Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: From Russia With Love

The second expensive luxury James Bond film, made in 1963, introduces the most important character in the whole series, so Expensive Luxury Cat and I thought it would be worth looking at it next.

There is a pre-titles sequence where James Bond gets killed - well, that was a short film. Oh no, it was actually a different manny wearing a Sean Connery mask, predating the likes of Rollin Hand or the Master's use of masks by several years, as well as explaining why neither of them ever tried disguising themselves as Sean Connery - it isn't as if his voice is hard to impersonate, but they didn't want to get themselves strangled by SECTRE agents by mistaik!

Now obviously this means that James Bond doesn't really appear in his own pre-titles sequence. But it does introduce us to the baddy Donald Grant and quickly establishes how dangerous he is - if he can kill a manny disguised as Bond, then maybe he can kill the real Bond too!

The first scene after the title sequence introduces us to Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal), who must be clever because he is good at chess. He is also the Number Five member of SECTRE, which we see when he goes to meet the most important character in the film - SECTRE's Number One, a.k.a. Blofeld's expensive luxury cat.

Kronsteen explains his masterplan to us and then Number One tucks in to some fishy noms.

Expensive and luxury fishy noms, no less. You can already see why this film series became a worldwide phenomenon, especially in the early 1960s when such glamorous escapism would have been beyond the reach of most cats.

We then see the early stages of the plan play out from SECTRE's point of view without Bond appearing for quite some time. When he does he is obviously in the middle of some typical Bond naughtiness, which gets interrupted by his being called in for his mission.

After the briefing from M (which goes exactly as Kronsteen predicted it would) we are introduced to a character almost as important and iconic as Number One, although sadly he is not a cat. This is Q, played by Desmond Llewelyn, and he gives Bond his gadget for this mission - the briefcase with lots of hidden extras.

Clang!

The action properly begins in Turkey where there are three factions - the Turks who are friendly to Bond, plus two sets of baddys - the Russians and, of course, SECTRE.

Kerim Bey quickly becomes Bond's friend, and he is a great character who walks the line between not taking things seriously and taking them exactly seriously enough. This is demonstrated in the bit where the Russians make an attempt to blow him up and he is joking with Bond about it by the next scene.

The scene where Kerim Bey takes Bond to see the "gypsies" and witness two of them fighting is one of the more iconic scenes from this film, despite being not exactly politically correct. But then, this film was made well over 50 years ago so we can't exactly judge it by today's standards while at the same time acknowledging that it wouldn't and shouldn't be made that way today.
For example, the fight is of a type commonly known to old-fashioned mannys as a 'cat-fight' even though they are mannys involved, not cats. A real cat fight usually goes more like this:
"Blake is the second-best character in Blakes 7."
"You're wrong, Tarrant is obviously the second-best character in Blakes 7."
"Mew!"
"Mew!"

When Bond gets back to his hotel there are a number of noises made before he pays proper attention, which is most unlike him - he must have read the script and know what is coming next.

Tatiana Romanova slips into his bed and steals his sleeps. Bond wants to get on with the mission straight away and he starts asking her questions about the Russian decoding machine, the "Lektor," that she's supposed to be giving him. This is also unlike him - later versions of James Bond would be more interested in giving her one.

Lol.

There are a large number of shots with the Hagia Sophia in the background, it must be the Turkish equivalent of the Eiffel Tower. But the next bit is actually set there as Bond and Tatiana do spy stuff along with Grant - who Bond still doesn't know about - who kills a Russian so Bond doesn't have to.

The middle of the film is perfectly paced, with every scene advancing the plot via a mixture of action and intrigue, and even a short komedy interlude with M and Miss Moneypenny back in London.

The main set-piece takes place on the train, when Bond leaves Istanbul along with Tatiana and Kerim Bey. Also aboard are a Russian agent and Grant. Grant shows up regularly in the background to remind us of his presence, but he still doesn't interact with Bond directly. He even kills Kerim Bey and the Russian without Bond finding out, by making it look as though they killed each other.

The train conductor who tells bond of Kerim Bey's death is played by George Pastell from Tomb of the Cybermannys - a small part but he is very recognisable due to his distinctive voice.

Bond now knows their plan is going wrong, but he does not yet realise that every move he makes has been anticipated by Kronsteen and has been observed by Grant. Grant eventually makes his move when he kills a manny Bond is expecting to meet and takes his place, calling himself "Captain Nash."

He pretends to be Bond's new friend (although he does keep trolling Bond by calling him "old man," which Bond doesn't like), and they even go to the restaurant car together, where "Nash" orders red wine with his fishy noms so that Bond can't swap their glasses after he drugs Tatiana's white wine - now that's what I call thinking ahead.

Bond sees Grant drug her, but Grant is actually able to talk Bond into trusting him again long enough to stun him with the old single-blow-to-the-back-of-the-head move.

"Red wine with fish... now that should have told me shomething."

This is essentially the dramatic climax of the film, as Bond and Grant confront each other with Bond at Grant's mercy. Bond realises Grant w-words for SECTRE, and gets him to spill the entire plan. Grant threatens to kill Bond slowly and painfully by shooting him multiple times, although the plan requires him to make it look like suicide so I'm not sure how he expects to manage that, mew.

Anyway, Bond tricks Grant into opening the gadget briefcase which explodes in his face, stunning Grant so that Bond can start a proper fight with him. Grant tries to kill Bond in the same way as he killed fake-Bond in the pre-titles sequence, but again the gadget briefcase saves him when Bond gets the hidden knife and stabs Grant until he goes

Bond makes sure to call Grant "old man" after he does so.

Bond and Tatiana escape from the train and get chased by a helicopter in a scene that owes quite a lot to North by Northwest (1959) when Bond tries running away for a bit. He shoots the manny in the helicopter just as he was about to drop a grenade, and this blows up the whole helicopter - in lesser films he would probably only have needed to shoot the helicopter to make it blow up.

Another iconic scene follows as the film cuts back to Number One, Klebb (SECTRE Number Three), and Kronsteen, as Number One tells them that

"We do not tolerate failure."

and then has Kronsteen killed, by means of his henchmanny's famous poisoned shoe.

The final scene of the plot then sees Klebb act directly, as she tries to steal the Lektor and kill Bond with her own poisoned shoe, and is only stopped because of Tatiana, who finally proves whose side she is on when she first distracts and then shoots Klebb. Bond's main contribution here is to quip

"She's had her kicksh."

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Very Luxury

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil Episode Six

Quite a long reprise from the end of episode five shows us UNIT's attack on the prison again, so this action sequence must have been too expensive to only use once. Then when we reach the cliffhanger moment again... surprise! It was actually the Brigadier shooting Mailer, not Mailer shooting the Doctor. This is quite a clever resolution of the situation, since it uses information we weren't aware of (that the Brigadier was present at the scene) but in a fair way.

The Doctor is characteristically (certainly for this story) ungrateful when he says

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

Is that meant to be a pun on the actor Nicholas "Nick" Courtney's name? If so then he will by definition always arrive in the "Nick" of time, mew.

"I'm glad to see you too, Doctor."

replies the Brigadier with a smile, so he knows the Doctor doesn't really mean it. Their celebration is short-lived though.

"What about the missile?"
"Isn't it here?"
"No."
"Oh."

Fortunately, it isn't long before the escaped Mike Yates telephones the Brigadier to tell him where the missile is. The Brigadier takes most of his UNIT soldiers away with him to try and catch the Master, leaving the Doctor, Jo and Benton behind to deal with the Keller machine.

The Keller machine escapes from the Doctor's electric hula hoop trap by making the very studio set itself afraid of it, shaking the camera and throwing props about, which I suppose must be the sort of thing a television studio is afraid of. This allows the machine to disappear again, then it reappears in the prison set and noms a couple of unlucky mannys.

The Doctor and Jo see the process room is empty, but when they are examining the broken equipment the machine reappears and starts to nom them. Barnham comes in and the machine stops and goes quiet. The Doctor quickly realises that it is because Barnham is near, and he makes him come back when the machine tries to start up again.

"The mind of evil, Jo. I should have realised!"

Clang!

"That creature feeds on the evil impulses of the brain."
"And Barnham hasn't got any?"
"No, the machine extracted them all. Something in his mind acts as a screen and neutralises it. So long as he's here, we're perfectly safe."

The Doctor gets the lid off and we see the creature that lives inside the machine. Cthulhu claims it looks like one of his friends, whose acting career must have been going well in the early 1970s if he managed to land the title part in a major BBC TV serial.

The Master telephones Benton by mistaik, and asks to speak to the Doctor. The Doctor offers to exchange the Master's dematerialisation circuit (which he took from the Master's TARDIS back in Terror of the Autons, a wee bit of continuity between the stories) for the missile, which the Master quickly agrees to, provided the Doctor delivers it personally. The Doctor tells the Brigadier his plan, but the Brigadier is clearly not quite fully on board with it, and still wants UNIT to blow up the missile if they can.

This leads into the climax of the story, where the Brigadier, the Doctor and the Master all have their own plots and plans that are about to meet.

The Brigadier's plan fails first, when the Master prevents him from blowing up the missile by disconnecting "the abort mechanism."

The Doctor goes out to meet the Master in a van that secretly has Jo, Barnham and the sleeping Keller machine in the back of it.

Jo distracts the Master so that the Doctor can Venusian Karate the gun out of his hand with a loud "Hai!"
The Master ends up lying on the ground near the Keller machine, which starts to wake up (and so is probably very grumpy) when the others all run away.

The Doctor reconnects the missile's abort mechanism. Barnham goes to help the Master, which allows him to escape from the Keller machine. The Master then gets in the van and runs Barnham over in a choppy and confusingly directed scene that robs it of a lot of the intended dramatic impact, the end result of which is that Barnham goes

The Doctor and Jo escape in UNIT's helicopter and then the Brigadier blows up the missile, as well as the building it was next to for good measure. We are forced to presume that they also exploded the Keller machine as well, at least until the next scene when the Doctor and the Brigadier confirm it - but as it did not die on-screen it must be ripe for a return story at any point, right?

The Doctor realises he has lost the Master's dematerialisation circuit, and worries that the Master may have recovered it. This is confirmed almost immediately when the Master telephones to let him (and us) know:

"Ah, Doctor. I was afraid you'd be worried about me, so I thought I'd let you know that I'm alive and well."
"I'm extremely sorry to hear that."
"I made the safety of my TARDIS which, thanks to your generosity, is in perfect working order."
"So, we won't be seeing you for quite some time?"
"Not for quite some time. But one day, I will destroy this miserable planet and you along with it. Goodbye, Doctor. Oh, by the way... enjoy your exile."

The story ends with the Doctor insulting the Brigadier to his face when he says

"I'm stuck here on Earth... with you, Brigadier!"

and, like a lot of the Doctor's dialogue in this story if you take it out of context, the Doctor might appear to be acting like a massive yacht, but this is softened by the reaction the Brigadier has to this, which is to smile good humouredly. It's hardly an Avon smile to end upon, but it does have much the same effect of reversing the mood of the final moment.

What's so good about The Mind of Evil?

As with the previous story, the answer is largely due to the Master.

Terror of the Autons introduced the character, but this is the first story to truly let him shine as the Doctor's new arch-enemy. He sits like a pider at the centre of the web of seemingly separate plot threads introduced in part one, and instantly ties them together when he makes his appearance in part two, as only a true Mastermind can.

Roger Delgado is, if anything, even better here than in his first story, perhaps because for a lot of the time he is in familiar territory from his days as a rent-a-henchmanny in '60s telefantasy series, such as the scenes where he hypno-eyeses Chin Lee or teams up with Mailer to take over the prison - except here he has finally ascended to his true potential as not the henchmanny but the brains behind them... the Mind of Evil. That's right, the story's title doesn't just refer to the Keller machine, it has a clever double meaning. I felt like a very clever cat when I spotted it.

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

With the multiple plotlines that come together gradually, Don Houghton's script does well to hide the padding for the most part, but there are definitely some scenes that are redundant or, at best, overlong. These include the unwise komedy scenes with Fu Peng in episode two, the prison fight in episode three, the Doctor's escaping and getting recaptured (also in episode three), the Keller machine disappearing pointlessly on the occasions when it reappears in basically the same location, and the scenes of the Doctor and Jo in the prison cell in episode five.

The Keller machine's repeated menacing of the Doctor at the end of half the episodes is also padding, but I think it is unfair to count cliffhanger padding for this analysis since that really should be its own category, and is just as likely in a shorter story - we have seen this plenty of times before now, mew.

Since this is the first Pertwee Six-Parter we have, as yet, no other examples with which to compare it, so it remains to be seen if this is a typical amount of padding for a P6P, but don't worry - we will soon encounter others.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil Episode Five

Mailer runs away, and instead of noming the Doctor and Jo, the Keller machine disappears. The Doctor thinks "it detected a higher concentration of evil in Mailer" and so has gone to chase him like a cat chasing a mouse.

The Brigadier has gotten himself a helicopter - I hope this goes better for him than the last time he was in one! The Doctor and Jo team up with Barnham, and then they wave at the helicopter to get the Brigadier to come and rescue them, but Mailer's henchmannys recapture them.

Mailer telephones the Master to get him to come back to the prison to deal with the Keller machine, and even threatens to tell UNIT where the missile is if he doesn't come back - this is probably not a good long-term survival strategy being employed by Mailer here.

The Master has Mike Yates prisoner. Yates asks why he stole the missile, leading to a nice little exchange:

"Why did I take the missile? I intend to use it."
"You'll never be able to, it's too complex."
"Nonsense, this is childishly simple!"

The Master leaves Yates tied to a chair while he goes off to help Mailer at the prison.

With Benton injured, the Doctor, Jo and Yates all captured, and Captain Hawkins still ded, the Brigadier needs another character to talk to, so he gets Major Cosworth to come in and help him. The Brigadier has wrongly concluded that the missile is at Stangmoor prison, so makes plans to go and get it back.

"It's an old fortress. You'd need an army to get in there."

It's a good job he has an army then. He says they will use a "Trojan Horse" to get into the prison - do you think the Brigadier knows that the Doctor invented that plan?

The Master enters the cell where the Doctor and Jo are playing draughts, and even though they are prisoners they troll him by shhing him whenever he tries to speak to them. Only when he threatens to have Mailer shoot Jo, the Doctor agrees to try a plan to control the Keller machine.

Yates escapes from the baddys, but that's the last we see of him this episode.

The Doctor and the Master are once again forced to team up as the Doctor tries his plan with the Master assisting him. This is, naturally, a great bit.

The Doctor has to put an electric hula hoop over the top of the Keller machine, and the scene is a lot more dramatic than that sounds, especially when the machine makes the hoop go on fire and sends out images of monsters to try and scare the Doctor (again). All the Master has to do is turn the power on, and even he breathes a sigh of relief when the scene is over.

The Doctor says this "won't hold it for long" so the Master puts him back in the cell to think of a more permanent solution for the Keller machine.

The Doctor and Jo have noms, and the Doctor starts to tell Jo an anecdote about when he met Sir Walter Raleigh. Fortunately we are spared from having to listen to most of this obvious padding, as the scene dissolves to the Brigadier and his soldiers approaching the prison. The Brigadier is in disguise, and he has acquired a van from somewhere off-screen.

They get inside and start a big fight between UNIT and the baddys, which is another proper HAVOC action scene including obligatory stunt of a manny falling off a high place. You know, this isn't nearly as impressive as the show seems to want us to think it is - we cats do that sort of thing all the time and, since we always land on our feet, it's no big deal.

Mailer tries to use the Doctor and Jo as hostages so he can escape by himself, leaving his henchmannys behind to do the fighting. Jo makes an attempt to knock Mailer down, but all it accomplishes is to make him realise "I only need one of you," and he goes to shoot the Doctor - we even see the gun firing (in a cut to extreme closeup), which makes this a much more effective cliffhanger moment than if it had cut to the credits before the trigger was pulled.

This is also a nice change from all the 'Keller machine menaces someone' cliffhangers we have had so far in this story.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil Episode Four

The Doctor escapes from the Keller machine by deciding it is time for some sleeps. In the next scene all the mannys are moaning and groaning about how much of a cop-out that cliffhanger resolution was, so the Master decides to investigate. He staggers into the process room and turns the machine off, then he wakes the Doctor up and the Doctor tells him

"I know the secret of that machine. Inside is a creature that feeds on the evil of the mind, and very soon it'll feed on yours."

Cla... oh no, hold on, that was almost a Title Drop, but not quite.

Mailer puts the Doctor in the prison cell with Jo, while the Master goes back into the process room and has a battle of wills with the machine:

"You can't harm me, I'm stronger than you are. I brought you here. I gave you the minds you need to feed on! You are my servant! You are my servant!"

This scene was already great, considering it is Roger Delgado acting against what is basically just a prop and some sound effects, but it gets even better when it uses its power on him so he sees the thing that he fears, and it is a giant Doctor, laughing at him.

The Master says "I'm too strong for you" then changes his mind almost as instantly as he did at the end of Terror of the Autons and he runs out of the room.

He orders Mailer to stop anyone going into the room, so that they can deny the machine any noms. Mailer still wants to escape from the prison, but the master tells him that if he does so then he will only be recaptured because that's how a lot of these six-part stories pad out their run-time unless he goes along with the Master's plan (Masterplan?) to capture the Thunderbolt missile.

The Master even has some slides to show (slideshow?) Mailer his plan with.

As Mailer and his henchmannys set out to do the plan, the Doctor and Jo overpower two of the guards to escape from the cell. Rather than use Venusian Karate, the Doctor just hits one of them on the head with a tray, and this is just as effective. They get to the Governor's office and Jo finds the Master's slideshow, although the Doctor claims to have already guessed the Master's plan anyway.

There is a short action scene of Mailer and his mannys attacking the UNIT soldiers, that ends when Mike Yates gets shot while trying to telephone the Brigadier to tell him what has happened. Unfortunately, although his telephone gets broken, Yates is still alive. He chases after the stolen missile while Benton has a sleep.

The baddys take the missile to a big building where they can hide it. Yates drives up really close to it and is noisy, but he avoids getting spotted immediately by staying out of any shot where the baddys are in the foreground. I know he is also wearing army camouflage clothes, but when does that ever work in a TV programme? He'll get spotted when the script calls for him to get spotted and not a moment before, mew. The baddys eventually notice him when he tries to drive away and they shoot him again, causing his motorbike to crash into some boxes - another ironclad law of the TV universe being observed, there.

Benton (now sporting a large comedy bandage on his head) tells the Brigadier he saw a black van, and the Brigadier quickly connects this to Stangmoor prison, either once again demonstrating some intelligence without the need for the Doctor, or else maybe he just realised that we're in the second half of the story now so it must be time to start tying all the plot strands together.

In the process room, the Keller machine turns itself on and disappears - or possibly has a flashback, since its a similar wavy special effect to the one that usually denotes such things. It appears in another part of the prison and starts to nom one of the baddys.

He shoots at it, but that only causes it to make the picture go grainy and black & white when it kills him, like a bargain basement version of the traditional Dalek pewpewpew. Then it disappears again, so it is gone when the Doctor and Jo find the manny's body.

They go into the process room and see the Keller machine isn't there. Mailer and a henchmanny come in and capture them, but then the machine appears behind them and kills the henchmanny before vanishing again. This is a pointless bit of vanishing, because it then reappears almost immediately, and tries to nom the Doctor and Jo - cliffhanger!

'Oh no, not again,' the Doctor is thinking.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil Episode Three

Dragon!

The dragon menaces the American delegate for a bit, although I am bound to report that it does look a bit derpy when we get to see it in long-shot.

The Doctor, the Brigadier and Fu Peng come in and the dragon turns back into Chin Lee in time to have some sleeps. Fu Peng finds the metal hypno-eyes device on her.

Benton orders some UNIT mannys around while standing in front of a missile, and none of them are brave enough to point out to him that it is only a photograph. To be fair to Benton, it does look a lot less like a photo if you see it in black & white (as used to be standard for this story until the DVD release), which implies that Benton sees the world like a doggy.

The Master is still listening in on the telephone calls between Mike Yates and the Brigadier, and finds out from them that the American delegate isn't ded and that the Doctor already knows about the link to Stangmoor Prison.

While talking to Chin Lee about Professor Keller, the Doctor finally realises the Master is in this story, and the Brigadier is even slower on the uptake:

"Post-hypnotic block, his usual technique."
"Whose usual technique?"
"Well think man! Who else would make a deliberate attempt to plunge this world into war, using equipment and techniques not even developed on Earth, like this?"
"The Master?"
"Otherwise known as Emil Keller!"

Then another telephone call to the Brigadier informs him and the Doctor that Jo has "been captured."

At the prison, Barnham accidentally distracts Mailer long enough for Jo to grab the gun from him, and this kicks off a big fight. The fighting is all over by the time the Master comes in and pretends to be Profesor Keller again. He meets with the Governor and finds out that the Doctor is on his way. He asks to see Mailer, who is now a prisoner again.

Alone together (a curious phrase - technically it doesn't make sense and yet the meaning is clear) in the cell, the Master grabs Mailer's arm in much the same way as he grabbed Rossini in part one of Terror of the Autons - maybe this is just the way he goes about recruiting all of his henchmannys?

He gives Mailer guns and gasmasks out of his briefcase for use in a plan to take over the prison properly this time. They set off some smoke bombs. Despite Mailer shooting at least three mannys (is the Doctor still "looking forward" to the Master's return, I wonder?) the alarm is raised and another fight starts, but this time it is Mailer's team that wins.

The Doctor is let into the prison and is immediately captured by Mailer.

"I understand there's been some trouble here?"
"That's right, mate, and you're in it."

Would this have been better if Mailer was replaced by Regan (King of Space) from Ambassadors OF DEATH? Probably not, but we do like our gratuitous little bits of continuity, we Doctor Who-liking cats, mew.

Mailer takes the Doctor to the Governor's room to find the Master there in the Governor's place. He tells the Doctor he isn't going to kill him yet because he needs his help, tantalising us with the prospect of the second team-up in as many stories:

"You want me to help you with that machine of yours, 'Professor Keller'? You want to be careful of that thing, you know. One day it's going to end up killing you."
"Oh, it won't harm me. I created it..."

"...But recently I must admit that it has developed a mind of its own. Hence my need for your assistance while I'm engaged on other business."

The Master can't stop himself from telling the Doctor all his plans, as he goes on to tell him how he intends to steal UNIT's nuclear missile.

The Doctor knocks over the Governor's table and runs away. Some of the henchmannys chase him out onto some location filming and, by the time the Doctor arrives back at the studio and goes into the process room set, the Master is already there and waiting for him.

The Doctor gets put in the chair. The Master turns the lights off in order to make it more atmospheric, and then he sets the Keller machine on the Doctor. He doesn't bother to stay and wait to see the effect this has on the Doctor because the Master is a baddy of the highest class, and knows how these things ought to be done.

As soon as he leaves the room, the Keller machine music starts up and the Doctor sees more fire, as well as some monsters, and he hears a bad impression of a Dalek so that this cliffhanger isn't an exact copy of the end of part one.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil Episode Two

Jo comes in and saves the Doctor seemingly just by turning up. The Doctor says

"Your coming in broke its grip on my mind."

which is convenient. You might even say very convenient, if you were given to that turn of phrase. Cheers.

When Jo asks the Doctor why he saw fire, he explains:

"Well, some time ago, Jo, I witnessed a terrible catastrophe. A whole world just disappeared in flames. This machine picked that memory out of my mind and used it to attack me."

While not explicitly named as such, this is blatantly a continuity reference to Inferno.

Mike Yates comes to get the Doctor to go with him to the Brigadier's plot. He doesn't want to go (plus ça change) until Yates tells him there's been a murder.

Benton is following Chin Lee undercover, but he is rubbish at it. She stares at him and the Keller machine music starts, then the machine itself superimposes over her and gives Benton a headache. This allows her to get away.
When Benton tells the Brigadier what happened his response is scathing:

"Throbbing in the head? Fainting? You're too delicate for intelligence work, Benton, you'd better go and lie down."

Outside UNIT's building a manny who we're probably not supposed to recognise as the Master straight away has hacked their telephones so he can steal their internets listen in on Yates's conversation. He doesn't remain in disguise for long and, as soon as he takes his mask off, the Master's music starts playing just to be doubly sure we know it's him. Roger Delgado has played baddys in enough telefastasy series by this point that he can probably do this sort of espionage acting in his sleep.

The Doctor has by now returned and teamed up with the Brigadier. They set out to meet with the new Chinese delegate, Fu Peng, while the Brigadier tries to set them up as a new komedy double act.

"Fu Peng? He must be Hokkien."
"No, no, no, Doctor. He's Chinese."

I think the Morecambe and Wise show is missing one of its writers, mew.

And not one they want back.

Fu Peng is very rude to the Brigadier, which is odd behaviour for a diplomat unless, of course, he read the script for the previous scene and is trying to punish the Brigadier for the joke.

The Doctor speaks Hokkien to Fu Peng, and name drops Chairman Mew. This is probably a similar bluff to his claim in Terror of the Autons that he was a member of the same club as the minister Lord Rowlands, since the Doctor is unlikely to be on first-name terms with a manny (and he was a manny, despite the name) who was responsible for the deaths of between 40 and 80 million other mannys.

Because he can't speak Hokkien, the Brigadier can't impress the delegate by claiming any mass murderers as casual acquaintances, so is left standing about while the other two talk to each other. When the Doctor and Brigadier finally leave Fu Peng's office, the music goes a bit Chinese-y to underline the komedy, in a way that you most certainly wouldn't get away with these days.

In the prison, one of the mannys hides a gun under a pillow. Mailer (played by William Marlowe, because the real Oliver Reed was too expensive) is put in the cell by the Governor, with the dialogue implying that he is intended to be the next victim of the Keller machine. Mailer knows the gun is there, and he uses it to take a hostage.

Back in the Brigadier's office, Yates is getting ready to do the nuclear missile plot. He describes the "Thunderbolt" as "a nuclear powered missile with a warhead full of nerve gas" which sounds like overkill to me but is typical of the way military mannys think - why only blow up and irradiate your enemies when you can nerve gas them as well?

When the Doctor hears about Benton losing "a Chinese girl" earlier, his plot-relevant-information-sense tingles, and he immediately connects it with the Governor's description of Professor Keller's assistant from part one.

"It could be coincidence."

suggests the Brigadier, knowing that (Chairman Mew's best efforts to thin their numbers notwithstanding) there are quite a lot of "Chinese girls."

"Coincidence my foot."

the Doctor says, banking on his knowledge of the law of conservation of narrative details to win the argument for him.

Chin Lee gets in a car where the Master is sitting smoking a cigar. He has already hypno-eyesed her, and gives her orders to "kill the American delegate." He's not in this episode very much, but he's effortlessly the coolest character in it, and fits so perfectly into the centre of all the villainous plots that it is easy to forget to be surprised by his returning to the series so soon after Terror of the Autons.

Mailer and his henchmannys in the prison capture Jo and Dr Summers, but their plot strand doesn't get any more time to develop in this episode, because we go straight back to the other plot.

The American delegate is wandering around the Chinese embassy set looking for Fu Peng. Chin Lee comes in and attacks him with the Keller machine music and sound effects. He doesn't see water or fire, he sees... a dragon!

My friend Dragon was most impressed by this cliffhanger ending and he went on to suggest that every episode of Doctor Who should end in this way.
While I wouldn't go that far, I would say that it would at least have been a significant improvement on, say, the cliffhanger we actually got for part one of Dragonfire.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil Episode One

The Mind of Evil is the second story of season eight of Doctor Who, and was first broadcast in 1971. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton.

At six episodes long, it is also the first instance of a Pertwee Six-Parter, a collection of 11 stories that have the combined reputation in Doctor Who cat fandom of generally being a bit too long for the amount of story they contain, with a corresponding amount of padding to fill out the rest of the run time. I think it should be interesting to see how much that theory holds to be true as we look at each P6P in turn.

It starts with the Doctor and Jo arriving at a castle in Bessie. We see a sign that this is "H.M. Prison Stangmoor."

Inside the castle-prison is a BBC television studio-prison (like you might see in the oft-repeated BBC sitcom Porridge) where there are mannys making lots of noise. Some mannys go and wrestle with another manny who doesn't want to leave his cell. One of them is Dr Summers, played by Michael Sheard in his second of six Doctor Who appearances.

The Doctor and Jo talk exposition - the Doctor is here to see the "Keller process" for himself - he seems to know what it is even if we don't. This is a story where things have already started without us, a technique we last saw in Ferno - which is not so surprising since Don Houghton wrote both of them.

The Governor (who may or may not be another Time Lord, the cat jury is still out on that one) introduces Professor Kettering, who gives us the full exposition when he tells the Doctor and the other assembled mannys

"Science has abolished the hangman's noose and substituted this infallible method."

As he goes on, the Doctor keeps interrupting him for no obvious reason. After a great deal of thought, we have decided that the best explanation available to cat science is that this is an attempt by the writer to conceal by breaking up what would otherwise be an enormous exposition dump. Sadly it has the side effect of making the Doctor look like a massive yacht.

Kettering gives the game away somewhat when he describes the intended victim of the Keller machine as "the condemned man." Of course, Gamma Longcat, I should have realised... the Doctor is acting like a massive yacht because he is convinced that any professor in a Don Houghton story must automatically be an equally massive yacht like Professor Stahlman was.

They wheel in the wrestling manny from earlier who is now trying to have some sleeps on a trolley. He is Barnham (Neil "Thawn" McCarthy), and they put him in the chair for the machine. No wonder he was so grumpy before, I'm like that if I get woken up from nice sleeps, mew.

They turn on the machine, and the lighting goes evil. Something goes wrong, and Kettering and Dr Summers run about for a bit looking at dials before deciding that everything is fine after all and the resemblance to an electric chair must surely be a coincidence. Meanwhile the Doctor says

"I knew there was something evil about that machine."

Later on, a manny goes

in the process room studio. The Doctor quickly teams up with Dr Summers to start investigating, and ignores Jo telling him about what the Brigadier is doing:

"Today's the first ever World Peace Conference. UNIT's handling all the security arrangements."

This line of exposition is a link in to the next scene with the Brigadier and Mike Yates in it.

The Brigadier tells Yates that he is in charge of transporting a missile, something that UNIT apparently does a lot of, even as late as Battlefield. Captain Chin Lee comes in and complains to the Brigadier about how

"Important state documents have been stolen from General Cheng Teik's suite."

She suspects "the imperialist Americans" and says

"I must warn you that this puts the success of the peace conference in grave jeopardy."

With this peace conference subplot, the story has gone a bit Sandbaggers. Given that the UNIT era is supposed to be the near future, these could even be related to the SALT talks we saw in season 3 of that series. At this rate by the end of the season we'll see the Brigadier ordering Benton to shoot Jo to save her from the East German Secret Police. Or maybe that's what really happened to Liz Shaw in between the seasons..?

In which case, Mike Yates is auditioning for the Willie Caine role when he pervs after Chin Lee and says

"She's quite a dolly."

Nice try, Mike, but you're not fooling anyone. You'd be lucky to be considered Sandbagger Two material.

Chin Lee goes out on location where she takes a document and sets it on fire while the Keller machine noise plays on the soundtrack. She then touches a bit of metal behind her ear - the traditional place for a hypno-eyes device!

Back at the prison, the Doctor argues with Kettering about what killed the manny. The Doctor is already convinced the Keller machine is to blame, and manages to get the Governor on side enough to order Kettering to give the machine "a thorough check."

Kettering is in the middle of examining the Keller machine when it starts playing its sound effect and its lights start flashing. He tries to turn it off but cannot reach the buttons, and we see his terrifying vision of getting wet - oh noes! No wonder he too dies of fright. Poor Professor Kettering, and it wasn't even his own machine that killed him, so he wasn't allowed to say 'Stop! No! I created you!'

The next scene sees the Doctor and Dr Summers investigating Kettering's death. Dr Summers thinks it looks "consistent with death by drowning" and the Doctor once again blames the Keller machine. It is the Governor's turn to be sceptical:

"Oh, come now, Doctor. It's only a machine."

In parallel to this, the Brigadier is investigating a murder as well - he gets a telephone call from Chin Lee saying that the Chinese delegate is ded. This has practically turned into a TV detective show now. The Brigadier knows that in those terms he is only a sidekick and needs the Doctor's help, and asks Yates to try and get him back from the prison plot to help him with this one.

The Doctor asks about Professor Keller, and learns that he had an assistant who the Governor describes as "a rather attractive Chinese girl." In accordance with the laws of conservation of narrative detail, and because Doctor Who doesn't have the budget for more than one character to fit that description, this means it must refer to Chin Lee, which the story hammers home when it follows that line of dialogue with a direct cut to show her standing around waiting to talk with the Brigadier.

The Brigadier has caught her out in a lie from her statement about the time she telephoned him - once again the Brigadier showing a high level of competence in the Doctor's absence, such as previously seen in Ambassadors OF DEATH, so he's not utterly dependent on the Doctor after all.

There's definitely something very strange going on - Dr Summers discovers that

"Kettering's lungs were full of water. He drowned in the middle of a perfectly dry room."

It's a mystery!

The prison mannys start shouting again and the Keller machine turns itself on, just as it did with Kettering earlier. This time it is the Doctor that is alone in the room with it.

Instead of wets, the Doctor sees fire and he makes a face - the now universally recognised sign that it is time for the cliffhanger.