| Production Code FFF
First Transmitted:
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia
The Doctor's scepticism seems valid when a prisoner called Barnham collapses whilst undergoing the treatment. The Brigadier is meanwhile in charge of security at a World Peace Conference, where documents go missing and the Chinese delegate dies in mysterious circumstances. Captain Yates is away on another mission, transporting a banned Thunderbolt missile across country to be destroyed. The Doctor joins the Brigadier at the conference and they foil an attempt by the Chinese delegate's aide, Captain Chin Lee, to kill the American delegate. Lee is under the hypnotic control of the Master - otherwise known as Professor Emil Keller. The Master uses the evil impulses stored within the Keller Machine - actually the container for an alien mind parasite - to cause unrest at Stangmoor. He then enlists the convicts' aid to hijack the Thunderbolt missile, planning to use it to blow up the peace conference and start World War Three. Shielded by Barnham, now immune to the effects of the parasite, the Doctor transports the Keller Machine to a nearby airfield where the missile is being held. Using the Machine to keep the Master occupied, he reconnects the missile's auto-destruct circuit and gets clear just before the Brigadier triggers it. The parasite is presumed destroyed in the resulting explosion, but the Master escapes in a van, running Barnham down in the process.
Analysis by Cuisle The master is again trying to cause trouble on Earth. WHY is the eternal question. The Master IS an intriguing character, but he was OVER-used in some of these stories. The same was true during the Peter Davison era when The Master was found at the back of too many plots. That said, there are some original ideas in Mind of Evil. The first sequence in Stangmoor prison was chilling. The prisoners rattling their doors as a prisoner is taken for ‘sentence’. It must have been more so in 1971, only six years after the death penalty was abolished, because until it was revealed that the ‘sentence’ was to be subjected to the Keller machine, it looked as if an execution was about to be carried out. The Keller machine, extracting all the negative energy from the brain, looked more like an instrument of torture and left the prisoner with their mind wiped and reduced to a childlike state. And this was something U.N.I.T. wanted to observe as a potential solution to crime! Where were Amnesty International and the Howard League to protest against experiments being forced on unwilling prisoners? Even though The Doctor is uneasy about the process even he takes it for granted that they have the right to conduct such experiments. He is prepared to ‘observe’, at least until he is convinced that the machine is dangerous. Of course the machine IS dangerous. Because Keller is in fact The Master. And from here the plot thickens. Besides using the prisoners as guinea pigs he is busy killing of delegates to the peace conference in order to destabilise world peace, and steal a very nasty weapon. Again the scriptwriter’s imagination is worrying. Was Britain really the sort of place in 1971 where a nuclear-powered weapon packed full of nerve gas and capable of reaching any city in Europe was a believable part of its defence systems? As a social document this episode says some odd things about this country in that time. The character of Barnham, the prisoner who is subjected to the machine and reduced to an almost pathetic childlike character who becomes emotionally attached to Jo is a charming cameo. It is not true that he is the template for the character “Benny” in Crossroads (from 1975). Though it is possible that a similar character in Planet of the Spiders, who became fond of Sarah Jane was. We never learn what crime Barnham committed originally, but it is implied it was a violent one. The Keller machine made him gentle, but also robbed him of intelligence and understanding of the world. But he proved he knew right from wrong, joining with The Doctor and Jo to help defeat The Master. Sadly, he falls victim to The Master in the end, and Jo mourns his death in a way completely in keeping with her sweet-natured personality. One of the most telling moments in watching this episode over again, though, is when we find out that the Doctor’s deepest fear is fire. He speaks of seeing a world burn. Looking at that now, when he has seen his OWN world burn, it has an even more chilling resonance. It is easy to let the imagination run to thinking, perhaps, that what he saw was a foredoom of Gallifrey.
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