Holistic Review: The idea at the heart of The Mind of Evil is both interesting and scary, but unfortunately it's buried under so much irrelevant plot and excessive padding that it seems under-utilized.

Oh, Don Houghton, how far you fall in the space of a mere two stories! Inferno has got to be one of my favorite Pertwee stories, but The Mind of Evil certainly ranks toward the bottom. It's Doctor Who as a political thriller with a social conscience, but for some reason that just doesn't do it for me.

The main problem with The Mind of Evil is that the Master's plan is so terribly complex, which affects the plot in various negative ways. Basically, he wants to start World War Three and destroy the Earth, after which he will take charge of the ruins (how terribly exciting that will be!). In order to initiate the war, he decides to implicate England in the destruction of a European city, and/or destroy a peace conference. In order to do this, he plans to hijack a missile fitted with a nerve-gas warhead. In order to do that, he needs to assemble an army to steal it. And in order to do that, he arranges to take over a nearby prison and persuade the prisoners to help him. And in order to do that, he brings an alien parasite to the prison that will cause riots and create chaos. And in order to do that, he establishes the machine's credibility for prison reform over several months in Europe. And in order to do that, he poses as a respected scientist. Now how's that for an elaborate scheme of events? Of course, alternatively, he also plans to just redirect the power of the machine through his assistant and cause the war by murdering delegates to the peace conference and escalating world tensions. Whichever comes first.

What this means is that we have three basic plot elements: the prison, in which the Master establishes his machine; the peace conference, which is being attacked from the inside; and the missile, which is his ultimate goal. Now, when you think about it, if the Master really wanted to cause World War Three, he could probably manage it with judicious use of the machine alone. There might very well have been an easier way to secure the missile, if he was really bound and determined to use it. (If he has to use both, why not direct the machine's power against the missile's guard escort, then abscond with it while they're writhing about in mental anguish?) Either way, it makes pretty much all three plotlines irrelevant. Now, I could easily overlook this problem if the plot were interesting or fun - after all, it's all about the ride, not necessarily how efficiently we get there. But in this case, all three plotlines are so deadly dull and chock full of padding that it's hard to get excited about any of them.

The Mind of Evil does have one really interesting concept going for it: the Keller Machine, whatever it is, is fascinating, pretty scary, and well-used in the context of prison reform. Its method of killing is quite horrific: a mysterious death by rats, drowning or immolation is pretty terrifying, and it's particularly scary when it develops the means of travelling about independently. Had they ditched the rest of the story and built another one around just the idea of this machine, I think it could have been really good. But the prison subplot is mainly an excuse for two revolts: the first one is thwarted shortly after it has succeeded, and the second puts the prisoners in charge in time to hang around for a couple of episodes until they're needed again, during which time lots of people talk about escaping and the prisoners threaten people in macho ways as often as possible. And of course this allows us to have the obligatory UNIT action sequence, when they retake the prison amid wildly flying bullets. The peace conference barely seems to play any part at all, particularly since the Master's scheme with the missile seems to render it redundant, except to inject some multiculturality into the proceedings. Then we have the missile plot, which is pretty much just unexciting. Even though we have all these storylines built into the plot to provide lots of "justified" padding, there is still apparently a need to pad the individual plots out further. So, after Benton loses Chin Lee, the Master works on bugging the UNIT phones... for almost two and a half minutes. In the prison, of course, one revolt isn't enough; let's have two! In part six, after it's already been well-established that only Barnham's presence is inhibiting the mind parasite, Summers comes in and tries to yank Barnham out just so that this can be demonstrated all over again. As the Doctor says, "You know, this is all very tiresome."

In some stories of this nature (although, granted, not that many), we can rely on the supporting actors to inject some life into the proceedings. Here, though, it just doesn't work. Pretty much none of the supporting characters are all that interesting. The most prominent are Mailer (William Marlowe) who is just plain despicable and disgusting (particularly the moment when he gives Jo a sleazy air-kiss); Dr Summers (Michael Sheard, and bless him, I didn't even realize it was him), who is certainly the most likeable of the lot although he's barely given anything to do; Barnham (Neil McCarthy), who plays a pretty vital role in the story but isn't terribly memorable (certainly not in the way that Tommy would later be, in Planet of the Spiders); and Captain Chin Lee (Pik-Sen Lim, who is a fairly wooden actress; although as she was married to writer Don Houghton, and therefore probably inspired most of the authentic-sounding Chinese elements of the plot, I can forgive her a little).

With a boring and padded plot stuffed with uninteresting characters, fortunately we can rely on the regulars to get us through it. I actually like Jon Pertwee more than usual as the Doctor - overall, he's imperious toward all the right people and has a wonderful take-charge attitude. I always enjoy his insistence on critiquing the lecture to Jo while the professor is still talking! And of course when the professor calls him on it, the Doctor just turns right around and puts him on the spot too! It's somehow satisfying to watch him take out his moral outrage on the people who refuse to listen to him, and I still really enjoy his disdain for self-important bureaucrats ("Because those idiots in authority won't let me, that's why."). On the lighter side, I love the scene at the very beginning in which he is waving and generally clowning around to the closed-circuit camera when the guard comes out of the gate! Pertwee demonstrates some enjoyable facial expressions throughout - in particular, he gives Jo a great look when Kettering calls him unsophisticated. Unfortunately, he's pretty sharp with Jo at times, too ("But I prefer to work that way!") - it's clearly still early on in their relationship. But they do get a nice moment when the Master comes to visit them in their cell and they both shush him - and then Jo wins the game of checkers! But poor Katy Manning is not generally well-served by this story. Jo is basically superfluous to the plot, contributing nothing significant to the narrative whatsoever. Mostly she just hangs around the prison, either waiting for someone to tell her what to do, or cooling her heels in a locked cell. Fortunately, she does get to act heroic throughout: she attacks Mailer and seizes his gun during the first riot, she loses her temper at the convicts who don't bring them any breakfast, she whacks the guard with a tea tray before karate-chopping him and then kicking the second guard, and she tries to put Mailer out of action and give the Doctor a chance to escape as they descend the staircase in the prison. Additionally, she defends the Doctor to the prison staff, and she befriends Barnham, which turns out to be vital because he's the only person who can blanket the effects of the mind parasite. So she isn't completely bereft of good characterization, it's just that she doesn't really get much of a chance to strike out on her own. And she does look nice in her black sweater and brown pants, although her leather jacket is a little strange.

Nick Courtney turns in a nice performance as the Brigadier, both commanding and overall likeable, and he does a great job in his role of Brigadier Delivery-Man! Love the accent, and the outfit. The Brigadier also demonstrates his excellent marksmanship during the attack on the prison. Benton is as likeable as always, although the Brigadier spends an awful lot of time belittling him in the beginning. His determination to help in the attack on the prison is great. He is a bit rude to poor Barnham, though, but of course it was all a plot excuse to get Barnham down to the Process Chamber. Mike Yates even gets a nice heroic jaunt when he single-handedly tracks the Master and his goonies to their lair, where they're keeping the Thunderbolt missile. Unfortunately, he then gets captured for an episode and a half, but in the end he's able to let the Brigadier know where they've gone. On the villainous side, there's Roger Delgado, who is enjoyably evil but not in a particularly standout way. It's nice to see another story in which the Master inadvertently bites off a bigger scheme than he can chew, and he has to rely on the Doctor to bail him out. But his motivations are somewhat confusing - at one point, he shackles the Doctor beside the Keller Machine with the intent that it will kill him; but then, when it almost succeeds in doing so, the Master then revives him and tells him what a lucky escape he had! What's up with that? And speaking of confusion, just before the Keller Machine incident, the Master threatens to shoot the Doctor in both hearts - but he should know full well that as the Doctor will merely regenerate, that will hardly get him out of the Master's hair. The Master does get a nice moment to display his inhuman strength, though, when he physically restrains Mailer, and I do love that his deepest fear is the the Doctor will regard him as a mere object of ridicule... it makes their relationship that much more interesting.

Turning my attention to design... The mask the Master wears is just hideously bad - I'm not sure it would have even fooled someone from across the street, much less close up. But whoever designed the creature did a great job; I'd love to see it in color, because it sure is gross in black-and-white. As for the special effects, there aren't many to speak of, but they're almost uniformly poor. The CSO background even looks bad in black-and-white, and at one point, the staticky effect that's used in later episodes to indicate the parasite's killing spreads to the walls and a table! I do, however, like the modelwork used at the end to depict the missile and building blowing up. (but it's a shame that they didn't move the missile away from all that expensive equipment that the building was housing!) The stuntmen do a nice job, though - the one who flips over Yates' chair deserves particular mention. Not much to speak of in the way of incidental music here, although I like the piece that's playing when the Brigadier and his men drive up to Stangmoor.

Minor points:

• At least the story starts out right, by giving us the Doctor and Jo right from square one. Somehow I always find it easier to get immediately drawn into a story when the Doctor and/or companion is there. (But nothing at all against a well-crafted, X-Files-style teaser; those are great too!)

• Upon seeing Stangmoor, Jo says, "Looks like Dracula's castle." I wish! That would have made things more interesting!

• If the Keller Machine is 65% full after 112 cases, that means that, assuming the amount of evil impulses extracted from each subject is consistent, it should only be able to process around 172 criminals before it's full. What do they do then? Is there a way to destroy or siphon off the evil in the machine? It's no wonder the Doctor was suspicious about it.

• A great line for Pertwee:

  Doctor: "Then would you kindly explain, sir, that unfortunate man's reaction?"
  Kettering: "An excess of negative particles, the machine overreacted."
  Doctor: "In other words, you don't know."

• And a nice subtle eye-rolling reaction from Courtney:

  Lee: "We suspect the imperialist Americans of this crime!"
  Brigadier: "Naturally."

• As Mike watches Captain Lee walk out of the office, he looks at the Brig with a smirk and says, "Pity. She's quite a dolly." Now how inappropriate is that! Good heavens.

• Surely it's not a good idea to toss a burning sheaf of papers into an open wastebasket that is surrounded by crisp autumn leaves? Captain Lee is lucky she didn't set the whole playground on fire that way!

• As Captain Lee calls the Brigadier again, he picks up the phone and says: "Wonder what she's complaining of this time?" The underlined words are what he's saying as he picks up the phone, which means that Captain Lee almost certainly heard him, and that's still pretty much enough context to understand that he's complaining about her! Not wise, Brigadier, not wise.

• I find it odd that the Doctor keeps asking Summers to check the dead men's medical records. I've had to fill out those basic medical records several times, and not once have they asked me what I'm afraid of. They've never even asked me my phobias. So how is it that Summers has access to that information?

• I like the continuity established in this episode that the events of Inferno have left the Doctor with a fear of fire. (Although, given that they were both written by Houghton, I suppose it makes it a little less impressive, and a little more self-referential.)

• Jo is quite bold, just outright asking the Doctor what deep-seated fear the Keller Machine made him see! How did she know he wouldn't mind reliving it? Or sharing such an intimate secret with a relative stranger? That was rather personal of her!

• Eek! When Benton succumbs to his Keller-Machine-induced headache, he falls and nearly impales his neck on a wrought-iron fence spike!

• One of my favorite quotes of the story:

  Doctor: "Fu Peng? Well, he must be Hokkien."
  Brigadier: "No no no, Doctor, he's Chinese, now come along."

• I do love the fact that this story has a bit more multiculturality than usual, thanks to the Chinese delegation at the peace conference, and they don't all speak Mandarin! Kristopher Kum doesn't have a very large role in this story, but he's enjoyable as Fu Peng, particularly the way that he obviously ignores the Brigadier's impatient, and very Western, attempt to get straight down to business, but responds beautifully to the Doctor's more hospitable and culturally-aware way of establishing a relationship. And it's a treat to hear the Doctor speaking both Hokkien and Cantonese during the story. (However, I'm curious about the fact that the Doctor implies Chairman Mao spoke Hokkien. That seems highly unlikely, given that Hokkien is spoken mainly in Fujian province, in the southeast, but Mao grew up in Hunan province, further to the west, where Xiang is spoken.)

• Jo gives Barnham a Dairy Box? How sweet! I wonder where on earth she got it?

• An interesting quote:

  Summers: "It's extracted all the negative impulses from his brain."
  Jo: "So what does that make him now?"
  Summers: "That depends how you look at it. An idiot... or a saint."

• Yum, dried squid and stewed jellyfish sounds really tasty! I can only imagine what the Brigadier thought of it though!

• When the Doctor learns that Emil Keller was assisted by a Chinese girl, and there is a Chinese girl in the delegation for the peace conference, he exclaims, "Coincidence, my foot!" Sure, because there's only one Chinese girl in all of England. (But, to be fair, I guess they were both connected with the whole affair, so his suspicion is understandable.)

• "He asks that you come alone," monotones Captain Lee over the phone to Senator Alcott. (Well, I guess it is true that a lot of Chinese speakers have trouble with English intonation.) Now, shouldn't that have been just a twinge suspicious? Or, to be less charitable, a massive giveaway?

• Is it necessarily going to be a good thing if the American delegate is found dead in the Chinese delegate's suite? I thought Captain Lee (and therefore the Master) was trying to implicate Britain in the killing of a Chinese delegate? Now if the Chinese delegation turns around and kills an American for no good reason, that's just going to implicate them in the whole thing. It still might start another war, between the US/UK and China, but surely the whole thing would be handled via the normal judicial channels instead, particularly if people think that the Chinese delegation is harboring a murderer.

• It's not clear how exactly the mind parasite kills its victims. Sometimes, as in the rats/drowning/immolation examples, it exploits people's potentially deadly fears. Sometimes it exploits the stereotypes of foreign cultures (was Senator Alcott really afraid of ancient Chinese dragons? and how would it have even killed him? I can hear the Doctor now... "These claw marks could clearly have only been made by the Chinese long - and look at the singed spots on his skin!"). Sometimes it taunts you with images of things you fear, but which seem incapable of harming you (like the mocking Doctor, or the still photographs of various monsters). And sometimes it just gives you a throbbing headache. When it gets stronger, it seems to be able to make you drop dead at its mere appearance. There's an implication early on that it can only kill people who are alone with it (because the presence of another mind disorients it), but then later it seems quite happy to kill multiple people at a time. Another discrepancy: initially, the parasite's mental visions can only be seen by their intended target (as shown in the scene in which Jo rescues the Doctor from a fiery fate), but when it menaces Alcott with a Chinese dragon, even the Brigadier can see it! Finally, at one point the Doctor and Jo hide from it behind a computer bank, as if the machine has to be able to see you to kill you - but surely, for a mental parasite, that should be irrelevant?

• One notable, and surprising, feature of this episode is how many people get shot, between the various prison riots and the UNIT attack. A lot of it is relatively graphic, by Doctor Who standards.

• Another nice performance from Pertwee:

  Mailer: "Now let's get this heap inside."
  Doctor: (pushes the gun barrel away from his head) "I was going there anyway."

• I rather like the fact that we get to see flashbacks of some of the Doctor's scarier enemies (A War Machine? Koquillion?!?) even if I don't really understand what physical damage they're supposed to inflict upon him.

• Why do they threaten to use the machine on Jo? Given that she has no sociopathic tendencies whatsoever, as far as we know, what's it supposed to extract from her? Or do they just want to kill her with her deepest fears?

• At one point, the Doctor says, "Inside is, is a creature that feeds on the evil of the mind." Now there's a better title! The Mind of Evil implies that the parasite creature is some kind of malevolent brain... but The Evil of the Mind would be a nice reference to (a) what the parasite feeds on, (b) why these men are in prison in the first place, and (c) what motivates the Master's plans. Much better! Too bad they didn't use it.

• Why does the guard call Jo a "proper little Miss Nightingale" when he sees the unconscious Doctor lying on the floor? Jo hasn't bandaged him up or anything. She doesn't seem to have done much more than roll him onto his back! If that's all Florence Nightingale was good for... "Excuse me, doctor, does this patient need to be rolled over?" "No." "Oh, all right then..." Thank goodness for Crimea she was cleverer than that!

• Summers claims that the Doctor was beaten up both physically and mentally - but when did he receive a physical beating?

• Jo tries to give the Doctor some kind of pill - everyone seems to think it's aspirin - which he claims could kill him because he has the wrong sort of metabolism. I'm very curious as to how that could possibly be! And what an ignoble reason for a regeneration. "He swallowed an aspirin, and then he changed!"

• After the Doctor and Jo attack their guards and lock them in their cell, they make straight for the Master's office. Outside the window, Jo can see what appears to be a search party, so the Doctor suggests they wait until the heat has died down. But how does anyone know they've escaped? The guards didn't set off an alarm, and presumably nobody saw them wandering the corridors. Does he think the Master has an innate psychic awareness of when the Doctor has escaped his custody?

• And, more infuriatingly, why don't they close the office door?!?!? I hate when characters do that! When you hide in a room, you close the door, otherwise it's like a big flashing neon sign that says "I'm in here!"

• The Doctor calls the Keller Machine "the deadliest threat to mankind since the beginning of time." So... I guess he's forgotten about the Daleks in 1866, the Great Intelligence, the Cybermen and the Nestene, not to mention mankind himself, as in Inferno! Does he realize that the Fendahl and Sutekh were in a position to destroy the Earth? Up against competition like that, the mind parasite seems like small fry.

• What exactly is it that suddenly enables the machine to go gallivanting about on its own? The Doctor says that it's gotten stronger, but... why now?

• How does a man who no longer has any violent impulses suddenly decide to fight with a guard?

• An interesting Master quote, but...:

  Master: "Well, in the event - in the highly unlikely event - of UNIT finding us before the missile is ready, you would make a very useful hostage. Remember that."

  What is Yates supposed to remember? That the Master actually needs him alive, and therefore the best way to put a kink in his plans would be to commit suicide if push comes to shove?

• I rather like the Brigadier's relationship with Major Cosworth - he seems to be poised to take over Benton's position as the Brigadier's favorite whipping boy. In particular, the moment when the Brigadier asks a group (of two?) if they have any questions, and Cosworth - who has actually been helping him present - speaks up for them and says "No, sir."

• Awww, Benton:

  Benton: "It's only a scratch, honest. And you said yourself I've got a thick skull. Anyway, I'd like a chance to get at the blokes who did it."

• The Doctor says that his little electric circuit has a pattern much like the human brain - but the creature feeds on human brains, so why should a human-brain-like pattern confuse it and rob it of mobility?

• Ewww! Jo picks a piece of toast up off the floor and then EATS IT! (And she convinces the Doctor to eat it, too!) Nasty.

• Did anyone actually use the much-praised and easily-found-on-a-map-despite-having-been-secret underground tunnel in their assault on the prison? It looked like the Brigadier brought them all inside in his van (which, by the way, was amazingly able to hold 9 men plus the supplies to hide them!).

• Boy, save a man's life and this is the thanks you get:

  Doctor: "Thank you, Brigadier. But do you think for once in your life, you could manage to arrive before the nick of time?"

  And then, as if that weren't disdain enough:

  Doctor: "Yes, well, apart from losing the Master and the missile, you're doing very well, Brigadier."

• I don't really understand why Barnham is able to stop the parasite from moving around and killing people. The Doctor says that there's something in his mind that serves as a buffer, but that doesn't really make sense as all the machine did was suck all the negative energy out of him. If you have a bunch of people standing in front of a buffet, but then you put down an empty plate, that's not going to stop them from eating!

• I'm also alarmed by UNIT's idea to blow up the nerve gas missle on the ground. Isn't that akin to destroying an atomic bomb by blowing it up? Presumably this would actually release a cloud of nerve gas that would be blown around on the wind, and surely the missile was designed for the maximum possible disperson of the gas - Stangmoor isn't that far away, and who knows what other little village might be in the area? (By the way, it's also worth mentioning that 1972 was apparently also the year in which dumping chemical agents into the ocean was banned!)

• When the mind parasite is sitting on the ground by the missile, it seems to be spewing some kind of icky foam. What was that supposed to signify? Is it dying? And if so, why?!

• Why is there a set of controls for the Thunderbolt inside the little hut? Surely it wasn't intended to be launched from there - the Master just brought it there as a convenient and out-of-the-way hiding place.

• I'm shocked that the Doctor was just going to leave the Master lying by the missile to be blown up! Surely that was a little drastic! (although I guess he's done it before and since, so I shouldn't really be surprised.)

• Poor Barnham dies for no good reason whatsoever, except I guess to reaffirm how utterly evil the Master is. Would it have been so bad to just let the Master escape, and Barnham get in the helicopter with the Doctor and Jo?

• Why doesn't the machine just teleport away from the missile the moment that Barnham is dead? Does it have something to do with that foam expulsion?

• The Doctor taunts Jo: "Have some coffee," he says, holding it out to her. Then as Jo reaches for it, he feints and sets it on the table instead.

• So, the Master has his TARDIS back. Unfortunately, he won't be gone for long.

The first episode moves pretty well and seems relatively promising, but by episode three I pretty much lost interest. It certainly has its good elements, but by the end I was just breathing a sigh of relief that I'd managed to slog through the whole thing. If you don't know what's going to happen, it's probably reasonably exciting, but when you take a step back and consider just what each plot element contributed to the overall story, then it seems like a lovely central idea lost amid a jumbled mess of padding.