Review of The Brain of Morbius (#84)

DVD Release Date: 07 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 03 – 24 Jan 1976
Doctors/Companions: Four, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: The Android Invasion (Four, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: The Seeds of Doom (Four, Sarah Jane)

This week includes both the 57th anniversary of Doctor Who‘s first broadcast and the American Thanksgiving holiday, so it feels like an appropriate time to review a well-loved story, a Hidden Gem that barely fits the moniker. It’s pretty hard to argue that The Brain of Morbius is hidden from fandom in any meaningful way, as it is often cited as an iconic story from an era that many consider “golden,” but in the five-year-old io9 ranking of the 254 stories then extant, it placed at #110, solidly in the second quartile.

So how does a famous story end up in such an ignominious place? It’s a good question that dovetails nicely with my own experience of Morbius. Before sitting down to re-watch, I didn’t really remember much detail; the story as a whole had not made a big impression on me, despite my having seen it multiple times. My clearest sense of the story was its obvious allegorical similarities to Frankenstein. If I thought hard enough, I also remembered that this is where we saw all those mysterious faces that may well have been previously unknown incarnations of the Doctor (or, others would argue, might be Morbius’s other faces), but that was pretty much the extent of it.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that the Doctor and Sarah Jane had landed on Karn.

The Sisterhood of Karn has stuck in my consciousness far more than this encounter has. Aside from the fact that they have cropped up more recently in The Night of the Doctor and Series Nine, there has been at least one Sisterhood of Karn cosplay group at Gallifrey One. All of these serve to maintain my awareness of the existence of the Sisterhood, without directly reminding me of where they originated. As I watched the adventure unfold, I was astounded at how integral to the plot they were. How could I have forgotten that? Evidently my brain works in mysterious ways.

I was thus pleasantly surprised to rediscover that I rather enjoy The Brain of Morbius. Tom Baker is only in his second season here, and is still taking his job fairly seriously—the Fourth Doctor has not yet acquired the over-the-top silliness of his later years—and Lis Sladen’s SJS is always a delight, just helpless enough to drive the plot forward without ever being stupid or clueless.

There’s just enough mystery to the plot line to keep a first-time viewer (or a forgetful Nth-time viewer) guessing, and while the parallels to Frankenstein are pretty blatant, they’ve split the role of the tragic, misunderstood creature between two characters, one of whom (the “creature” one rather than the “tragic, misunderstood” one) even gets the ol’ torches-and-pitchforks treatment.

If I were to pick a Classic Who adventure off my shelf to watch just for kicks, I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have gone for Morbius before. There’s a little too much baggage around it—in the sense that it’s one “everyone knows” is good—for me to think of it as a comfortable fit for my tastes, especially given that I generally enjoy the Fourth Doctor less than many of the other Doctors. But now that I’ve had the chance to revisit it, perhaps my brain will retain some of those more positive impressions. After all, sometimes it’s okay to agree with others’ opinions.