UU2 - The Mind Robber 2

Can you imagine if Frazer Hines would have contracted chicken pox a few weeks earlier, during production of The Dominators? Or later, during the making of The Invasion? There would have to have been a hasty rewrite, have Jamie knocked out off camera by a Quark or Packer, and somehow pick him up the next week, all refreshed and ready to go as if nothing had happened.

Thankfully (well, not for Frazer Hines, though), the actor had to bow out of the most oddball of oddball stories made to that date (even predating the term "oddball" by a good 19 years), so the explanation of his absence in this story actually enhances the story, rather than providing a detraction and , indeed, a distraction. The introduction of the Hamish Wilson Jamie fits in with the story so well that had you not known the back story behind it, it would seem like just another chapter in an already brilliantly bizarre story.

We first hear (and almost see) "The Master" (quotation marks are used to differentiate him from, you know, The Master) in this episode, too. Emrys Jones is actually acting three characters in this episode - the robotlike, order barking, controller Master; his softer, calculating companion who acts as someone to bounce ideas off of, and the original, soft spoken man who would become the Master. It's a great, twitchy performance that seamlessly glides between each schizophrenic facet.

And then Bernard Horsfall turns up! But more from him later.