I watched episode four of “The Brain of Morbius” last night. I’m not quite sure what to make of the scene which apparently reveals eight previous incarnations of the Doctor prior to William Hartnell, though! One the one hand, there are so many discrepancies regarding his early years (Is he half human or not? Was he contemporary of Omega and Rassilon or not? Just how old is he?), that I can almost buy it. The twelve-regeneration limit is certainly self-imposed by the Time Lords upon themselves. The Master has broken it; perhaps the Doctor has as well. On the other hand, although Morbius was winning his mental battle at the time, I suppose those could have been Morbius’ own previous regenerations. And wasn’t that machine very like the one once used in a similar mental battle between Doctor Doom and Reed Richards?
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My recollection is one of the figures in the montage was Douglas Camfield, who directed other stories for Doctor Who.
Corrected for you...
A: Why the long face?
Awesome. :)
The big confrontation is in the two-part finale of Big Finish season two of their adventures. A few strands of that are then tied up in the opening 2-part story of season 3, now playing on BBC7!
I always figure you KNEW Solon was INSANE when, instead of seeing The Doctor, and wanting to transplant Morbius' head into The Doctor's, NO!, he wants to cut off The Doctor's head, sew it onto the patchwork monster body, and THEN transplant Morbius' head into it. This wasn't a "mad" doctor, this was an INSANE one!
Oddly enough, the first tie I ever saw this, I walked in on Part 4, the sequence where The Doctor has teamed up with Solon to try and stop the monster. So for a brief moment, I didn't quite realize Solon was the VILLAIN of the piece, or just how crazy he really was. Makes The Doctor appear to "trust" him at all seem a bit crazy, doesn't it?
1)Watched this again last night - apparently "Robin Bland" was actually Terrance Dicks heavily re-written by Robert Holmes, to the point where Dicks insisted his name be taken off the script and some "bland pseudonym" be used. Supposedly, the business with Solon wanting to take the Doctor's head ather than using his whole body is a result of this re-write - it's a fragment of Dicks' original version of the story, where Morbius was was re-built by a robot with faulty knowledge of anatomy. It's a shame, because it makes Solon look a bit of a moron.
2)Christopher Barry originally hoped to get a bigshot like Peter Cushing or Vincent Price to play Solon. I can't imagine anyone other than the late, great Philip Madoc in the role. He's just so good in the part - he and Baker really worked well together. Madoc worked well with Colin Fay as Condo, too. Heck, Philip Madoc worked well with everyone! Cynthia Grenville and Gilly Brown were good as Maren and Ohica, as well. Quite well-cast all around, this.
3)I hadn't realized it, but the guy who does the voice of Morbius in this one was the same guy who would later play Magnus Greel in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang".
4)I remember when I first saw this on PBS back in the 70's, Part One was broadcast with no music or sound effects.
5)I liked the opening scene between the Doctor and Sarah, where he's all hissy. Of course, the funnt part is that he's undoubtedly right, and the Time Lords have done it to him again.
6)Interesting seeing a Mutt from "The Mutants" again. Gotta amortize those monster suits, I guess.
7)I notice how Sarah doesn't drink the wine - she seemed to notice something wrong before the Doctor did! Of course, she also managed to infiltrate the Sisterhood without any of them noticing
8)"You take Condo's arm for this?" The scene where Solon shoots Condo is pretty graphic for 70's Doctor Who. I did like Solon's subsequent "Why doesn't Condo answer the damn door? Oh, that's right, I shot him" moment. You almost feel sorry for Solon at times, he can't get anything done with all these people pestering him!
9)Actually, Condo's pretty vigorous even after having been shot a couple of times.
10)It's extraordinarily dumb of the Doctor to trust Solon to disconnect Morbius' brain at the end.
11)Doctor "I abhor killing" pretty casually gases Solon to death. To be fair, Morbius doesn't spend alot of time mourning him.
12)As for the "pre-Hartnell" faces issue, I've come to the conclusion that the Doctor, sensing the nearness of death, had a flashback to the fun he had attending a costume party with some of the guys who worked on his TV show! More seriously, I gather that the production team got inot trouble with the actors' union for using non-actors for those faces.
13)If you watch closely, when Morbius goes over the cliff, he bounces back into shot momentarily.
14)The bit at the end where the TARDIS flash-bangs out instead of dematerializng normally was Chris Barry's idea, playing on the fact that the Doctor had just given Ohica some firecrackers.
Overall:
Another old favorite This story all by itself is good reason to be glad that Philip Madoc became an actor.
)Some Fun Quotes:
)Cliffhangers:
“The Night of the Doctor” (the online prequel to “The Day of the Doctor”) has me pretty excited about the prospect of the 50th anniversary special. In the prequel, the Eighth Doctor awakens among the Sisterhood of Karn and says something to the effect of, “I’m back”… which I thought was a reference to “The Brain of Morbius”, but then I find this:
Figserello said:
You wouldn’t happen to know which episodes those are, would ya, Figs (or anyone)?
'Vengence of the Flame' & 'Vengence of Morbius'. End of season 2, 2008.
It looks like Big Finish are giving McGann a ... well ... a big finish. See the extended 'Dark Eyes' sequence stretching to 2015, here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_audio_plays_by_Big_...
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