The Mind Robber

Sorry that I've been a bit quiet of late; a combination of feeling torpid due to being ill and not feeling motivated to sit at my computer after doing so for long days at work has left me a month behind on posting and commenting. I'll probably manage to backfill posts over the next few weeks but I may not catch up with all the comments - I'm really sorry about that.

The thing that's spurred me into action is my commitment to post a Doctor Who review each month so I need to comment on Patrick Troughton, the second actor to take the role before the end of today.

A lot rested on Troughton's shoulders. Although we now see it as commonplace, this was the first time a major character role in a popular series had been replaced with a different actor. Somehow Troughton had to convince the viewers that his character was a continuation of that played by William Hartnell while not trying to be Hartnell. Ironically he did this by changing the character to a more clownish, Chaplinesque presence despite being a serious character actor and Hartnell's background being in comedy.

Sadly, little of Troughton's legacy remains. In the late 1960's and early 1970's the BBC had a policy of reusing videotape and much of Troughton's most critically acclaimed performances, including his first couple of adventures where he set his stamp upon the character, were simply recorded over. Most of what remains comes from his last series in the role.

One of these survivors is The Mind Robber, a surreal tale even by 1960's standards. For the early years of its run Doctor Who had been anchored in real science and real history having been originally envisaged by its creators as a form of 'edutainment'. The Mind Robber throws all that out as the Doctor and his companions find themselves in a world of fiction populated by characters such as Gulliver, Rapunzel and Medusa and created by a mysterious and shady character we only meet at the end called The Master (clearly planned as a one-off character here rather than a recurring villain). As such, the story isn't particularly credible due to the silliness level but Troughton does his best to rescue it with a storming and convincing performance.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to observe in this is one of the Doctor's companions, a young mathematician from the (then) near future. Zoe Heriot was brought up in a space-station city in near earth orbit in the year 2000. The Mind Robber was broadcast a year before Apollo 11 landed on the moon and it's clear that the popular view of how fast humanity would colonise space far outstripped the reality - no human has left near-earth orbit since Gene Cirnan in Apollo 17 (1972). It's interesting how this seems to be coming round full circle with the projects announced in the news this week about looking for a volunteer couple to orbit Mars. Maybe this will reingite a spark of optimism in the bleak outlook pervasive in modern science fiction.

I'm afraid the book illustrated isn't my copy of Gulliver's Travels - I found I needed a hardback to lie flat enough.