The Time Lords once again decide that they need the Doctor to do their dirty work for them.  The TARDIS, with the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) on board, is sent to the rocky planet Karn.

On Karn, the crazed Dr. Solon (Phillip Madoc) lives in a castle and is kidnapping shipwrecked travelers and using their limbs to build a body for Morbius (Stuart Fell with the voice of Michael Spice).  Morbius was once a Time Lord but, after being found guilty of war crimes, his body was destroyed but his disembodied brain survived.  It now sits atop a makeshift body that has been constructed out of several different alien races.  Solon takes one look at the Doctor’s head and decides that it would be the perfect house for the brain of Morbius.

There’s a subplot about the Sisterhood of Karn and the Elixer of Life but make no mistake.  This is Doctor Who‘s take on Frankenstein, with the Baron reimagined as a mad scientist on a distant planet and the Monster reimagined as being not at all sympathetic.  When I was a kid and first watching these episodes of PBS, The Brain of Morbius was one of my favorites because of the Frankenstein connection and also the look of Morbius.  The original Doctor Who was known for its often-shoddy monsters but Morbius was a definite triumph.  The brain sitting in a transparent bowl atop a stitched together body was one of the defining images of classic Doctor Who.

The Brain of Morbius is also known for a controversial moment during the final episode, where the Doctor and Morbius engage in a battle of the minds.  On a view-screen, the faces of the three former Doctors appear, followed by several faces that had never been shown before.  It was actually an in-joke on the part of production.  The faces were all members of the Doctor Who crew.  For decades, though, this in-joke led to a fierce debate whether or not William Hartnell was actually the first Doctor.  This, of course, was back when it was still believed that a Time Lord could only regenerate 12 times.  The Doctor Who revival tossed out that idea, along with a lot of other good ideas.

All these years later, The Brain of Morbius still remains one of my favorites of the Fourth Doctor’s adventures.  This serial was the Tom Baker/Elisabeth Sladen era at its best.