The Brain of Morbius

The Brain of Morbius is the fifth serial of the 13th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 3 to 24 January 1976. The screenwriter credit is given to Robin Bland, a pseudonym for writer and former script editor Terrance Dicks, whose original script had been heavily rewritten by his successor as script editor, Robert Holmes. It is the first serial to feature the Sisterhood of Karn.

The serial is considered to have many thematic links to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. It is set on the planet Karn, where the surgeon Mehendri Solon (Philip Madoc) seeks to create a body for the Time Lord war criminal Morbius (Stuart Fell and Michael Spice) from parts of other creatures that have come to the planet.

The Time Lords drag the TARDIS to the planet Karn, where the mad scientist Solon has his assistant Condo kill shipwrecked travellers to construct an artificial body for the Time Lord criminal Morbius. The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith find their way to Solon's castle, where Solon welcomes them as a ruse to steal the Doctor's head. Meanwhile, the Sisterhood of Karn discover and steal the TARDIS; their elderly leader, Maren, recognizes it and believes that the Doctor has come to steal their Elixir of Life.

Solon drugs the Doctor and takes him to his lab, but the Sisterhood intervene and take the Doctor for sacrifice. The Doctor tells the group that he felt Morbius' mind while unconscious, but Maren, who witnessed Morbius' execution, denies this. Solon arrives and tries to bargain for the Doctor's head while Sarah secretly cuts the Doctor loose. The three escape, but Maren blinds Sarah; Solon lies that Sarah can only be healed by the elixir. Sarah stumbles into Solon's lab and is harassed by Morbius' disembodied brain; Solon finds her and drags her out. After overhearing him calling Morbius by his name, she locks Solon in the lab and tries to rescue the Doctor, but is recaptured by Condo.

The Doctor warns the Sisterhood about Morbius' survival. They return him to the castle, where Morbius realizes that the Time Lords tracked him down. He forces Solon to immediately place him in the body using an untested artificial head. Condo recognizes his lost arm on the body and attacks Solon, knocking over Morbius' brain; Solon shoots Condo and forces Sarah to assist in his stead. Sarah regains her sight, but is immediately attacked by a berserk Morbius, who kills Condo and a sister before being tranquilised by Solon.

Maren realizes that Solon revived Morbius, giving the Sisterhood permission to attack. Meanwhile, Solon locks the Doctor and Sarah in the lab and repairs Morbius. The Doctor kills him with homemade cyanogen, but Morbius' lungs filter it out. The Doctor defeats Morbius in a mind-bending contest, but is gravely injured; the sisters arrive and chase a dazed Morbius off a cliff. Maren allows the sisters to revive the Doctor with the remaining elixir and sacrifices herself to supply it. The Doctor awakes and part ways with the Sisterhood, giving them a firecracker and matches to maintain their eternal flame.

The original script was written by Terrance Dicks, using some ideas from his script of the stage play Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday to a requirement from Hinchcliffe for a story about a human/robot relationship. However, after delivery Dicks was out of the country when it was decided that the robot, core to the story, could not be realised under the budget constraints. In excising the character, script editor Robert Holmes had to undertake the substantial rewrites without informing Dicks, who could not be contacted. The robot character was replaced with Solon who required a different motivation—that of a mad scientist. Dicks later said of the decision that it was not original but it was the "only one available". Upon his return to the United Kingdom, Dicks learnt of the changes and angrily phoned Holmes. Since the work was more Holmes than his own, Dicks demanded the removal of his name from the credits saying it could go out under a "bland pseudonym". This ended up being the name Robin Bland. The episodes were recorded entirely in studios during October 1975.

Philip Madoc had already appeared in The Krotons (1968–69) and The War Games (1969) and would appear afterwards in The Power of Kroll (1978–79). He also had a role in the film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966) and appeared in the audio plays Master and Return of the Krotons. Colin Fay was a fortunate find for the production team: an opera singer by trade, he was a large man and, as a newcomer to television, cheap to hire. Other cost cutting included hiring only a single professional dancer who was copied in the scenes by actresses who had been chosen because of previous dancing experience.