Season 8, Episode 2 | 6 parts | First broadcast: 30 January – 6 March 1971 | Writer: Don Houghton | Director: Timothy Combe
Cast
- Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
- Katy Manning as Jo Grant
- Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
- Roger Delgado as the Master
Summary
At Stangmoor Prison, a revolutionary machine claims to be able to purge criminals of their darkest impulses, but the Doctor suspects the device is in fact an alien Mind Parasite that feeds on extracted fears, leaving its victims catatonic or dead. As the Master manipulates a prison uprising and a world peace conference toward his own ends, the Doctor must confront a nightmarish, shape-shifting creature that can strike at his own deepest terrors.
Interesting Facts
- This is the only Third Doctor serial in which the Master’s master plan involves stolen nerve gas missiles as well as the Keller Machine, giving the story an unusually sprawling, multi-threaded plot.
- It was one of the few Doctor Who serials of this era shot substantially on colour videotape but existed for years only in black-and-white recordings after the BBC wiped the colour masters; the colour version was later reconstructed.
- The Mind Parasite’s visualisation of each victim’s worst fear allowed the production to briefly reuse effects and monsters from earlier stories, including a giant clockwork model and Dalek insert footage for the Doctor’s own vision.
- At six episodes, it gave director Timothy Combe, who had also helmed Doctor Who and the Silurians, one of his most demanding assignments on the series.
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