The Mind Robber

The TARDIS is in the path of molten lava and the Doctor is forced to activate the emergency unit to move it . . . out of the time space dimension and out of reality! When the TARDIS crew land "nowhere" they stumble into a world where fiction appears as reality and where things exist only when men believe in them. It is a world peopled by White Robots and a race of fictional characters and monsters, by Gulliver and Rapunzel, by D'Artagnan and Sir Lancelot, and worse, by the Unicorn, the Minotaur and the Medusa.

As they explore the forest of words and the maze in this Land of Fiction, new horrors await the Doctor and his companions around each corner . . . will Zoe and Jamie be turned into fictional characters? . . . Is the Doctor at the mercy of a higher intelligence or force outside of time and space as he knows it? Can he outwit the brain that is the source of this terrifying creative power?

• This story picks up immediately after "The Dominators" with the Doctor realizing that the TARDIS is in the path of a volcanic eruption.

• Originally intended as a 4 part story, "The Mind Robber" inherited an additional episode when "The Dominators" was trimmed from 6 to 5 episodes.  Therefore, an additional episode was written at the last minute which expanded on how the Doctor and his companions become trapped in the Land of Fiction.

• An amusing way to give Frazer Hines a short break was written into this story.   Jamie's face is wiped clean and the Doctor is forced to reconstruct it with cardboard cutouts of various noses, eyes, etc.  The finished product ends up looking like Hamish Wilson (Jamie #2).  :)

• Bernard Horsfall  (Gulliver) would later return to Doctor Who in Patrick Troughton's final story "The War Games" where he played a Timelord.  4 years would pass before he would return to Doctor Who.  This time he played Commander Taron in the Pertwee story "Planet of the Daleks."  Another 4 years passed when he returned to play Chancellor Goth in the classic Tom Baker story "The Deadly Assassin."

• Somewhat confusingly, there is a character referred to as "the master" in this story.  It turns out that this is not the debut appearance of the Doctor's arch enemy "The Master," but rather a title made up before the Timelord villain was created.