When we left off last time, the Dominators and their Quark lackeys unknowingly had their atomic bomb returned to them and it detonated inside their ship ending the threat to Dulkis and its pacifist inhabitants. However, the local volcano didn't get the all-clear message and decided to send some of its molten rock towards the TARDIS.
Although its exterior shell can handle the deepest depths of space with no problem and shrug off whatever the Vortex can throw at it with ease, a little lava is highly problematic. Engulfed by the liquid rock, which looks a lot like bath bubbles, the rascally fluid link strains and threatens to fail once again as some mercury vapors rise from the console giving me a forboding sense of déjà vu.
The TARDIS does have an emergency unit which would extricate it from this peril but the Doctor is loath to use it as doing so would move them outside of the time-space dimension and out of reality. His hand hovers over the activation button but he is trapped in indecision. Luckily Jamie is not and he forces the Time Lord's hand - literally - by pressing it down onto the button.
Although saved from the lava, the ship ends up in a void. Despite being nowhere, as the Doctor foresaw, Zoe heads back to into the TARDIS interior to find a new, less diaphanous outfit and returns in a glittery catsuit. It may be form fitting but at least you can't see her knickers. With her new duds, she is ready to investigate outside but the Doctor warns that it's too dangerous. He wanders off and Zoe and Jamie alternately see pictures of home on the scanner. The sight of her city proves too much for the young prodigy and she goes outside only to disappear into a white void. Jamie goes after her.
This weird space reminded me of the 8th Doctor and Charlie story, Scherzo. After the companions encounter a mirage or two and some robots, a disembodied voice tells the Doctor to rescue them and he does. Inside the ship, things remain weird. Jamie dreams of a unicorn charging him before the crew are overcome by a deafening pulsing sound. We then cut to the TARDIS spinning in the void before breaking apart.
The console is set adrift with Zoe and Jamie clinging onto it for dear life and the camera is placed in just the perfect spot to capture Zoe's callipygian figure. We briefly cut to the Doctor who is somewhere unknown with his eyes closed. Then we see Zoe seemingly pointing to him before letting loose a blood-curdling scream and then the console disappears into a mist.
One of, if not the, most surreal episodes of Doctor Who ever and it was fantastic. Certain bits had the vibe of the final episode of The Prisoner while the scream Zoe lets out while she clings to the console felt very Lynchian/last episode of Twin Peaks as we're not quite sure what she's terrified of. The lack of incidental music was a masterful choice and gave the episode a strong sense of the uncanny which I adored.
From here the story settles into a more conventional mode but it retains a lot of strangeness. Jamie and Zoe find themselves in a maze of what look to be square trees. The Scotsman runs into a Red Coat and moves to attack but is shot. Instead of suffering a gunshot wound as you'd expect, he is turned into a 2D cardboard standup display thingy.
The Doctor awakens in the forest maze, which we later learn is actually comprised of giant moveable type, and hears his companions yelling. Those lumbering robots from the void reappear and our hero runs into 1699 guy who, we learn later, is actually Lemuel Gulliver. He warns the Doctor that "the Master" is out to arrest him. Lemuel disappears and the Doctor is beset by a group of kids who proceed to interrogate him with a series of riddles.
Things don't get any less bizarre as the Doctor is confronted by the cardboard Jamie but this time without a face. He is presented with a palette of facial parts and has to reassemble the Scotsman's visage like Mr. Potato Head.
We find out that there is method to this madness with some shots of a grey-haired fellow sitting at a control panel watching monitor screens. We only see him from behind for quite a while and the exact nature of this place isn't revealed until fairly late in the story. Meanwhile, our heroes are confronted by various literary characters, including a comic book superhero named Karkus.
Seeing him, I was reminded of the Virgin New Adventure Conundrum, which has a caped crusader on the cover and had the 7th Doctor, Ace, and Benny wandering the same weird setting as we have here - the Land of Fiction.
It turns out that this Master fellow is an English writer trapped there by a higher power whom he serves. He seeks to have the Doctor take his place. Since they can both author events that take place in the Land of Fiction, it comes down to a dramaturgical duel for control. In the end, the Doctor wins. The computer at the hear of the Land is overloaded and the TARDIS reassembles.
This tale took the bizarreness of The Celestial Toymaker and upped the weirdness quotient. The first episode stands out for being so surreal, so eerie and Lynchian in tone and feel. But it's a fun tale that remains strange throughout.
In one scene, Zoe and Jamie are forced between the pages of a giant book by the robots and, we are told, become fiction as the metal monsters close the tome. What a great scene! The Land of Fiction exists beyond our normal Newtonian universe and we never find out much about the being behind it all. It's just this crazy place that our heroes happened upon by chance. No explanation, no fitting it into a larger picture. It is simply an enigmatic, standalone bizarro world.
I appreciated the lack of incidental music and the use of weird, electronic sounds. This created a spooky vibe and helped keep me off guard. Just as the time travelers were off in terra incognita, I felt like I was given no clues as to what was to come next, what was around the corner. I felt off balance watching The Mind Robber. Despite the Land of Fiction being explained a bit and the situation our heroes found themselves in fleshed out a bit, the story ends ambiguously. Do they escape the Land of Fiction? Are they able to return to our universe from the nowhere that the emergency unit sent them to?
I think I got caught up in the sheer strangeitude of the story and didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to the characters. The Doctor is extremely indecisive early on but he eventually becomes the crafty hero we all love. Interestingly, the Master-Controller author fellow describes him at one point as "ageless" and existing outside the barriers of time and space. Jamie is ever the man of action, always happy to kill a Red Coat. I liked the bagpipes on the soundtrack during the scenes when he hallucinates images of the Highlands on the TARDIS scanner and how entranced he was by them. Zoe does her fair share of cowering but I think she also helps out in some puzzle solving. She's reckless here too. After all, she leaves the TARDIS contra the Doctor's admonition after they land in that void. Plus, at one point in the Master's citadel, her rash move to investigate triggers an alarm. She may be a mathematical savant but she is very young and prone to rash actions.
Strange, fun. A fine story.
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