Doctor Who: The Brain Of Morbius

I have a sneaky fondness for The Brain Of Morbius because it comes from a time when I was a kid and just discovering Doctor Who. I read the novelisation and I saw the TV show and I was scared of the brain-in-the-jar and the horrible patchwork creature, but reassured by the Doctor's effortless control over the situation, and fascinated by the mind battle that showed all those other faces after Tom Baker's. Morbius stems from a time when Doctor Who pillaged stories for their content and spun them into a new story with a Doctor Who twist. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes must have been well pleased when they saw this story hit the screens, and kids everywhere had nightmares for weeks. "Scare the little buggers," was Holmes motto, and not for the first time, the Doctor Who team followed his creed.

Of course the story actually came from Terrance Dicks who then went off on holiday whereupon - according to Dicks - Hinchcliffe went off the idea that Dicks came up with - a robot that would assemble a body for his master Morbius without any sense of aesthetic - and got Holmes to rewrite the script as any good script editor, Dicks included, would do. Hinchcliffe posits they got rid of the robot because they couldn't do a good robot on their budget, and he wasn't too far off the mark; although the following season they would come up trumps with their robots.

There is pretty much not a single thing wrong with The Brain Of Morbius - the casting is brilliant, with Baker and Elisabeth Sladen in top form, and Philip Madoc putting in an absolutely superb turn as Solon; without forgetting the wonderfully venemous Michael Spice as Morbius who, despite what is said on the commentary, doesn't sound anything like a Dalek - but if there is one thing you had to point to to single out as genius it is the atmosphere. Everything that happens is done in a doom laden atmosphere that just reeks of horror. The oft-mentioned Gothic horror no less.

On the DVD front, there is a nice little documentary about the programme which gives some interesting insight, although fans will probably be mostly surprised by the inspiration of the design work of the story. The commentary is quite fun, although Sladen is extremely hypocritical as she slags off K-9 & Company in the previous release for being too slow, and yet praises this story for taking its time to tell the story. Baker is a loon, while Madoc, Christopher Barry (director) and Hinchcliffe seem, more often than not, to be Baker's straight men.

I can't recommend this DVD enough. This is truly classic Doctor Who and if you don't have it on your shelves you'll be worse off for it.

"A+"