during this season's second-last episode It Takes You Away.)

Oh, I just don't have enough words for how much this era puts me in my happy place. It's just... !!!!!

And up next I'll have Invasion! Which I watched on Dailymotion in the summer because it wasn't in the marathon, but now I get to watch it again and on my TV screen. Isobel! Zoe and Isobel! Zoe and the feather boa! Zoe and the computer! Vaughn! "Packer!" All the Two & Jamie adventurous shenanigans! Cybermen in London!

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aww, so glad you enjoyed it! It really is wonderfully weird, isn't it?

Enjoy The Invasion, too! <3

[auroracloud]

It is! And such well made weird, too! I did see enough during the marathon to guess that I would love it and I've been very much looking forward to watching it, but I loved it even more than I had hoped!

Thank you! I'm not sure if I'll get to The Invasion before or after Christmas, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it this time around, too! Very much looking forward to it. Though oh dear, that means I won't have many of the Troughton era serials left... Well, that just means I'll go back and rewatch and go through the audios/recons of the missing episodes! (And, er, watch some other eras, too.) That reminds me, I should get Seeds of Death, it's the only Troughton era DVD I haven't yet got or at least ordered. It took me a while to realize that it is on the Revisitations 2 box set...

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, it's good when something turns out just as great as you hoped!!

Oh, Seeds of Death. Much foam and Miss Kelly! ;-)

[auroracloud]

That sounds promising! I remember seeing a little bit of it during the marathon, because I remember seeing some of Miss Kelly, but it was probably one of these "checking in quickly while having breakfast" things I managed, but I definitely didn't see much. So looking forward to it!

[liadt]

'The Mind Robber' was the first Two serial I saw when the BBC re-ran selected serials in the 1990's. It is indeed good -it has to be as there is a lack of real Jamie's face(!). Nice fights;)

You should enjoy 'Seeds of Death' because Miss Kelly as the guest blokes aren't much use, one of them is little Terry Scully so they're doomed in that way anyway and Zoe is teamed up with the "young" male lead and she has to bolster him up.

Packer!

[auroracloud]

Whee, that's a nice one to start on. :-) Yes, it manages to be awesome even when Jamie is suddenly different! (Oddly, I was more thrown out by his voice being different, because you hear it already before you see he's got the wrong face. At least you already know the Doctor assembled the face wrong. Which, by the way, I can sympathize with - it's not necessarily easy to assemble even your best friend's face together from parts, because we don't usually look at faces that way! I'm not sure I could do it right on the first go either when under pressure.)

I look forward to Seeds of Death, then! :-)

[liadt]

I agree with the faces thing. I tried to draw a person's face from memory as an art exercise and it didn't look like anybody. It's quite common apparently.

Enjoy! Well maybe not the costumes, bless the actors!

[ellieet]

I actually met Frazer Hines a couple of years ago and he was such a nice man. I asked him what it was like working with Patrick Troughton and what he was like as a person and he said nothing but good things. He also said they used to mess around a lot onset. It was a really interesting conversation. I look forward to more of your Classic-Who reportage.