April 18: The Dominators Episode 5 / The Mind Robber Episode 1

Yep, you guessed it: the cliffhanger was resolved by Rago coming in and yelling at Toba for wasting time and energy on hunting and killing "primitives" rather than on the all-important drilling.

Episode 5 is probably the best of the lot, because things are actually happening.  Toba's no longer running around the island trying to hunt down our heroes, which means there's a greater sense of urgency at play here.  And the Doctor has worked out what the Dominators' plan is: they're going to turn the planet into a giant radioactive mass that their fleet can suck up and use as fuel.  In order to stop them they decide to dig a tunnel from the bomb shelter where they're all hiding to the central bore, where the seed bomb that will start the process is going to be dropped, and catch the bomb on the way down.  Meanwhile Jamie and Cully are running around the island blowing up Quarks (thanks to a homemade bomb made by the Doctor) in an effort to distract the Dominators and slow down the drilling.  As I said, this is a much more exciting episode (and consider the fact that it was apparently episodes 5 and 6 that were condensed down into a single episode -- contemplate what those episodes must have originally been like and shudder), and thankfully it's not the same actions being repeated over and over again.  And so they complete the tunnel, catch the bomb, and return it to the Dominators -- which means that Dulkis is saved, and there will only be a local volcanic eruption.  Except that volcano is erupting right where the TARDIS is.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea behind The Dominators.  The problem lies in the actual scripts and the execution.  This might have worked as a four-parter, with a number of repetitive scenes (particularly most of the arguments among the Dulcian council, which tend to stop the story dead in its tracks) removed.  But as it is we get the same stuff over and over again, with only minor variations, and (worse) that same stuff isn't particularly interesting to begin with, and we've seen it done better in previous stories.  There might have been a spark to make this work before script editor Derrick Sherwin removed it (though, as mentioned before, the consensus seems to be that there wasn't), but it's not present in the finished product.  As a story designed to fulfill five episodes The Dominators is a success (which, as we'll see, is an accomplishment in itself for season 6), but by any other standard this is a dull and plodding tale.

So, they've cut down The Dominators from six episodes down to five, which means now they have an extra episode to fill and no one around to write it.  It's too late for Peter Ling to write an extra episode, and nothing else is ready, so script editor Derrick Sherwin is forced to mark time for an episode (and note that this episode has no writer credit).  The result is episode 1 of The Mind Robber.

It starts out fairly normally -- the TARDIS is having issues in the wake of the volcanic eruption from the end of the last episode, so the Doctor is forced to use the emergency unit to get the TARDIS out of danger.  But the emergency unit takes the TARDIS completely out of time and space, to "nowhere", as the Doctor puts it.  "Nowhere" is realized as a white void -- a decidedly striking image -- and it seems the TARDIS isn't the only thing out there.

Jamie and Zoe are surrounded by White Robots. (The Mind
Robber Episode 1) ©BBC

What follows is a battle of wits, as Jamie and Zoe are both lured outside the TARDIS and into the void by images purporting to be their home.  This leads to them wandering the white void, unable to find the TARDIS again, and confronted by strange creatures (known in fandom as White Robots, even though they look more grey) which seem to hypnotize them and make them look like whitened-out versions of themselves.  The Doctor is forced to go out after them, stepping out of a white TARDIS into the void (another great image) and ushering them back into the TARDIS.  Whoever is out in nowhere luring Jamie and Zoe outside dislikes this, and assaults the time travellers inside the TARDIS.  Unable to withstand the assault, we get another striking image of the police box exterior of the TARDIS breaking apart, leaving Jamie and Zoe clinging to the console while the Doctor spins off on his own into another void, but black this time.  And then everything fades out of sight.

It may be an episode written under immense pressure and with no money (and note that this is the second-shortest episode yet, at 21'27"⁴²), but this episode is impressive, full of striking, memorable images and with some fascinating mind games being played.  If the rest of the story is this good, The Mind Robber will be one of the standouts of Troughton's run.







⁴² The shortest being Fury from the Deep Episode 3, which clocks in at 20'29" -- though subsequent episodes of The Mind Robber will break this record.