Viewing posts tagged mind robber
Posted by:
Jack Graham
4 years, 2 months ago
Strange, isn't it? Years go by without you hearing my voice... and now I won't shut up! But yes, there's some more audio for you to enjoy with your ears. This time it's another
Eruditorum/Shabgraff co-venture, with Phil Sandifer and I talking over the top of one of the greatest
Doctor Who stories ever made. Very much for people who think
Doctor Who is best when you can't hear the dialogue... but can hear two bloggers talking about it. Hmm.
I'm only kidding. These commentaries are actually all brilliant. Especially my bits. (Phil's are
quite good, but he does insist upon letting actual knowledge and erudition interfere with the flow of manic blithering... which is not a problem
I have, let me tell you.)
This time you can download all the episodes at once, which is a better way of doing it (I think). Just click
here, my poor innocent trusting fools.
Posted by:
Jack Graham
6 years ago
On 'The Mind Robber'. A regurgitation of something originally buried in the middle of an old post.
1. The ReviewJust one of the best things ever, this story is a gloriously trippy metafictional journey into
Doctor Who's own status as a text.
'Robber' picks up the Troughton era handbook for writers, stamps on it, scrawls insulting and anarchistic slogans upon its pages, rips it up and sets fire to the pieces. There is no isolated base, no croaky computer, no catalgue of disposable characters who are laser-beamed to death, no unstable authority figure, no creeping infiltration, no standard fight sequence for Jamie, no scene where someone goes into a bonkers tirade and storms out of a control centre... instead we have a deeply trippy ride through sheer weirdness; a totally unpredictable variation of content, style and pace from episode to episode; an intelligently created elllision of symbolism and literalism; a classic surreal quest narrative drawing on
Wizard of Oz and
Alice in Wonderland yet beholden to neither.
The Doctor and his friends leave their universe and enter a non-spatial, non-temporal buffer zone... and this buffer zone is a world of fiction. An empty nothingness until imagination works ...
Posted by:
Jack Graham
8 years, 8 months ago
I reposted my Hartnell stuff from Timelash II pretty much as it originally appeared. I've rejigged the following Troughton stuff a fair bit, however, so you'd better read it all over again very carefully, in case you miss a syllable of my searing insight and sage wisdom.'The Underwater Menace'I could easily tear this story to pieces, yes? And feed the pieces to my pet octopus, yes??? But this story has sense of humour! I too have sense of humour!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
Look, if you think this story is any more silly than any other
Doctor Who story... well, it isn't.
Look at the amount of thought that went into the costumes and sets. Polly spends a lot of the story with a detail from a doric column on her head! Look at the detail in which Atlantean society is depicted. There's a throne room, a temple, a lab, a hospital, a market... there are priests and acolytes, beggers and traders, slaves and workers, guards and orderlies... there are intimations of popular dislike for the forces of the state... Look at the variations in the personalities. Look at the ...
