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.