You know when you start a new John Peel Doctor Who story that you’re in safe hands – which is not as twee a prospect as it might sound. You’re going on an adventure in a universe you love with someone who knows that universe both intimately and broadly, and who has both the imagination and the skill to keep you with them – and introduce you to a few surprising, rewarding new things along the course of the journey.

The Mind Trap is a Second Doctor audio short story, read by Troughton’s son David. That adds to the sense of security you should feel when shelling out your hard-earned cash on it – Both Michael and David Troughton have an uncanny legacy in their voices from their father Patrick, and both have played him in audio adventures at Big Finish. 

And if Michael is the company’s Troughton of ongoing choice to bring new Second Doctor adventures to the listening public, that doesn’t take away from the uncanny gifts of phrasing and tone that David brings to any reading of Second Doctor adventuring.

Here he slips us simply and without fuss into the era of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, (1968-69) and takes us along on an entirely believable adventure for that period. 

The Second Doctor – But Updated

But it’s in Peel’s construction of first a mystery and then a challenge that the real meat of the story lies. And that updates the 1969 sensibility with some thoroughly logical modern storytelling choices.

Jamie is packed unceremoniously off to bed for much of the adventure, with a high-tech dose of Lemsip to tackle a cold he got while running about after Ice Warriors in what Zoe insists is “a skirt.” That lightens the storytelling load somewhat, and allows the two Tardis smarty-pants to go roaming about a seemingly almost-deserted space station with some elements that tell a dark, foreboding story of their own.

The station is populated by a mute robot which is a little trigger-happy when it comes to putting visitors to sleep for unspecified periods of time when they get a bit curious, button-proddy, or exploratory.

As you might imagine, the Doctor and Zoe are zonked fairly soon after setting foot on the station, because two more curious, exploratory and button-proddy people you’d be hard pressed to meet in an infinite cosmos.

And then… there’s Markan.

Enter The Villain

Markan appears to be the only organic life form on board the station, and there’s a choice to be made about him. Doubtless in 1969, they would have taken a couple of episodes to bamboozle viewers with a strong, charismatic performance (Someone get Philip Madoc on the phone! Oh no, wait, we’ve already booked him for The War Games, dammit!) that tried to persuade the audience that Markan was a tragic, lonely genius, badly wronged by the people who trapped him on a lonely space station with a non-verbal robot, leaving the reveal of the truth until the Episode 2 cliffhanger.

Peel doesn’t have the luxury of the time to do that, and also respects the fact that the Doctor and Zoe Heriot, besides being curious and exploratory and physically incapable of leaving any button unprodded, are very often the most intelligent people in any room, and can spot discrepancies that act as clues faster than a 1969 TV audience would have.

He has them pin Markan as a wrong ’un pretty quickly, because there’s actually more interesting Stuff To Do than to ponderously figure it out, 1969 style. We get a solidly satisfying explanation of who Markan is, what he’s done, and what his psychology looks like, with the villain seemingly incapable of empathy with the victims of his scientific experiments. And then, without much ado, we move right along to the “running back to the Tardis” stage of the adventure – which, to quote the Goons, is where the story really starts.

Back To The Tardis!

Because escaping from Markan is not as straightforward as it should be – and we don’t actually get an inkling of quite how complicated it is until the attempt is made, so the story begins to flower the further in we go. 

It also develops in ways with which we’re familiar from the likes of The Celestial Toymaker, The Mind Robber, Vengeance On Varos and Amy’s Choice, but it has more in common with Varos than any of the “Mysterious Entity” variants on the theme. There is technology at play here that can mess comprehensively with your mind – and once you don’t have control of that, you’re in a whole world of potential trouble.

Suffice it to say without spoilers that if you find yourself uncertain what anything is, or who anyone is, then pressing the right buttons on your immeasurably powerful time machine to help you escape the madness of a mechanical mind-melter becomes uniquely problematic. 

Are either of the Doctor’s young friends who he sees them to be? Where actually is he? In the Tardis or in a vista created by Markam and his ingenious mind-trap? And how can he possibly escape from someone who can shape and reshape what his mind fervently believes to be reality?

The Markam Problem

It’s a compelling problem, with an ingeniously practical solution, but while it’s ongoing, it holds the listener just as spellbound as Markan’s machine holds the Second Doctor. 

Peel’s writing creates a spiderweb-cum-minefield for the Doctor, where every move could be fatal, and the listener struggles to find a way out until enough blood, sweat and investment has been expertly wrung out of them.

The result is a story that is short in duration, but feels packed with both incident and philosophical complexity, while still holding true to the Second Doctor ethos and tone. 

When Jamie reappears, he’s a shot in the arm of worldly straightforwardness, but by that point, the Doctor is unable to trust that he is who he says he is, let alone to heed the advice of the hairy-legged Highlander.

And the solution, when it comes, is deliciously pragmatic, rather than overly thought-out and intellectual. Sometimes, the more thought you invest in a problem, the more tangled you become.

Markan has all the dark potential of a Sixties Who supervillain (and indeed, gets rightfully namechecked alongside the likes of Salamander during the course of the story), but he adds a callous narcissism that feels all too potent and modern in 2026.

Is The Mind Trap a story that will reward your investment? Beyond all shadow of doubt – but then, you should have known that going it. It’s by John Bleedin’ Peel, after all. Moral complexity, believable characterisation, a strong strand of plotting and a satisfying resolution are all baked into the name. Tony Fyler

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