Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius (Episode 84)
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 10/07/2008 Run time: 100 minutes Rating: Nr
Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius (Episode 84) Accessories
 Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord - Episode 144-147
Doctor Who - The Invasion of Time (Episode 97)
Doctor Who: The Invisible Enemy/K9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend
Doctor Who: The Complete Fourth Series
Doctor Who - Black Orchid (Episode 121)
Doctor Who - The Time Meddler (Episode 17)
The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Complete First Season
Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest
Doctor Who - The Five Doctors (25th Anniversary Edition)
Torchwood - The Complete Second Season
Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius (Episode 84) Reviews
Unlike this DVD, you might want to give that book a miss. Just as well, however. All in all, "Brain of Morbius" blends two elements of "Doctor Who" greatness. First, a terrific script by Robert Holmes, full of memorable insults ("That palsied harridan.") and throw-away world building (the lone reference to "the silent gas dirigibles of the Hoothi", which 15 years later was resurrected for Love and War (The New Doctor Who Adventures). The only curiosity is that, while the text commentary accurately describes Terrance Dicks' novel-writing career as including the Past Doctor Adventure Warmonger (Doctor Who), the writer curiously fails to mention that it was in fact a prequel to this story.
Even Terrance Dicks, who took his name off the final version of the story, seems to have warmed up to it considerably and we know from many other past DVD releases that Uncle Terry isn't shy about picking a fight with a 35 year-old bit of TV history. What's most impressive about the DVD release is the Restoration Team's attitude to the story. I out-and-out love this story. Frankenstein stand-in, Solon. Now that the classic series DVDs have been coming out for almost ten years, and the greatest of the great stories have long since been released, and the available remaining stories come from deep in the third tier (and now, with the imminent release of Doctor Who: Four to Doomsday (Episode 118), the fourth tier), it is hard to predict what editorial slant the DVD extra features will take. Fortunately, the DVD producers appear to love Morbius, and for roughly the same reasons that I do. I've been surprised, for example, by the coldness toward Doctor Who - Black Orchid (Episode 121), and I nodded along to the wistful revelation that Doctor Who: The Invisible Enemy/K9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend just hasn't aged that well at all.
But everyone loves the dimly heroic Condo, the one-armed manservant standing in for Igor. I've taken the typical "Doctor Who" fan's path to this point of view, however. They're perhaps a little too enamored of Philip Madoc's Shatner-esque turn as this story's Dr. When the disembodied brain of Morbius fell onto the floor with an audible "splat." late in Part Three, I actually cheered. And second, there's that fearless 1970's mentality that "We're going to get away with putting a rubber brain in a fishbowl and mounting that on an ill-fitting costume with chicken feathers and an enormous lobster claw". I was riveted at age 11, embarrassed at age 16, and now celebrate it in all its campy glory.
It's the mad scientist and Rocky Horror (w/o the sex) meets Dr. almost gets his head cut off. There's something for everyone. Cult worshippers, Sara Jane goes blind, the Dr. Who and the BBC. it's lots of fun. there's large insects combined with humans.
Indeed, this is a vividly memorable tale from early in Tom Baker's tenure as the fourth Doctor, one beloved by a vast majority of the show's fansmyself definitely included. And yet moments of clever wit and cerebral comedy punctuate the story without defusing the horror in the least, nor does the overall horrific and moody atmosphere render the humor any less funny. Again, an unlikely combination of mutually conflicting elements somehow sublimates into a wonderful compound greater than the sum of its parts within the crucible of these four episodes. The risks taken here by the show's writers and producers, namely that the story collapse into a muddied incoherent mess or else come off as a stitched together patchwork of rip-offs, were significant but well worth it.
"The Brain of Morbius" gets about as rough and gory as Saturday evening BBC TV in the 70's would allow, with a chilling premise underlining it all: an ingenious but twisted surgeon working to construct a body from spare parts for the preserved brain of his master, a Time Lord dictator presumed executed and long dead (All he needs is a good humanoid cranium, when who should show up at his castle door but the Doctor and Sarah Jane). Who else, after all, could get away with a story so morbidly gruesome and yet so hilarious. It doesn't take long until the viewer realizes that "The Brain of Morbius" is an unlikely concoction, a hodgepodge homage to any number of classics and not-so-classics, the chief ingredient being of course one of the key progenitors of the science fiction genre, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"with a dash of late 20th-century paranoia, "They Saved Hitler's Brain" tossed into the brew for good measure. And what a fine release for October, just in time for Halloween.
What we have instead is a brilliant specimen of Doctor Who that draws on several interesting sources in good measure and synthesizes them into something highly original, thrillingly riveting, immensely entertaining, and uniquely characteristic of the show.
But I was captivated. In the epsiodic and combined version I saw, the first episode was missing the music and sound effects. This episode was one of the many great ones. It's fascinating to see from a technical standpoint how the sound and music contribute to the atmosphere and mood of a televised show. It's hard to believe it's been 30 years since Doctor Who came back to America in the form of Tom Baker, I missed the Pertwee episodes from their 1973 run (and in DC they were preempted that summer by the Watergate hearings). I'd rush home from high school to see the show, a little fuzzy from the station in Baltimore. I wonder if for this DVD they fixed the problem with episode one. Great mood that overcame any small defects.
what can I say, the more Doctor Who that is released the better the world is.
|
