The Mind Robber - BBC Audio

[Rob McCow]

This is Si Hunt's review of "The Mind Robber" as featured on the Planet Skaro Facebook page!

"The Mind Robber" Target Audio sees Sir Derek Jacobi's deep Shakespearean tones take on Peter Ling's fantastical 1968 Adventure - a slightly confusing move, as of course Jacobi played the not-quite-Master on TV, a Master with a completely unrelated namesake to the one we meet here, who of course wasn't invented yet. Interestingly, Ling points out the unfortunate duplication of names in his novel, with the Doctor musing that this definitely isn't his old Time Lord foe.

Jacobi is older than most trees now, so it's a bit of a pity it took Doctor Who so long to utilise his skills. Still, now he's here, he does a passable crack at Zoe. Jamie's Scot's lilt is of a slightly different kind of Scots brogue than Frazer Hines used on TV, making him appear uncomfortably feminine. He doesn't really bother with trying to impersonate Troughton.

Storyline-wise, there are some interesting twists from what we get on TV, beginning by starting the adventure at the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, rather than at the end of "The Dominators". My favourite moment though, was when the Doctor is required to solve a giant crossword puzzle, the letters drifting down to him on snowflakes, which he must catch to solve the riddle. There's also shenanigans in a boat, which they couldn't afford on telly. The best visualised bits are those set in the Forest of Words, which of course here is a PROPER forest. It makes you realise how poor the studio-bound one we actually got was. The Medusa as well, is rather more fearsome here, thanks to some extra description, and Jamie's faceswap (surprisingly retained in the book, even though it serves absolutely no purpose as a function for swapping actors when Frazer Hines came down with the pox) is rather more unnerving by him being literally a man with no face, although by the time his face comes to be restored, Ling seems to have abandoned this and he's said to be made of cardboard again in true budget-saving small screen fashion.

Character-wise, Jacobi gives a lesser performance than several of the original actors. I prefer Bernie Horsfall's vocal trick of making Gulliver's repeated lines sound identical each time he says them, which Jacobi doesn't pick up on. And his Master of the Land of Fiction doesn't revert quite so chillingly from kind old man to raving dictator in quite the right way.

The Land of Fiction is rather more cohesive here - you get more of an impression of it being a complete place. For example, in the book Jamie escapes from the Labyrinth by a rock fall making a hole in the wall, which the Doctor and Zoe also use to escape by. It's internal logic is no more clear on book/audio, however. How can the Doctor become fiction simply by the Master writing about him first? If this is the case, why doesn't the Master simply jot down "The Doctor walks along without doing much" and then manage to fictionalise him when he can? And it's not really clear why he wants to turn him into fiction anyway, if the whole point of the thing is that he becomes the new controller, another motive entirely.

Ultimately this is an enjoyable audio book, although in places it takes a long time to do some simple things. Ling is surprisingly faithful to the TV version, but takes the opportunity to make a few things a bit more vivid and larger-scale. It's a shame at times he stuck SO closely to his original scripts, as there was plenty of scope here to introduce dragons and the like that they couldn't have hoped to do back in 1968. The sound design is adequate, with a few clanking robots and hissing snakes - and the White Robots whir menacingly. In the end it's Jacobi's flawed but professional telling that holds the interest, along with the original story ideas, some of the best and most imaginative that Doctor Who ever came up with.

[Stuart Wallis]

Not that I've heard it, but that's still a very good review.

[Rob McCow]

I absolutely adored Jacobi's reading of The Mind Robber. The main reason for this was because we got to hear what his version of the Doctor would be like. As Si picked up on, he doesn't really impersonate Troughton, instead he delivers his own idiosyncratic performance. He's clearly wanted to play the Doctor for years and attacks the part with considerable relish.

In some ways, he's even better than Troughton. It's hard to compare, because he gives a similar kind of performance, but Jacobi's charisma really shines through. He would have made a magnificent Doctor. Plus, he's one of these readers who can really take you there in an audio book.

One of the things that the Target books needed to do was to evoke the TV show that the story was based on. Now that the DVDs are so familiar, they're not bound by that constraint. So for the actors reading the books, there's a balance between expanding on what was originally there and doing something new.

But never mind, The Mind Robber is a first-rate reading and in my opinion, one of the absolute best BBC Audiobooks.

[Stuart Wallis]

I found it a disappointment that he wasn't really allowed to have a go at the Doctor in his Unbound, good as it was.

[Si Hunt]

Have the Target audio readings quietly stopped? There's no sign of a story for September or beyond yet.

Si.

[SiHart]

They don't tend to do them while they do the Paul Magrs/ Tom ones.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I suppose audio readings are all well and good if you can't be bothered to read the original novels, but personally I think I'd rather wait until they do a proper adaptation for TV.

[Si Hunt]

How can they adapt the sixties stories for TV?!

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Wouldn't they work for TV then? No, probably best to leave them in their original literary state.

[Rob McCow]

I can't see them making them as part of the new series, if that's what you mean.

[Simon R]

I don't understand the idea. Why would they re-make a story from the past for the new series? I must be missing something!

[Rob McCow]

The Mind Robber would work quite well as a new series episode, but Doctor Who should always move forward, even if they made it in the 60's style.

[Si Hunt]

These are tv stories, their original state wasn't literary.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

That's right, the audio versions came first.

[Si Hunt]

Before someone drew a comic of them anyway.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

I haven't got a copy of that. I heard that a troupe of mime artistes once did an excellent version of The Evil of The Daleks, but that only audio recordings exist.

[Si Hunt]

There is a version of The Mind Robber made from smoke signals and I don't really believe that Wendy Padbury exists.

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I was going to make a comment along the lines of "has everyone on this forum turned into an American?" due to the general lack of comprehension of my (admittedly rather weak) "joke", but then it seems everyone else went mad in the last few posts anyway and rather spoiled it

[Rob McCow]

GAME OVER!!!!