Next up in my Who Review series is The Mind Robber, featuring the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie McCrimmon (who has a special place in my heart because of the kilt), and Zoe Heriot.
The Doctor isn't a tough guy. He generally eschews weapons and violence, and some of his incarnations have been straight-up pacifists. He doesn't use force or aggression to save the day (which puts him in stark contrast with many American sci-fi protagonists), but instead he expresses his heroism by being clever.
A criticism that some people make about the Doctor is that he's too powerful (and thus un-relatable from a story perspective). Further, his power comes from his tools- the sonic screwdriver, the psychic paper (in recent years), and, most notably, the TARDIS. The argument is that, even with advanced intelligence and de facto biological immortality, the Doctor is essentially useless without his toys.
Some of my favorite stories, then, are the stories where the Doctor saves the day without access to his stuff.
This is especially true with stories where the TARDIS is inaccessible, malfunctioning, or presumed to be destroyed. Mind Robber is a good early example of this trope. The cliffhanger at the end of Episode One shows the TARDIS being rent asunder, and the inhabitants thrown into the Void.
So here we have the Doctor in a sort of fantasy realm outside normal Time and Space. No TARDIS. No sonic screwdriver. His Companions are missing. Even his cleverness will only carry him so far, since the rules of the world he's operating in are in flux, and change specifically to thwart him! And he finds a way to prevail anyway!
There are a few stories where the Doctor loses everything and still manages to save the day (The Eleventh Hour being an excellent recent example). The Mind Robber is a classic example of that, and quite possibly my favorite Second Doctor story.
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