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.