The Brain of Morbius

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084 – The Brain of Morbius
Doctor Who serial
Brain of Morbius.jpg
Sarah's eyesight returns while Morbius lurks
Directed byChristopher Barry
Written by"Robin Bland" (Terrance Dicks rewritten by Robert Holmes)
Script editorRobert Holmes
Produced byPhilip Hinchcliffe
Executive producer(s)None
Incidental music composerDudley Simpson
Production code4K
SeriesSeason 13
Length4 episodes, 25 minutes each
First broadcast3–24 January 1976
← Preceded by
The Android Invasion
Followed by →
The Seeds of Doom
Doctor Who episodes (1963–1989)

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 on-screen writer credit is given to Robin Bland, a pseudonym for script writer Terrance Dicks and script editor Robert Holmes. It is the first serial to feature the Sisterhood of Karn.

The serial is set on the planet Karn. In the serial, 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.

Plot summary[edit]

On the planet Karn, an insect-like alien is killed by Condo, a man with a hook for a hand, who takes its head to a castle and his master Solon. However, the head is unsuitable — Solon needs a head from a warm-blooded humanoid.

The TARDIS materialises in the middle of a lightning storm, and the Fourth Doctor rushes out, ranting at the Time Lords for diverting him to this planet. Sarah finds the alien's escape pod and sees a valley filled with wrecked spacecraft, as well as the headless body of an alien which the Doctor identifies as a Mutt. She and the Doctor make for a castle that she spots. The travellers are welcomed by Solon, complimenting the Doctor on his "magnificent" head.

Meanwhile, the Sisterhood of Karn discover the TARDIS and teleport it to their temple. Their elderly leader, Maren, identifies it as a Time Lord vessel, and believes that the Doctor has come to steal their Elixir of Life.

The Doctor knows of Solon as an authority on microsurgical techniques and tissue transplant. The Doctor recognises a clay bust as that of Morbius, one of the Time Lords' greatest criminals. Before he can say anything further, a drug takes effect, and the Doctor passes out. Sarah pretends that she has succumbed. In the laboratory, Solon's examination of the Doctor confirms that he is a Time Lord. As he and Condo leave the room, the Doctor vanishes. Sarah keeps hidden and enters the lab. She draws back the curtain on a bed, thinking it is the Doctor, but as the lights come up, she sees a headless, patchwork creature made from various body parts.

Morbius, on display at the Doctor Who Experience

The Doctor regains consciousness to find himself surrounded by members of the Sisterhood. The Doctor realises that just before he passed out, he felt the mind of Morbius. Maren refuses to believe him.

Sarah follows Solon and Condo as they make their way towards the temple. They interrupt the ceremony, Solon asking them to spare the Doctor, or at least give him the Doctor's head. A disguised Sarah frees the Doctor, but she is blinded by the energy from Maren's ring, the Doctor assuring her that she will recover. Despite Sarah telling him about the headless body, they return to the castle. The Doctor asks Solon to examine Sarah's eyes. Solon tells him that Sarah's retinas have been almost completely destroyed, but there is one chance: the Elixir of Life. The Doctor goes to the Sisterhood.

Elsewhere, Sarah hears a voice calling for Solon. Following the sound, she enters a hidden laboratory and stumbles blindly towards a glowing brain in a tank, which accuses her of being sent by the Sisterhood to destroy it. Solon enters and drags her away. As he closes the door, she hears Solon address the voice as "Morbius" and hears how Solon has sent the Doctor into a trap. She locks Solon in the laboratory and, still blind, makes her way out of the castle.

The Doctor is captured by the Sisterhood. When he explains why he came back, Maren tells him that the ray's effect is not permanent, and Solon knows that. The Doctor believes that something evil related to Morbius is happening. Maren affirms that she saw Morbius dispersed. The Doctor asks if Solon was present. Morbius had led an army of mercenaries, promising them the Elixir and immortality and revealing its existence to the cosmos. The Doctor reignites the flame with a "Little Demon."

Sarah is captured and taken back to the castle. Learning that the Doctor is a Time Lord, Morbius fears the Time Lords have tracked him down and will return in force. Morbius insists that he be transferred into the patchwork body now, with an artificial brain casing that Solon constructed. Solon protests, as there may be severe pain and seizures, but Morbius insists. Back in the castle, Solon prepares to operate, but Condo is enraged when he recognises his lost arm attached to the patchwork body. He attacks Solon before being shot in the stomach, their struggle knocking Morbius' brain to the floor. Not knowing what damage has been done, Solon places the fallen brain in the casing, releasing Sarah so she can assist in the operation. He threatens her into doing so, saying that if Morbius dies, then so does she.

The wounded Condo crawls into the hallway as outside, the Sisters carry the Doctor's seemingly dead body through the lightning storm. In the meantime, the operation is finished — within minutes Morbius will live again. Solon goes to answer the doorbell, and sees the Sisters leaving the Doctor's body in the parlour. In the laboratory, Sarah's eyesight starts to clear, but the monstrous body of Morbius gets off the operating table and lumbers towards her.

Sarah screams as she sees the Morbius creature, and dodges out of the way. She warns Solon that the creature is loose and he runs back to the laboratory. Sarah notices the Doctor's body, but as she approaches, the Doctor wakes up and smiles at her. He is here to stop Solon, but Sarah tells him it is too late. But Morbius is revealed to not be in his right mind as he knocks Solon out and then the Doctor. Morbius chases Sarah, but Condo intervenes, knocking Sarah down the stairs into the cellar while he grapples with Morbius. However, Morbius is too strong, and he kills Condo instead. Morbius wanders out of the castle as the Doctor regains consciousness. He carries Sarah into the secret laboratory to let her recover.

Solon, too, has awakened, and assembles a tranquilliser gun. He tells the Doctor that the operation was not complete, only the motor functions are working, the rest on an instinctual level. Knowing Morbius' hatred, he will seek out the Sisterhood. Sure enough, Morbius finds one of the Sisters in some ruins nearby and kills her. The Doctor and Solon find the body and they search the ruins. Morbius attacks the Doctor, but is knocked out by Solon's tranquilliser. As they carry the creature back to the castle, the Doctor tells Solon that Morbius's brain will be detached and returned to the Time Lords.


The Doctor gives Solon five minutes to disconnect the brain as he goes and checks on Sarah. However, Solon locks them in the secret laboratory instead and begins to repair Morbius. Using materials from the secret laboratory, the Doctor makes cyanogen gas, which he then pipes through a vent that leads to the operating room above. Though Solon dies from exposure to the gas upon finishing the operation, Morbius' lungs filter out the poison as he goes to confront Sarah and the Doctor — he claims that when the knowledge of his resurrection spreads, his followers will rise in their millions. The Doctor and Sarah mock Morbius in an attempt to overheat his brain, and the Doctor challenges him to a mindbending contest.

They grab hold of the appropriate apparatus in the laboratory and begin. The machine's display begins to show Morbius' brain casing head, then his previous face, then the Doctor, then the Doctor's previous incarnation. After going through the Doctor's previous incarnations, a series of eight other faces are shown before Morbius' brain case shorts out. The Doctor collapses, as Morbius stumbles out in a daze. The Sisterhood arrive and chase Morbius over a cliff, and Ohica finds Sarah crying over the Doctor.


Ohica starts to thank the Doctor, but he stops her, saying that Sarah and he have another engagement. Before they leave, he gives her a pair of curious objects in case they need to relight the Flame again. When Ohica asks what they are, the Doctor answers, "A mighty atom and a thunderflash." He explains that the writing on the cardboard tubes reads: "Light the blue touch paper and stand clear." This time, the TARDIS vanishes in a puff of light and smoke.


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".[1] This ended up being the name Robin Bland.[1][2] The episodes were recorded entirely in studios during October 1975.

Cast notes[edit]

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.[3] 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.

Faces in the mind-bending sequence[edit]

During the Doctor's mental battle with Morbius, the mind-bending machine displays two images of Morbius, then images of the Doctor's four incarnations as of the serial's production. These are followed by images of eight previously-unseen faces, intended to represent incarnations preceding the First Doctor. The Doctor's previous faces are portrayed by production unit manager George Gallaccio, script editor Robert Holmes, production assistant Graeme Harper, director Douglas Camfield, producer Philip Hinchcliffe, production assistant Christopher Baker, writer Robert Banks Stewart, and director Christopher Barry.[4][citation needed] Hinchcliffe stated, "We tried to get famous actors for the faces of the Doctor. But because no one would volunteer, we had to use backroom boys. And it is true to say that I attempted to imply that William Hartnell was not the first Doctor".[5] After a complaint, the BBC paid a sum of money to the actors union Equity benevolent fund.[6]

The season 14 story The Deadly Assassin introduced the idea that Time Lords are limited to 12 regenerations. The season 10 story The Three Doctors, produced and aired before both The Brain of Morbius and The Deadly Assassin, calls the William Hartnell Doctor the "earliest Doctor". Attempts to retrofit this with the number of faces seen in the mind test machine have brought about explanations including the possibility that the faces were Morbius' previous incarnations, younger versions of the First Doctor, or the Doctor's potential future incarnations.[7][8] The Virgin Missing Adventure Cold Fusion by Lance Parkin implies that one of these prior Doctors was the incarnation of the Doctor active at the time of the birth of Susan Foreman. However, the subsequent Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow states that Hartnell's Doctor was the first, implying instead that the faces represent incarnations of the Other, one of the founders of Time Lord civilisation, of whom the Doctor is the reincarnation.[9]

Themes and analysis[edit]

It has been suggested that there are many thematic links to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, and particularly to the James Whale Frankenstein film released by Universal Studios.[7]

Broadcast and reception[edit]

EpisodeTitleRun timeOriginal air dateUK viewers
(millions) [10]
1"Part One"25:253 January 1976 (1976-01-03)9.5
2"Part Two"24:4610 January 1976 (1976-01-10)9.3
3"Part Three"25:0717 January 1976 (1976-01-17)10.1
4"Part Four"24:1824 January 1976 (1976-01-24)10.2

Upon the story's original broadcast, Mary Whitehouse (of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association) complained of the violence displayed; she was quoted saying that The Brain of Morbius "contained some of the sickest and most horrific material seen on children's television".[11] At the time the programme was under close scrutiny by the NVALA; complaints centred on the shooting of Condo by Solon with a resulting spurt of blood.[12]

The story was repeated on BBC1 at 5:50 pm on 4 December 1976, edited and condensed into a one-hour-long omnibus episode.[13] This edit—done without the director's participation—was similar (but not exactly the same) to the one used for the 1984 video release.[12] The omnibus repeat was seen by 10.9 million viewers, a higher audience than the original episodic broadcast.[14]

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote of the serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), "A superb exploration of gothic themes. Philip Madoc's portrayal of Solon is crucial to the story's success, and the pseudonymous epithet 'bland' is not at all deserved."[15] In The Television Companion (1998), David J Howe and Stephen James Walker praised Madoc as Solon and the sets, and noted that the violence was realistic but adult.[11] Together with Mark Stammers in the Fourth Doctor Handbook they described it as "everything a good piece of drama should be: entertaining, enjoyable, effective and emotional"[12] In 2010, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times noted that Solon's insistence that he only use the Doctor's head was "a fundamental lapse in logic", but otherwise said that the serial was "a salivating treat".[16] The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn found some minor problems in the script, but gave a positive review of the story, pointing out how it did not ripoff classic stories but repurposed them.[17] DVD Talk's David Cornelius gave the serial four out of five stars, saying that it "allows for a wide range of storytelling tones without feeling cluttered or uneven" though at points the "silliness" of the Morbius costume threatened to "overtake" the story.[18]

Commercial releases[edit]

In print[edit]

Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius
Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius.jpg
AuthorTerrance Dicks
Cover artistMike Little
SeriesDoctor Who book:
Target novelisations
Release number
PublisherTarget Books
Publication date
23 June 1977



Home media[edit]

The serial was released on VHS in a 58min heavily edited omnibus format in July 1984 and complete in episodic form in July 1990.[12] The edited version was also released on Betamax, Video 2000, and Laserdisc. The story was released in complete form on DVD on 21 July 2008.


  1. ^ a b Gallagher, William (27 March 2012). "Doctor Who's secret history of codenames revealed". Radio Times. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
  2. ^ Howe, Walker and Stammers Doctor Who the Handbook: The Fourth Doctor pp 175-176
  3. ^ Howe Stammers Walker p182
  4. ^ How Stammers Walker (1992) p198
  5. ^ Lance Parkin, A History of the Universe pg. 255
  6. ^ Howe, David J., Mark Stammers and Steven James Walker (1992). Doctor Who, The Handbook: The Fourth Doctor. Doctor Who books. ISBN 0-426-20369-0.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link) p198
  7. ^ a b Howe, David J. & Walker, Steven James (2004). The Television Companion: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who. Springer. ISBN 1-903889-52-9. Archived from the original on 16 February 2006.
  8. ^ Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping's "Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide", (Virgin Books, 1995)
  9. ^ Parkin, Lance; Pearson, Lars (12 November 2012). AHistory: an Unauthorised History of the Doctor Who Universe (3rd Edition). Des Moines: Mad Norwegian Press. p. 715. ISBN 978-193523411-1.
  12. ^ a b c d Howe, Stammers, Walker (1992) p201
  13. ^ "Dr Who: The Brain of Morbius". 2 December 1976. p. 21 – via BBC Genome.
  14. ^ "Doctor Who Guide: broadcasting for The Brain of Morbius".
  15. ^ Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "The Brain of Morbius". The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. ISBN 0-426-20442-5.
  16. ^ Mulkern, Patrick (28 July 2010). "Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius". Radio Times. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  17. ^ Bahn, Christopher (21 August 2011). "The Brain of Morbius". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  18. ^ Cornelius, David (15 October 2008). "Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius". DVD Talk. Retrieved 18 April 2013.

External links[edit]

Target novelisation[edit]