Hogan Reviews

I will always look forward to more Season 7 content, it remains one of my all-time favourite seasons full stop, so I was really looking forward to “and the Brain Drain”, which I guess is a callback to “and the Silurians” though that title was always an annoying one-off rather than something that should be copied (but let’s not get into the “Doctor Who/ The Doctor” debate!) Sadly Brain Drain took an interesting concept for a one hour story, maybe a four parter at best, and then had to stretch it out for seven parts, causing it to fall to pieces. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the Season 7 seven part stories can drag but they at least often have alien threats to give some fun cliffhangers! Ah well, let’s take a closer look.

The story starts like so… so many others of this era as we hear a Scottish scientist is holding a public demonstration of new technology that this time is said to be able to cure dementia and UNIT are going to attend, and while The Doctor (Tim Treloar) is initially more interested in reports of ghosts and mythical creatures he decides to join Liz (Daisy Ashford) and The Brigadier (Jon Culshaw) when it turns out these reports are coming out of the same area as the symposium. This actually involves an episode mostly on a train as they head up to the event, during which they meet Professor Albert Heber (Glen McCready) and Dr. Fiona Lynch (Susan Harrison), the former against the whole idea of the technology as the stuff of fantasy while the latter is trying to keep an open mind about things. The two argue until Heber leaves, but a short while later The Doctor and Liz find the Professor dead in his cabin, and while Liz goes to tell the Brigadier a mysterious Steward (also played by Glen McCready) appears and zaps him with some sort of special gun, causing our titular Time Lord to vanish.

While this is all going on we cut back to the Scottish scientists a few times, Professor Abigail MacLeod (Rosalyn Landor) and her so Linus (Callum Pardoe), the latter of which is constantly talking to the voice of his father Peter in his head (voiced by Mark Elstob) who was the original creator of the technology until he ironically succumbed to the very mental disease he was trying to wipe out. We the listener know there’s more to it though as the voice of Peter MacLeod also communicated to the Steward and commanded him to take out the Doctor before he arrives. We then get a whole episode without The Doctor (something that just didn’t happen in Pertwee’s era at all, but whatever) as Liz, The Brig and Dr. Lynch walk around the castle for a while, watch the first demonstration and then later see the woman who was supposedly cured of the mental disease carried out under a sheet a while later. Liz is then targeted by the Steward and hit with the same special type of gun but soon wakes up near a river bed close by, being greeted by a gardener with the most over-the-top Scottish accent you’ll ever heard, so much so that I caught on quite quick that it was supposed to be The Doctor in disguise, like Pertwee did a few times, so it was actually quite fun.

Whether you like it or not, that’s definitely an eye-catching cover!

We then get to the awkward middle of the story, where the pacing really tanks. We get a second showing of the machinery that this time causes a couple of guests from the audience to seemingly get turned into ghosts for a bit, then later Liz and the Brig reunite with The Doctor and they take a peak in a shed guarded by The Steward and see technology not only “not of this Earth” but not of this dimension. These two incidents are completely surrounded by fluff though, including one of the worst cliffhangers I’ve seen (or heard, I guess) in a long time where Linus shows her mum the true potential of his father’s work by hooking her up to it and causing Peter MacLeod himself to appear! Gasp! … then the pick up at the start of the next episode has Linus say “this isn’t Peter by the way, it’s a projection from your mind” and then the conversation just continues on. The story does actually build to a climax, though by this time I had mentally checked out…

So in case you couldn’t tell, it had some good ideas at its core but the story was three, even four episodes too long and writer Richard James obviously didn’t know how to stretch it out to make it still entertaining like most of Season 7 or some of the good six parters from later is the Pertwee/Tom Baker run (though to be fair to it, it’s not as bad as some of the bad six parters from that same period either!)

The Continuity:

Not much, the story is specifically set in between “Spearhead From Space” and, um, “and the Silurians”, making this a very early story in the Third Doctor’s life. A scientist trying to cure a mental condition but actually tapping into a deadly other-dimensional force that’s killing those that use the tech which is then found out when The Doctor, his companion and The Brig visit a public demonstration in a re-used old building is the exact plot of “The Mind of Evil”, accept that one is better paced, the castle is a prison instead, and it’s only six episodes long. Still a bit too close to just be called “coincidentally similar”.

Overall Thoughts:

“and the Brain Drain” has one or two good ideas and is set during one of my all-time favourite periods of the show but sadly it doesn’t have enough meat on its bones to last four parts let alone seven. It leads to far too much downtime to the point where I kept losing concentration. Can’t quite bring myself to give it a two, it’s not THAT bad (or maybe it is just my love for the era and the recast cast supporting it) but I won’t be listening to it again, that’s for sure.

While explaining that he and Liz survived the special dimensional displacement gun due to pieces of tech they had on them The Doctor then gets told that Professor Heber’s body was resisting all forms of examination and then vanished, which leads to him reappearing and revealing that he is actually from the same neighbouring dimension as the “Peter” in Linus’s head, and that the evil force is known as Nelophex and that he’s here to capture it and bring it back to his dimension. Around this point Abigail is killed off but as The Brig goes to tell Linus alongside The Doctor and Liz Linus puts the machine into full go and brings the Nelophex into full existence, causing everyone to start becoming ghost-like beings as they get sucked into the other dimension.

As a lot of these things go Linus finally understands that he’d been manipulated this whole time and so he sacrifices himself to destroy the machine and save everyone from the mess he admittedly put them all in. The Doctor and Heber then manage to capture Nelophex, with the latter taking it back “home” with him to cap things off. We then get a bit of a nod and wink moment where the Brigadier asks The Doctor why UNIT has just taken order of an bright yellow roadster, so there’s the origin of Bessie I never really thought about… mostly because I assumed The Doctor ordered it without permission and that was all there was to it, which is exactly what happened!