Who Review: The Mind of Evil

The Doctor and Jo visit Stangmoor Prison to witness a demonstration of the new “Keller Machine.” This machine rehabilitates criminals by extracting the evil impulses from the brain. The Doctor is skeptical, and even after a seemingly successful demonstration, something about the machine unnerves him. Meanwhile, an international peace conference is taking place, and U.N.I.T. is in charge of security. A series of unexplained attacks, including the death of one of the delegates to the peace conference, heightens the Doctor’s concerns about the Keller machine, and the whole Keller process. The nature of the attacks makes him think they are connected. Someone is using the Keller Machine to influence the outcome of the peace conference. But who would want to start World War III? And can the Doctor put an end to the plan before it’s too late?

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

“The Mind of Evil” is a six-part story, first broadcast through February and into March of 1971. The Third Doctor, still exiled on Earth, is at Stangmoor to satisfy his curiosity with regard to this “Keller Machine.” His interest with the peace conference is only piqued when he suspects there might be a connection between the death of the delegate and the machine. It’s a good story, and it doesn’t drag over six episodes. Writer Don Houghton, who wrote “Inferno” in the previous season, has a good sense of pacing. Houghton went on to write movies, most notably Hammer horror movies, and I think both “Inferno” and “The Mind of Evil” would work well on the big screen without episode breaks.

The main weak point in the plot is the connection between the Keller Machine and the peace conference. It transpires that Emil Keller, inventor of the machine, is, in fact, the Master. His machine not only sucks evil impulses from the mind, but it feeds them to an alien Mind Parasite within the machine that uses those impulses to attack its victims. The Master has found a way to channel the Parasite’s telepathic ability, but he’s playing a dangerous game since the Parasite has a mind of its own. Parallel to this, the Master is planning to steal the “Thunderbolt” missile, containing a deadly gas, which U.N.I.T. is secretly transporting for disposal. It’s here that the connection becomes fuzzy. Yes, he uses the power of the Keller Machine to help him get the missile. But he also uses the machine to attack delegates. His plan is to start World War III, but either the machine or the missile would achieve that end–why use both? Especially given the instability of his Keller Machine.

In my review of “Terror of the Autons,” I wasn’t too impressed with Jo Grant as a companion. She seemed fairly useless, and more of a hindrance than a help. Given she stayed on as a companion for a few seasons, I expected some kind of “turn around,” or character development that would validate her. Well, I think “The Mind of Evil” was the story I was looking for. Not only does she behave with confidence in herself and the Doctor, but she actually makes herself useful. She rescues the Doctor from the Keller Machine, she single-handedly quells a prison riot, and helps the Doctor with his plans for securing the prison and stopping the Master. Definitely a good story for Jo!

Not only was this a good story for Jo, but U.N.I.T. actually looked like a competent military organization, again. The previous season was a bit of a disaster for the Brig and his boys, but here they actually execute maneuvers and, while foiled by the Master a couple of times, recover and cause problems for him. Captain Yates demonstrates initiative and courage, and Sergeant Benton takes his orders seriously. No wonder they both proved to be fan favorites.

The body count in this story is quite high, and this seems to be a feature of this era of Doctor Who that you don’t see much today: gun battles, and the Brigadier stepping over the bodies of the dead and wounded. They stop short of showing blood and gore, but the mere fact of people shooting at each other, and people apparently dying as a result, clearly didn’t phase kids in the early 1970s as it might today. I’m not sure why. Perhaps kids today expect to see a lot more damage from violent behavior. I don’t think twenty-first century kids would buy a gunshot wound with no blood, whereas kids of my generation would have no problem with that.

I have to applaud the use of a Chinese actress to play Captain Chin Lee of the Chinese delegation. Granted, the actress, Pik-Sen Lim, who is actually Malaysian-Chinese, was married to writer Don Houghton, but hers was not a gratuitous casting. She really can act, and she does an excellent job. Such ethnically-authentic casting was not common at this time, so this is a stand-out moment.

Finally, I can’t avoid commenting on the concept of “evil” in this story. Given the secular presuppositions of Doctor Who (even in the 1970s), the idea that there is some kind of objective standard of evil that a machine can detect and remove seems a bit out of place. It raises all kinds of questions: Who determined what is evil? By what right do they say “this is good” or “this is normal”? How “good” is good enough? How “evil” is too evil? Food for thought. 🙂

I’d say this one is worth watching for some good performances, and a good story.