Tuesday, August 25, 2009

FFF1 - The Mind of Evil 1



What a quaint, silly scene at the beginning of this episode where The Doctor makes a monkey out of himself at the novelty of a security camera. Cute - the days before CCTV. Obviously, 2009 is not a year The Doctor visited before his third regeneration.

The edge that was sorely lacking from Terror of the Autons shows signs of life in this installment, most notably where The Doctor is being an arrogant jerk to Professor Kettering during the latter's demonstration of the Keller Machine. Watch Pertwee as he sits down and flings his cloak into the face of the person sitting next to him. See how he strongly contradicts Kettering later on when the professor questions The Doctor's scientific background. We saw a little of bit of this attitude manifest itself in Terror of the Autons when The Doctor angrily brushed off Brownrose from the Ministry, but here, the arrogant Third Doctor that we've come to know and love(?) plants his feet firmly and takes on all comers.

I like that UNIT and The Doctor are working separately at the start of this story, too, and that each of their pursuits are completely independent of one another (at least for now). Tying The Doctor and UNIT together too much diminishes the effect of both entities. It's kind of sad and depressing to see, though, that probably a good deal of the Brigadier's standard working day is taken up with busywork at his desk. I suppose it can't be air strikes and gun fights every day...

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