The Mind of Evil

Dear Gary—

The Mind of Evil has some intriguing ideas that would have been bettered served if they had their own story rather than all being crammed into this one resulting in a haphazard and chaotic plot.

I’ll start with the evil mind of our title. “Interfering with the mind,” as the Doctor says, “it’s a dangerous business.” Especially when the minds being messed with are hardened criminals. The Keller Machine is being used at Stangmoor prison to extract all of the negative impulses from select criminals. However, as the Doctor points out, all of those evil urges have to go somewhere, and as it turns out they are being stored in the machine where an alien parasite has taken up residence and is growing stronger as it feeds on the convicts’ compulsions.

In and of itself this would make for an exciting story. The alien being has the power to affect a person’s psyche, causing one’s greatest fear to overcome and even kill one. “We believe what our minds tell us to Jo,” says the Doctor, and he himself almost succumbs to the raging inferno his brain has conjured.

Set in a prison, this scenario is rich with possibilities. Add a convict uprising and the Master and what more do you need?

Apparently an international peace conference and a hijacked missile.

Now we have threads of story scattered about with the Doctor and the Master crisscrossing back and forth between the prison and the conference site; the Keller Machine conveniently being put out of action momentarily only to burst free of its confines when expedient; one uprising being quashed only to be followed by yet another takeover; Jo being captured, released, and captured again; and just when we’ve had about enough of all of this running around we get a missile seized by the Master and aimed at the peace conference.

Meanwhile we have the poor Chinese delegate Chin Lee acting under the control of the Master and/or the Keller Machine to wreak havoc at the conference and make life miserable for the Brigadier. Throw in a murder and attempted murder and we have the makings for two or three fine stories if they could only be disentangled from this jumble of a narrative.

“The trouble with this game,” the Doctor says in a fit of pique over a game of checkers, “is that it is too simple.” Our story could use some of the simplicity of a straightforward game of checkers rather than the convolution of “three dimensional chess” that the Doctor is more used to.

As I have already mentioned, Gary, The Mind of Evil brings back the Master to face off against the Doctor.  And it is interesting to find out that the Master’s greatest fear is that of the Doctor standing over him and laughing. Perhaps this explains his vendetta against the Earth. “One day I will destroy this miserable planet and you along with it,” he tells the Doctor.

That day will not come in The Mind of Evil, however. As in our previous story, the Doctor and the Master briefly team up to defeat the alien menace that the Master thought he could control only to find out otherwise; and ultimately the Doctor blows up the commandeered missile, hoping it will take the Master out as well. It doesn’t, of course, and the Master now has his TARDIS dimensional circuit back courtesy of the Doctor.

The Master, as the Doctor complains, is “free to come and go when he pleases while I’m stuck here on Earth . . . with you Brigadier.”

The Brigadier, it seems to me Gary, is the one stuck with the Doctor.

“Thank you, Brigadier,” the Doctor says after being saved from being shot, “but do you think for once in your life you could manage to arrive before the nick of time?” “I’m glad to see you, too, Doctor,” the Brigadier responds good naturedly.

And then, after having his hands full with keeping peace at the peace conference, investigating a murder and attempted murder, arranging for the transference and disposal of a deadly missile, and infiltrating Stangmoor to overpower the rebelling prisoners, not to mention saving the Doctor and Jo, the Doctor has the nerve to tell the Brigadier, “Apart from losing the Master and the missile you’re doing very well, Brigadier.”

Of course the Doctor loses the Master himself, and to top it off he gets the saint like Barnham (who had all the bad processed out of him by the Keller Machine) killed. Jo laments the loss of Barnham, saying, “We never should have left him there,” to which the Doctor replies, “Well how do you think I feel?” He can’t take as well as he gives it seems.

One last note, Gary. The Doctor mentions sharing a cell with Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower of London. This doesn’t quite correlate with the first Doctor’s tale of being sent to the Tower of London by Henry VIII back in The Sensorites, but perhaps he had two stays in that illustrious tower.  Or it could have something to do with the disorientation and memory block he has been suffering since the Time Lords exiled him. Or it could be that old standby—“Time is relative.” Time and age, apparently, as he again claims to be several thousands of years old in this story.

Time is relative, Gary. I send this out with a saddened heart and hope that somewhere out there in your shimmering shards of the Doctor’s time swirl you are reuniting with the gentle soul of you mother.