What's Wrong With - The Mind Robber

 

Not a lot to say about this story. Where problems occurred for the production team, the fantastical nature of the story meant that they could often be incorporated into the story. Other problems the director encountered just had to be dealt with at the time - like painting a horse white with blanko in the middle of the night when the one which turned up proved to be the wrong colour.

When the Doctor drags Jamie and Zoe back into the TARDIS from the white void, take a look at the ship's scanner. It states quite clearly:    

                                                              Producer

                                                           Peter Bryant

In the 1960's and early '70's, music, sound effects and film footage all had to be played in as live during the studio recording. The opening and closing credits would be included. The reason that the closing title background appears upside down on three of the episodes of The Green Death is because the director couldn't wait for them to be rewound and so just played them backwards. 

What we're seeing in The Mind Robber Part One is the closing titles being set up, ready for the end of episode.

The thing is, because of the bizarre nature of this story - in which real people can become fictionalised - this mistake actually fits. The producer is being turned to fiction, like the Doctor and his companions.

The following week, Frazer Hines caught chickenpox from his nephew, and couldn't appear. It was simple enough to have Jamie lose his features in one this domain's many puzzles, and for the Doctor to get it wrong reassembling them - allowing for another actor to step in for an episode.

The only problem here is that Hamish Wilson has a Glaswegian accent, whilst Hines always used a soft Highland accent. Jamie's voice shouldn't change that much with just a different face.

The costumes used for the White Robots came from another programme (an Asimov adaptation from Out of the Unknown), so you could argue that they are also already fictional.

The Doctor is reunited with his companions in a forest of words. The letters as they appear in the studio don't match the ones seen in the model work. In the model they are wide and flat, in studio more compact and tall.

The Doctor works out that the strange man in 18th Century garb whom they keep meeting is Lemuel Gulliver, and he can only speak the words which his creator, Jonathan Swift, wrote for him - yet the Doctor says he is looking forward to a long talk with him later on.

In the labyrinth, Zoe claims that the way through the tunnels has an arithmetic progression - one left, two right, three left and so on. We see a map of this labyrinth, and it bears no relation to Zoe's description.

The Doctor faces a lot of dangers, ones which could easily kill him. Yet the whole point of the exercise is that the Master Brain computer wants him to replace the current master of this domain.

The other thing to say about this story - it never happened in the first place. Later writers using the Land of Fiction in their own fiction is a complete nonsense.