Trivia / Doctor Who S23 E2 "Mindwarp"

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• Acting in the Dark: Most of the time, Colin Baker had no idea if the events of the story were real or if the events had been tampered with. Neither writer Phillip Martin nor director Ron Jones knew, and Eric Saward had resigned his post as script editor by the time production began, so he played it as if it were a lie.
  I was very confused by it, but I had a very different problem, especially in "Mindwarp" because there was a point when I said to Eric Saward, the script editor, "When I'm tying Peri to this rock and threatening to torture her, am I doing it for some subtle reason of my own, because I think I'm being watched or whatever, or because I've been affected by the mind probe, or is the Matrix lying?" Those were the three alternatives as I saw it. He said, "I don’t know, you’d better ask Philip Martin", so I got in touch and gave him those three alternatives, he said "I don't know, Eric wrote the trial stuff, all the Matrix stuff was added after, by Eric, you'd better ask him". So I went to John Nathan-Turner, he said "Oh, whichever you like". This is the level of involvement at the time. Eric was going through his own problems at the time, disagreeing with John Nathan-Turner on all sorts of things. I felt that was all very sloppy, it was all cobbled together a bit. The stories were written independently, and the trial theme was put on top. I felt it was the Matrix lying, so I really was torturing Peri. But it was very difficult. You expect the writers to know what's happening, but that's not always the case.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! turned down a major film so he could work on this serial.
  • Peri's final fate happened in part because Nicola Bryant was really interested in playing a villain.
• Cast the Runner-Up: BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! had previously been in the running to play the Second Doctor.
• Enforced Method Acting: Nicola Bryant hated filming the interrogation scenes where she's tied to a rock by the sea, as she doesn't like the sea.
• Self-Adaptation: The televised story and its novelization were both written by Philip Martin.
• Stunt Casting: BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! as King Ycranos. Proof that Tropes Are Tools.
• Troubled Production: Nobody appears to have been sure exactly what is meant to be happening in this serial — has the Doctor been fried by the Mindwarp machine, or is he only pretending to have been fried so he can try and find a solution? Are the events distorted to show the Doctor in the worst possible light, or wholesale fabrications? How much of it actually happened? Colin Baker was unable to get a straight answer as to how he was meant to interpret the script out of the writer, director or producer. Eric Saward, the only person who might've been able to give him a clear answer because he was largely responsible for interweaving the story with the trial plot, had already resigned due to mounting frustrations with Nathan-Turner by this point, leaving Baker completely in the dark. He ended up going with the idea that the Matrix is lying. This is not helped by the fact that John Nathan-Turner later got cold feet about Peri's death and decided to retroactively make it a complete invention of the Matrix, apparently without even checking if this tallied with the rest of the story.
• What Could Have Been:
  • John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hill and Derek Jacobi were considered for Ycranos.
  • Peter Firth was considered for Crozier.
  • Phil Collins and David Warner were considered for Ycranos and Crozier.
• You Look Familiar: Deep Roy had previously played Mr. Sin.

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