Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Brain of Morbius

Dear Gary—
The Brain of Morbius is a Doctor Who story I have known and loved for many years. It, along with Pyramids of Mars, was the first and only of my collection for the longest time. I can’t believe that I never once noticed that the copy I own is a heavily edited version. It was not until this last viewing that I began to think that there seemed to be scenes missing; the action seemed to jump forward with some important events glossed over; and it seemed awfully short at under an hour. Something was wrong, I thought. Sure enough, I looked it up on line and discovered that it had been released in abridged form. It’s time I upgrade my collection from mostly VHS to DVD.
While waiting for the DVD to arrive, I have in the meantime found a complete copy that a friend made for us so I can now write more knowledgably about one of the all-time great stories of Doctor Who, The Brain of Morbius, a wonderfully atmospheric retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
I love how the story begins, as many stories have of late, with a delightful exchange between the Doctor and Sarah. The Doctor tears out of the TARDIS raging at the dark and stormy sky, positive that the Time Lords have once again waylaid him for their own purpose. “I don’t know and I don’t really care,” he tells Sarah when she asks where they are. “Ah, come on  . . . come on, stop being so childish,” Sarah chides while the Doctor practices double loops with his yoyo. “I’m just going to sit here and do nothing,” the Doctor sulks. “So there,” Sarah punctuates as she goes off to explore.
Even Sarah’s discovery of a graveyard of crashed ships doesn’t pull the Doctor out of his churlish mood. When Sarah screams, however, the Doctor is immediately at her side. The sight of a headless Mutt (a nice nod to The Mutants from the third Doctor’s run) peaks his interest; the grim fact that the decapitation occurred after the crash is worthy of investigation. The Doctor is now fully committed.
“I was born in these parts,” the Doctor tells Sarah as he begins to take a look around. “I thought I recognized the stars.” A fabulous detail, the Doctor, gentleman of the universe, time and space hobo, traveler to distant galaxies and alternate realities, the Doctor stands looking up at the stars and senses home, even within a couple of billion miles (unforgivably one of the parts cut out of my 59 minute long VHS copy).
The Brain of Morbius gives us several glimpses into Time Lord History parceled liberally throughout our story. The Time Lord Council was once ruled by Morbius who tried to steer the Time Lords down a path of death and destruction. Morbius was placed on trial for rebellion, a trial that attracted the attention of galaxies far and wide (I’m picturing a carnival atmosphere similar to the Scopes Monkey Trial), and condemned to death in a dispersal chamber. The Sisterhood of Karn, longtime opponents of Morbius, serves as guardian of the Elixir of Life, an elixir they share with the Time Lords.
All of this serves as a backdrop to our Frankenstein story.  Dr. Frankenstein and Igor are represented by Solon and Condo respectively. Their monster is Morbius, or more accurately, the brain of Morbius that Solon has been keeping alive, and the body he has pieced together from the casualties of the numerous shipwrecks on Karn. All Solon needs to complete his monster is a head. In walks the Doctor.
“Oh, what a magnificent head,” Solon exclaims upon first sight of the Doctor. “Superb head,” he adds for emphasis.
“Well, I’m glad you like it. I have had several. I used to have an old grey model before this. Some people liked it,” the Doctor replies.
“I did,” Sarah adds in a marvelous reference to her time with the third Doctor.
“I said, some people liked it,” the Doctor continues, “but I prefer this model.”
(So do I, Doctor; so do I.)
Philip Madoc as the mad scientist Solon is worthy of note; he plays the part to perfection. He can put on the face of suave and genial host or deferential supplicant when needed, but we can always see behind the mask his single-minded purpose, and he throws off the façade quickly, as impatient to get on with his work as he is with Condo, or as Solon calls him, “you chicken brained biological disaster.” With simple lines, like “That is an insect!” as he examines the Mutt head Condo brings him, or “Mind his head!” as Condo carries the unconscious Doctor, Phillip Madoc tells us volumes about Solon’s character.
And Solon is no blindly fanatical follower of Morbius. As Morbius himself points out, “You desire to be known as the creator of Morbius rather than his servant.”
This brings us to Morbius. As we learn over the course of the story, Morbius was an evil and dangerous Time Lord, gathering up a following of mercenaries and destroying countless planets. Long believed dead, Solon has kept Morbius’ brain alive, apparently a plan hatched between the two evil geniuses to trick the Time Lords. However Solon has been taking too long with his experiments and Morbius grows restless.
“Yet I am still here,” Morbius’ brain laments. “I can see nothing, feel nothing. You have locked me into hell for eternity. If this is all there is for me, I would sooner die now.” And later, “Trapped like this, like a sponge beneath the sea. Yet even a sponge has more life than I. Can you understand a thousandth of my agony? I, Morbius, who once led the High Council of the Time Lords and dreamed the greatest dreams in history, now reduced to this, to a condition where I envy a vegetable.”
“Events have moved along while I’ve been sleeping . . .”
Events have moved along. The Sisterhood, fearful that the Doctor has come to steal the last remaining Elixir from them, has stolen away his unconscious body form Solon’s laboratory and plans his execution; Solon pleads first for the Doctor’s life and then simply for his head; Sarah frees the Doctor, being blinded in the process by a ray from Sister Maren’s ring; the Doctor fixes the Eternal Flame for the Sisterhood so that there will be Elixir once more; Condo dumps Morbius’ brain on the floor; Solon shoots Condo (who has turned on his master when he finds his arm that Solon has been holding hostage has been stitched onto the monster’s body); Solon uses a blind Sarah to complete the operation to transfer Morbius’ brain into a manufactured brain case and onto the monster’s body; Sarah recovers her eyesight just in time to see Monster Morbius; Monster Morbius kills Solon.
Sorry for the abridgment, Gary, but events do move quickly along in The Brain of Morbius, and all are entertaining and worth mentioning. I hate to leave anything out. Now that I have given a brief overview, let me turn to some deeper observations.
First, the Sisterhood. This is a fascinating concept, a sort of female yin to the Time Lord yang. They are rather pathetic upon close examination, holed up on a desolate planet, guarding a dying flame, chanting incessantly, drinking an elixir to give them perpetual life, but a life not even a vegetable would envy to paraphrase Morbius, and now that elixir is drying up—drying up like Maren their leader. And yet I can imagine them once upon a time being a vital and living force. Perhaps now that the Doctor has replenished their flame and Maren is dead they will become revitalized under Ohica’s leadership.
Next, Sarah. I remember, Gary, how impressed I was with the character of Sarah Jane Smith when she first appeared in The Time Warrior, and feeling a bit disappointed that the promise of the character was never fully realized as the series progressed. I was wrong. Sarah does have her occasional twisted ankle, kidnapping, and screaming spell, but overall Sarah Jane Smith is one of the strongest companions the Doctor ever has had or ever will have, male or female. I would rank her right up there with Ian and Barbara. It is not just the camaraderie and the ability to cajole the Doctor out of moods. All, or most all, companions have such qualities. Sarah has that added resourcefulness, bravery, and intelligence that renders her invaluable to the Doctor. And as often as she is rescued, she does her share of rescuing as well.
The Brain of Morbius showcases all of these qualities in Sarah. I will single out her blindness. Sarah’s blindness does not leave her helpless. She might stumble over things, but when she hears a mysterious voice in the cavernous depths of the castle she goes to investigate, and when she hears Solon plot against the Doctor she locks him in his lab and faces the treacherous journey to find the Doctor. Even Solon recognizes her value, blind and all, and has her assist him in his operation. And through it all she maintains her sense of humor.
No wonder Condo has a crush on her. And this brings me to Condo. The Hunchback of Karn. Condo believes Solon will restore his arm to him if he only plays Igor to Solon’s Frankenstein. Condo does his dim-witted best to assist Solon, despite Solon’s obvious contempt. But Condo doesn’t want to hurt the girl—she’s pretty. And when Condo discovers his long lost arm attached to the monstrosity on the bed he has had enough. Poor Condo, shot in the belly, but even still as he lies bleeding the screams of Sarah rouse him and he manages one last and noble act before dying.
Of course, I can’t talk about The Brain of Morbius without talking about Morbius. No longer just a brain. He has been given a body stitched from the broken remains of corpses littering the surface of Karn. No longer trapped like a sponge. No longer envious of a vegetable. He has been given a body. But what a body!? His first glimpse of himself in the mirror is priceless, but he soon gets over it. He is free at last and ready to resume his tyranny of time and space.
Good thing the Doctor has kept his head.
“What does it feel like to be the biggest mongrel in the universe?” the Doctor asks. “To be free again is all that matters," Morbius concludes, but the Doctor and Sarah continue to mock. “Potpourri would be appropriate,” the Doctor offers as a new name for Morbius, but Sarah comes up with the clincher: “How about Chop Suey?”
“Chop Suey, the galactic emperor.”
Sticks and stones . . . “You will be the first to die!”
The Doctor, knowing the brain in the manufactured case after a hurried operation is liable to be unstable, challenges Morbius to a sort of “Time Lord wrestling” or mind bending as it is called, despite Morbius being a Time Lord of the first rank and the Doctor being “a mere nobody.”
I find the contraption they use for their mind bending a curious thing. What is it and what is it doing in Solon’s laboratory? Is it specifically designed for Time Lord mind bending? Or do they just happen to use it for this purpose? Whatever the case, it comes in handy. But I find the contest itself to be a bit anti-climatic. For the destruction it causes (Morbius’ brain fairly explodes and the Doctor nearly dies), it doesn’t take much time and they don’t really seem to be expending much energy. Morbius gloats through the entire process, despite his losing, and visions of past generations appear in the middle. I have to speculate that the majority of the generations depicted are those of Morbius as the Doctor only has the three previous that we know of. At any rate, the mind-blown Morbius wanders off to be chased by the Sisterhood (under the direction of Ohica) over the edge of a cliff and to his ignoble death.
“Death is the price we pay for progress,” the Doctor has advised the Sisterhood, and taking this advice to heart Maren sacrifices herself, giving up the few remaining drops of Elixir to the Doctor in order to save his life. The time for the Doctor’s death has not yet arrived (he is only 749 after all . . .).
“Death is the price we pay for progress.” It is a sad and hard truth, Gary. Death is the price we pay . . . .

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