It is so impressive that a story featuring a cliffhanger as stupid as Zoe and Jamie getting smooshed in a giant book is so existentially horrifying.

The Mind Robber is genuinely one of my favourite Troughton era stories, and one of my favourite Classic Who stories period. I think it's largely because Troughton's era, as great as it is, does tend to come across as quite formulaic and repetitive, so having a story as buck-wild as this dumped right in the middle of it feels like such a breath of fresh air

By that logic then it’s possible to consider every writer of a Doctor Who episode to be a version of the Doctor. How to be a Time Lord for a day.

For me, the Mind Robber is my favourite story because it's a perfect demonstration that Doctor Who can be incredibly creative without a large budget, production/runtime issues and no contemporary lead character. It's something I wish the show would consider a bit more.

Stu is such a horror writer, I swear to God. Everything he sees is just "Ah yes, this thing that society takes for granted has a sinister and controlling nature" Airports, writing, technology, humanity, school... I am more of a romance writer, so everywhere I go I see "Bittersweet beauty" and shit like that.

Now I want an episode where the Doctor confesses to his deepest fear that he never left that place. It would be one hell of a reboot if they ever wanted to do that. Imagine the discourse!

I absolutely LOVE The Mind Robber, it's just such a creative and engaging serial. It has a ton of memorable scenes as well, like the joke with Jamie's actor switching and the fight with the Karkus. Honestly it might be my favorite Classic Who story

Yes, this episode is really cool and creative with its trippy dream-like atmosphere and all that, but what _really_ makes it one of the best episodes of all time, is the scene where Zoe wrestles a cartoon supervillain twice her size and absolutely _demolishes_ him.

Amusingly enough, the famous Master (the War incarnation) himself ended up in the Land of Fiction in one of the War Master audios. He proceeded to trick and murder numerous famous fictional characters because even in the Land of Fiction where reality has its own rules, he's still the Master.

The Mind Robber feels like such a precursor to Rob Shearman’s Doctor Who

As a 6 year old watching the original broadcast. The unicorn, clockwork soldiers and minotaur absolutely terrified me. I remember finding it very disturbing when the TARDIS broke up. It was seen as indestructible.

The funny thing about those robots is that Doctor Who borrowed monsters from Out of the Unknown, and one episode of Out of the Unknown that had previously aired borrowed the Daleks for it's weird metaphysical episode about dreams and imagination.

If we consider Stubagful's theory, then The Dominators was the Doctor's last adventure in our universe. What a way to go.😔

Loved this as a kid when it was repeated weekday evenings on BBC Two as it captured my imagination even more than most of Who, but based on subsequent DVD rewatches it's fair to say it does end abruptly with a brief final episode that doesn't wrap things up all that neatly. How fortunate we are that as creative a serial as this survived when so much of the Troughton era was discarded. Your explanation that "everything after this in Doctor Who is fictional even in-universe" sounds like my head canon reasoning for some Red Dwarf series taking place inside an unreality bubble. And yes, I am yet to see any logic for excluding Emrys Jones from the list of Masters. As far as I was concerned when I first saw this, his character *was* just an earlier incarnation of the Delgado/Ainsley role.

Dont know if you've listened to legend of the cybermen, the big finish sequal to mind robber, but it literally does your fan theory that they never left the land of fiction as one of its cliffhangers before (of course) going back on that idea and reverting to the status quo

For your Masters? Left money on the table there m8

The "Doctor is fiction" thing solves any issues you may have with any later episode... Obviously fake backdrop SOLVED... Bubble wrap monster SOLVED... Bad acting SOLVED... I did however think that the TARDIS being alive (per "The Doctors Wife") solved a lot of the why/how he always arrives just before an alien invasion etc... But the Master Brain would want me to think that...

We are so lucky that the mind robber survives. It is a story where it’s charming visuals are part of what makes the story so good, and without them, the story would feel incomplete. A classic

FUCK FUCK FUCK I THOUGHT OF THE 'DOCTOR DOCTOR LITERATURE CLUB' JOKE FIVE MINUTES TOO LATE.

That would be a good Who story though: the Doctor getting trapped in the Land of Fiction and he notices this because that week’s doctor who episode is cliched even by the show’s standards. They could really go bonkers with this!

The mind robber is my favourite classic doctor who story

I love this theory and it helps me accept the Timeless Children more 😊

Honestly that could make for a brilliant story, sort of like the despair squid episode of Red Dwarf where the Doctor's attacked and seemingly killed only to wake up back in his Second incarnation, much older and all alone with the horrible realisation that everything that happened was all fictional Which can tie into the ending where he breaks free of this illusion and snaps back to reality where he confesses that still being trapped in the land of fiction is one of his deepest fears the more and more he lives with all the friends he meets and exciting adventures he has while eating away at the back of his mind is the notion that all of it was fictional

I've long thought that this is what The God Complex was trying to emulate. I like The God Complex, but I don't think it's anywhere near as fun as this. Oh, and on The Doctor having Deja Vu, he does say "Somebody tried to move the Earth once before..." In The Stolen Earth. So they probably DO get deja vu.

I've had an idea for a Doctor Who episode where the TARDIS falls into a parallel universe like in the Age of Steel (the Doctor doesn't treat it like a big deal because they can recharge the TARDIS in a day or two) but when they go and explore, they find out that they are in the real world, where every adventure they have ever been on is just an episode in a long-running science fiction TV series called Doctor Who. The episode could then go a number of ways, such as a more traditional storyline the Doctor bringing a load of DVDs of the show back to their world only for the villains within to escape the DVD and run amuck in the Doctor's world for... reasons, or a more introspective storyline of the Doctor just exploring this reality where they are a beloved sci-fi hero and observing their effect on the world. Could be interesting.

The mind robber is one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes. It's amazing and absolutely nonsensical. I love it. I also like to think that this is the first Master. I like your theory that The Doctor never escaped the land of fiction. Intresting!

G*reth R*berts novel 'The Well Mannered War' ends by basically saying everything Doctor Who after 1979 was in the Land of Fiction (doubtless a dig at the JNT era) Mind Robber is a weird one, but it is memorable, I'll say that

Never get bored of watching Troughton. So we can add this Master _and_ the War Chief as potential pre-Delgado lives?

I'm pretty sure _The Mind Robber_ was inspired by Luigi Pirandello's surreal comedy "Six Characters in Search of an Author", which is worth checking out. Better still, listen to Spike Milligan's version in the _Goon Show's_ "Six Charlies in Search of an Author".

Frazier Hines was absent in Episode 2 and 3 due to chickenpox, hence the appearance of Hamish Wilson.

The mind robber is great but for me none of those episodes live up to the mastery that is episode 1

the mind robber really feels like a Hartnell story imo, yet troughton makes it work really well

did you know that Paul Cornell wrote a sequel to the Mind Robber that involved the Daleks invading the Land of Fiction it was a Christmas Special and was titled Pride & prejudice & Daleks.

I have had this very same idea before. Especially more so seeing the trailers for the upcoming 60th special where they're bringing in characters from the Doctor Who comics. NPH might not be the celestial toy maker but a variant of the Story Master.

eyyyy i remember catching this one when classic who was still on Netflix!

Thanks mate! What interesting insights! The Mind Robber is a masterpiece- May 1968 was an interesting month what with the Paris riots and the Beatles recording the white album demos and everything else. They certainly caught the zeitgeist...

I think you might've accidentally predicted the plot of the 60th

Have you listened to the sequel story Legend of the Cybermen? It's with the 6th Doctor and Jamie- Its great!

4:02 - for context, it was because Frazier Hines caught chicken pox.

8:22 oh come on Stuart, you've seen Legends of the Cybermen surely.

!!! Your essay is on metafiction! Metafiction, my favourite concept ever. I genuinely want to read your essay. What are your favourite pieces of metafiction other than The Mind Robber?

I always thought the episodes Spyfall & Dr. Mysterio would have been a good return to the Land of Fiction

The stupid bad budget excuse negatively affects the writing and it’s why Doctor Who suffers from writing flaws like oversaturating popular villains and recycling plots in uninteresting ways. What makes the Farscape episode Won’t Get Fooled Again good at recycling a plot and being batshit insane is that starts with meta won’t repeat previous events and the episode slowly builds up into insanity.

So basically, Doctor Who was doing Undertale nearly fifty years before Toby Fox did.

I'm hoping that with Meep the Beep & Wraith Warriors that the Land of Fiction in the 14th Doctors specials are involved in someway with the land being the location where the Doctor fights the Toymaker or 14 being a creation of the land.

OMFG I LOVE UR THEORY!!! wish i came up with it! I totally believe it

Well, I wouldn't trust Gulliver, he's a bloody Time Lord!

Are you going to cover the rest of the eighth doctor audio stuff?

3:10 didn’t the doctor grab the copies

To me The Mind Robber is about being your authentic self and not being subject to controlling narratives, a theme very much at home with the psychedelic aesthetic. If you're just following a script, acting according to what's been written about you ahead of time, i.e. the countless narratives we're fed about how we shall live, then you've become a fake version of yourself, you've been turned into fiction. And being fictional means you can't think for yourself and can only say the words you've been given. It's kind of profound in my opinion, although it's taken to kind of an absurd extreme where it's like you can never do anything predictable, but remember we're in psychedelic territory. It almost seems hypocritical how anti-fiction The Mind Robber is considering that, you know, it is fictional. And yet there's no other way for the story to be told. It's not like you could tell a similar nonfictional story! But yeah, there doesn't seem to be any good kind of fiction in its worldview. Fiction only oppresses and dehumanizes people, even its own writer. Or maybe The Mind Robber itself is supposed to serve as an example of good fiction and we have to look for what separates it from the bad fictions within the story. It seems worth noting the Land of Fiction contains at least two real, historical people: Blackbeard and Cyrano de Bergerac. Presumably it's not historically accurate versions who live there, but the legends.

This was strangely one of my first dr who stories when I was about 6 or 7. Got it on video in second hand retro shop. Wild times of buying dr who’s just because they had dr who on the cover.

What's that spooky music called? I really wanna use it

Any idea when Jay's next 'Jay and Stu Talk Doctor Who' stream will be?

Sausages! Man will become a string of sausages all the same!

I hope it's okay to ask, but do you already happen to *know* that you won't make another video on "Kevin Can F*ck Himself"? In other words: Shall I seize hoping based on the (near-)fact that my hope would forever be in vain?

I like The Mind Robber

Yay the Myrka!

Good review and video for my favorite 2nd Doctor story of all time- In my ideal world, Doctor Who would be this level of weird every week, with it going and even weirder territory every now and then. Although, if I'm allowed to be completely honest, telling Zoe at the end that she's a fictional character was a bit cringy- Never will hear the word: "Piece" the same way again lol. Too overdone of a joke🙃

Doctor Who was meta way before it was cool.

I actually like your fan theory, but something like that is giving them far too much credit. Well, too much credit for the modern era anyway. Maybe in 1969 (or with Big Finish) they'd get creative like that. Honestly, I don't even watch the show any more it's become so dire (and I've been a fan since 1973). At this point, Big Finish is Dr Who for me so I'm grateful for them at least.

Is anything real or Is it all fiction?