Mindwarp | Sophisticated Idiots

Varoonik!

Mindwarp may represent Peri’s farewell fiasco, but on the plus side it boasts the finest display of oracy in the classic run.

Forget Nicola Bryant’s bald cap (temporarily – we’ll come back to this), the overriding memory we have from Trial Part 2 is of Brian Blessed utterly stealing the show in a display of kleptomania not seen since Clooney and chums spent a weekend at Caesar’s Palace.

Brian’s having an absolute wail of a time.

With wail being the operative word.

Doctor Who has never been delivered in so many decibels. And who can blame Brian for full-on bellowing when he’s scripted beauties like:

“Bear me away. Faster, faster!”

“By the great jewelled sword of Krontep, you will be avenged!”

And, incredulously, “Today, prudence shall be our watchword.
Tomorrow, I shall soak the land in blood!”

It’s stirring (and distinctly non-Doctor Who-y) stuff that only the voice of Grampy Rabbit could do justice to.

Yet The Mindwarp Masterclass of Oration does not solely rest with the great Brian.

He’s Blessed (ha!) with outrageously smooth support from the scientist, Crozier (Patrick Ryecart), who possesses the creamiest of chocolate voices (and who also has the best moment of this story when he discovers Kiv has gone into cardiac arrest. Before helping, Crozier stops to finish his tea, which is NHS training at its best).

Thanks to the two of them, the long-suffering audience is treated to a sheer auditory sensation.

Which is just as well because beneath this cacophony of venerable thesp voices, the story itself meanders without much hint of gusto. Mindless, you could say.

We’ve come to expect weak writing and plodding pacing by now. Oh, and a weird obsession with using boring business practices as a plot device (most prominently, in fellow duds The Sun Makers and Vengeance on Varos).

Commodities meetings are, after all, a sure-fire way of winning over the kids’ audience the Beeb were chasing.

However, we all agree this story needs a laser scalpel taking to it, so there’s no point in torturing ourselves on a rock with a rising tide by dwelling on such issues.

Instead, let’s all eat some flayfish and then go nuts, which, for those of you who don’t speak slug, translates to let’s focus on more important aspects.

And on to that death scene.

We don’t concur with the consensus that Mindwarp is guilty of casually discarding Peri’s demise.

This story is all about her exit. It’s heavily signposted throughout (whenever a character starts talking about love and the maudlin piano kicks in, you know they’re done for) but if the audience is ever in any doubt about where this is heading, Brian pops up with his baritone billboard to declare nudge-nudge pearls like, “A great day to die!”

In fact, the farewell to Perpugilliam of the Brown would be powerful as heck – and an ending we’d heap praise on – were it not handled by writers who are clearly happy to donate their minds to the advancement of science.

The slow-mo. The off-screen ‘death’. The Doctor not knowing if it’s real, let alone the audience. Not to mention the weasely retconning two stories later.

These faux pas combine to somewhat lessen the impact.

It’s at least in keeping with the incoherence of the rest of this story, which the Doctor accurately describes early on as “inconsequential silliness".

We’d like to give the production team the benefit of the doubt that the non-stop ambiguity is a carefully-laid plot device in keeping with the theme of mind-bending.

But let’s not kid ourselves – if we were to coax the truth from their devious brains, it’d show that nobody involved in this had a bally clue what the heck was going on.

In fact, if it wasn’t for Brian blagging his way through proceedings and literally dragging the supporting characters (we include the Doctor in this category) from one scene to another, Mindwarp would be nothing more than two slug cosplayers gorging on the most wrigglesome of youthful sand snakes.

Which brings us onto a Top 3 countdown of characters worthy of an honourable mention:

1. Sil

He was quite fun in the previous season but in this one he’s slithered into classic sequel territory, trying too hard and going overboard on the tongue shtick (which mega creeps out Mrs Sophisticated Idiots).

The introduction of his fellow slug kind doesn’t add a great deal either (though the old fella that hangs out in the bath complaining that Brian’s too loud is amusing).

2. Wolf Boy

A rare moment that’s played straight here (and packs an emotional punch – take note, producers), the plight of Dorf is genuinely moving. The Don Quixote – Sancho Panza-esque relationship between him and Brian is decidedly lovely.

3. The Doctor (*sighs*)

Is Colin Baker even in this story?

We struggle to recall a story where the Doctor has less bearing on the plot. Hartnell was on holiday for large swathes of his stories and still contributed more than Colin does throughout most of these four episodes.

When Doc 6 is not being sidelined, he’s reverting to Twin Dilemma territory with behaviour that may or may not be trickery on the part of the Matrix (like many aspects of this story, it’s never explained and we don’t care enough to Google it).

He’s at turns mocked for being a coward and a turncoat, before his long-suffering (and soon-to-be-murdered) companion defends him by half-heartedly claiming, after saving him at the start of Episode Three, “The Doctor wasn’t always like that”. She doesn’t sound any more convinced than we are.

Even her Royal Sagacity-ness has to give the poor sod an olive branch and keeps a straight face when she reassures him nobody is questioning his sanity.

Honestly, we’re starting to root for the Valeyard in all this.

But ultimately none of this really matters.

Forget all the clunky companion deaths, OTT villains and underwhelming leads conspiring to manipulate our brains.

Piercingly and irrefutably, this story is all about Brian Blessed, who’s having the time of his blooming life opening veins and piling heads like melons in a heap.

In order to enjoy that, we would all gladly donate our bodies to questionable medical science.

Varoonik indeed, eh?