Commentary Highlights:

Undoubtedly the seamless (and unannounced) arrival of Hamish Wilson in the commentary booth to match Jamie’s loss of face in Episode 2.

Not a specific factette, but if ‘The Mind Robber’ is usually seen as an experimental story, it’s interesting to see just how many ideas were rejected as impractical.

-The Fact of Fiction: The Making of ‘The Mind Robber’, in which an encouragingly large number of participants are brought together to recount their versions of the making of the story

-Highlander: The Jamie McCrimmon Story, essentially an extended interview with Frazer Hines in which he looks back on his involvement in Doctor Who from the 1960s to the 1980s

-Basil Brush, a sketch in which our bushy-tailed hero and Mr Roy encounter a friendly ‘Web of Fear’ Yeti

-Photo Gallery

It’s interesting how received opinions change over time; in the late 1980s, there was little room for doubt that ‘The Mind Robber’ was the best surviving Troughton story, and yet some twenty years later (perhaps once those fans who hadn’t seen it on transmission had caught up with the video release and repeat) the halo had slipped somewhat and we find it as a third choice for DVD behind big-hitting traditional monster stories ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ and ‘The Seeds of Death’. Nevertheless (at least at the time of recording the extra material) the story was well-served for contributors, with three actors and the director on commentary duty and writers Peter Ling and Derrick Sherwin, designer Evan Hercules and Karkus actor Christopher Robbie contributing to the "making of" item. The commentary itself is entertaining and informative, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, David Maloney and Hamish Wilson mix well and there’s a sense at the end of there being more left to say, which is probably better than running out of material. Frazer Hines in particular comes across as somebody who doesn’t mind repeating the same anecdote for the 350th time as long as there’s somebody else who wants to hear it, and it’s this generosity as a raconteur as well as his evident professional admiration of Patrick Troughton which emerge as the keynotes of the ‘Highlander’ feature. An item on a long-running companion could easily have turned into bland filler material, but Hines is an engaging speaker and his enthusiasm for his time as Jamie means that it doesn’t come across as routine or an obligation.

‘The Fact of Fiction’ is particularly notable for having a healthy number of contributors for a 1960s story although not all are still with us in 2009; still, what emerges is a picture of ‘The Mind Robber’ as a deliberate attempt to do something different, using a writer with no background in science fiction and exercising the imaginative resources of the designer. In fact, the number of discarded ideas suggest that something even more radical was contemplated and what actually went into production was simply a rump consisting of the most feasible ideas. Still, as a story with a troubled genesis and further problems once in the studio, it perhaps reinforces the preconception of the story as a triumph of imagination and pragmatism over the limitations of recording tightly-budgeted television in a small studio. The limitations are all too evident in the photo gallery- while many of the shots are familiar, the more unfamiliar ones tend to be those into which various pieces of studio apparatus (and there are quite a few of them) have intruded, or which show up some of the defects of the set design too brutally; although there’s an interesting one of Jamie wearing a pink shirt in Episode 1 (which transforms into a black pullover for the later episodes), the black and white version is ruined by two of the photographic flats making up the console room set being very badly matched up. That said, it’s also interesting to see a few shots of the White Robots in their ‘Out of the Unknown’ incarnation; watching late 1960s Doctor Who episodes, particularly those with futuristic or imaginative settings, it’s often noticeable from the sets and props that at this particular stage the BBC was becoming more confident and expert in realising suitable settings for science fiction. And then there’s ten minutes or so of a 1970s Basil Brush with a rehabilitated ‘Web of Fear’ Yeti- and what a treat it is, not just for the Yeti costume but also the realisation that a half-forgotten children’s show was actually quite well-written and genuinely funny.

And so ‘The Mind Robber’ emerges from the DVD treatment, nicely restored so we can read all the titles and writing in the background of various scenes, and accompanied by a set of extras which don’t just add to our appreciation of the story but also add a sense of the spirit of the Doctor Who set in 1968- the closeness between the regular cast including friendships which have lasted up to the present day, struggles behind the scenes and a fair amount of improvisation. Not bad going for a story which might have struggled to raise much supporting material, but also a useful corrective to any feeling of over-familiarity for one of the more frequently-viewed Troughton stories.