The Mind of Evil

"Jail House Suck", "Sarah Michelle Keller", "Doctor Who and Thunderbolt"

"The One With The Liberal Prisons Policy" (USA), "Captain Yates Was Wrong About Chin Lee" (Chinese Dolly Magazine)

Doctor Who finds the Master messing about with a prison, a Chinese soldier and a missile packed with naughty stuff. He stops him, naturally.

*** - If it had been written by someone else for something else, a lot of you would probably think differently about it.

Professor Kettering: [Speaking of the Keller Machine] "'Science has abolished the hangman's nose and substituted this infallible method."

Doctor: "People who talk about infallibility are usually on very shaky ground."

Timothy Combe: "Cut. You said 'nose' instead of 'noose' again"

Simon Lack (Kettering): "Buggery bollocks."

Jon Pertwee: "Would I help if I turned round while you're speaking?"

The Master: "Now, from the outside, I want these pants to appear to be running quite smoothly. I’m expecting a visitor."

Katy Manning was able to call upon her real life prison experiences during the making of the serial. She wandered into Wormwood Scrubs one day and, due to her short sightedness, couldn't find her way out again.

Roger Delgado had it written into his contract that Richard Franklin would not be allowed on set with him while he was dressed as a telephone engineer due to the latter's well known fetish.

Jon Pertwee refused all language coaching as he claimed he spoke fluent Chinese. Valuable studio hours were lost when it turned out all he had was an accent and politically incorrect facial expression.

Shortly after it was released on video the Restoration Squad issued the following statement. "Unfortunately, due to a technical fault at the duplication plant, a small number of video cassettes were released in monochrome only. If you have one of these tapes, please return it to the shop you bought it from for a full refund."

The London Evening Yawn described the story as "a complex narrative underpinned by dramatic inventiveness and social commentary" before spoiling it all with "who on earth is that white haired bloke - he looks like my gran."

...is that you shouldn't be a criminal because you won't get away with it unless you're a really really really evil criminal like the Master.

Si Hunt

"I was sitting on my own at my usual table right next to the dart board in the Elk and Bush when I craned my neck and overheard the conversation going on at the next table. "I watched the most fantastic video last night" said a burly man whose moustache was a little too flamboyant to be called sensible but was certainly along the right lines. "It featured men in prison being tied down and sucked on by a monster." His friend gave him a manly pat on the knee and said that it sounded most interesting. I could tell at a glance that they were discussing Story FFF and so I pushed my stool over to their table and joined in the conversation, purely in the spirit of research for my book "What the Ignorant Proles Think About "Doctor Who"". "What did you think about the ending with the enormous missile?" I asked, notebook in hand. "It was breathtaking - such power, such excitement" said the man with the promising moustache. "And the role of the Master?" I added. "Oh yes - that was an inspired addition to the story." I scribbled all of this down while his friend discretely attended to the man's trouser zip which had embarrassingly been left open - more haste, less speed in future <g> "Finally, do you think that the rather brutal methods employed here were the best way to deal with hardened inmates?" He considered my question, sensibly, for a moment before licking his peculiarly colourful lips and saying "We all have our different ways of dealing with hardened inmates but those are as good as any." I finished writing in my book, thanked him with a measure of sincerity and went back to my small glass of sherry. It was so nice to meet a sensible person for once and not one of those ghastly deviants who seem to follow me around."

"Vicky Versa" reviewer Tom Hickman wasn't overly impressed with Mind of Evil. He listed a hundred and four things he didn't like and only two - "the story" and "the acting" which he did. Meanwhile, Andy Crain, writing in "Catharsis of Spurious Morality" went to the trouble of watching the serial with a fluent Mandarin speaker in order to check the accuracy of the translations. He blamed Barry Letts personally when he was informed they were speaking Cantonese. Barry Mendel's column in "Gallifrey Hermit" was causing some controversy amongst the readers as bootlegged video tapes had been sent to his address and they still hadn't received their body parts. In deference to this outcry, Barry agreed to put the feature on hiatus until further notice. He was last seen heading to his shed with a saw, a book of stamps and a solemn look on his face.