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Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius [1976] One of the most successful pillage-old-horror-pictures Doctor Who serials, this takes place on a storm-wracked planet with red skies, castles and a Sisterhood of the Flame who owe something to She. For once, the studio-bound, claustrophibic feel can even be seen as an hommage to the similarly stylised gothics of Universal and Hammer. At heart, it's a Frankenstein pastiche with mad scientist Solon [Philip Madoc] and his hunchbacked, claw-armed minion Condo [Colin Fay] toiling over a shaggy patchwork body [perhaps influenced by Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell] to house the stolen, still-living Donovan's Brain brain of Morbius, a baddie Time Lord who used to command a cult of fanatical followers but is now down to just the one. Oddly, the Master [disfigured to account for the death of actor Roger Delgado] would show up in a few serials' time, though this story would have made perhaps a better excuse for reintroducing him to the show's format. As it was, after The Deadly Assassin, he went away again only to be reformatted to assist the change-over from Tom Baker to Peter Davison and then remain a part of the premise until Eric Roberts got swallowed by the TARDIS. The Doctor and Sarah Jane show up, perhaps nudged towards the planet Karn by the manipulative, sly, ostensibly do-nothing Time Lords, or perhaps dragged by a wrecking field that Solon has been using to cause crashes to provide him with multi-alien spare parts for the monster [in the opening scene, a leftover creature from The Mutants crawls out of a wreck and is killed - its head then being rejected by Solon as not fit to house the brain]. Of course, the Doctor's head would be perfect for the monster, and much of the plot revolves around Solon's need to keep the Doctor intact if not alive. The Doctor gets mixed up with that Sisterhood, who sit around a cave chanting 'sacred flame sacred fire' as their eternal flame [which produces an elixir of immortality] runs down. One of the best jokes in Whodom is the resolution to this plot as the Doctor solves the problem with a box of matches and entrusts this powerful artefact to the new sisters before departing - it isn't a cheap shot, because the script has taken care to show that these immortals have paid for long life by remaining in a static, tiny society, theoretically powerful but actually useless. Madoc benefits from a rare complex villain role, his ranting madness all the more effective for understated, persuasive and charming moments along the way, and he's also an enabler of villainy rather than the main menace - killed off by his own monster in the last episode so it can go on a rampage, play 'Time Lord wrestling' mind-games with the Doctor and take a plunge off the cliff. 'Robin Bland' [actually Terrence Dicks and Robert Holmes] fills out the story with elements from classic horror: blinding Sarah Jane for an episode or two so the hunchback can develop a tenderness for her, a fight between master and servant [who is irritated to find his missing arm sewn to the monster] that spills Morbius's brain out of its jar onto the floor [elements from the first two Hammer Frankensteins], the sisters' repeated attempts to sacrifice the Doctor [Baker not taking this seriously is charming], the apparently hospitable host offering shelter from the storm and then drugging the travelers [for once, the Doctor is suckered but Sarah Jane sees through the smarm and spills her wine covertly]. At this point, the show is still doling out bits of backstory about
the Time Lords: the mental battle includes flash-images of the Doctor's
previous incarnations [including, as in The
War Games, a bunch we've never seen before and who would be quietly
dropped from continuity], while the relationship between the Sisterhood
and the Time Lords [at this point, we'd never met a Time Lady] is a
vague echo of that between the Guardians and the Zamarons in the Green
Lantern comics [a parallel which might be worth further investigating].
Solon and Morbius have wonderful rants about the contemptibility of
the powerful but remote Time Lords, which makes Morbius sound like another
dark mirror of the Doctor himself, albeit one who has rebelled by seeking
power rather than adventure. Among the most gruesome of all Who
serials, this boasts a flamboyantly hideous monster - ungainly
and disproportionate [part of the point], it is all the more monstrous
for acknowledging ridiculous aspects like the plastic brain-bubble with
eyestalks. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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