Trivia / Doctor Who S8 E2 "The Mind of Evil"

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• Acting for Two: In addition to playing Vosper on-screen, Hayden Jones provided the hallucinatory Dalek voice the Doctor hears while under attack from the Keller Machine.
• Actor-Inspired Element: The reason that Fu Peng spoke Hokkien was that was the native dialect for Pik-Sen Lim, and was the only Chinese dialect that she felt comfortable in teaching to Jon Pertwee.
• Backed by the Pentagon: The production team were loaned a real (albeit unprepared) Bloodhound 2 SAGW missile from the 36th Heavy Air Defence Regiment out of Horseshoe Barracks in Shoeburyness, Essex, and several troops who would play the Master's men (eight marines had also been made available for the Dover Castle sequences). The troops were there because the RAF, while happy to loan the missile, were less amenable to loaning it unattended.
• Cast the Expert: Kristopher Kum, who played the Chinese delegate Fu Peng, was cast at the last minute when Andy Ho, who Kum was acting as agent for, was considered by the director to be unsuitable. Fortunately Kum had done some acting before turning to agency work, could also speak the right Chinese language, and hurriedly learned the lines. Similarly, Pik-Sen Lim was enlisted by her husband the episode's writer, to give Jon Pertwee a crash course in the Hokkien dialect.
• Creator Couple: Don Houghton's then wife Pik-Sen Lim played Captain Chin Lee.
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Katy Manning named this as her favourite story.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Pik-Sen Lim was in the early stages of pregnancy at the time, so her costume was accustomed. The director also made some discreet requests of the cast and crew to take it easy on her, and in a later "making of" documentary, Lim laughs at her very obvious gentle drop to the ground after the attack on the senator, meant to protect the baby she was carrying.
• Production Nickname: The production team jokingly titled the Chinese dragon into which Captain Chin Lee appears to transform in Episodes Two and Three "Puff the Magic Dragon".
• Promoted Fanboy: Stuart "BabelColour" Humphryes, a YouTuber who originally specialized in fan-colourised clips of the show's first six seasons, was hired by the BBC to assist with the manual re-colourisation of Episode 1. Humphryes' channel even once had a video explaining the episode's restoration process in detail.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The Master's henchmen were supposed to be wearing prison garbs, but they were played by soldiers in uniform, so Terrance Dicks added a line to Episode Five wherein Yates explained that the criminals had been wearing fake uniforms.
• Troubled Production: Ran seriously over budget to the point that director Timothy Combe (who had worked on the show before) was not invited back for another story; also required a re-shoot at Dover Castle as one of the film negatives got damaged to the point it could not be used and there hadn't been time to shoot close ups. With no actors available, several production staff had to step in as extras. The trivia subtitles for the DVD and Blu-Ray release also states that the production had to find a new costumer when the original one was arrested, though there is no elaboration on why.
• Throw It In!: The business of the Doctor tipping over the water pitcher on the Master's desk was not planned, nor was Roger Delgado slipping on the water that spilled on the floor after the Doctor upended the desk to escape. However, both happy accidents worked so well in selling the Doctor slipping from the Master's clutches that they were left in (though the budget and time issues in Troubled Production above may have had something to do with it as well)
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, the Keller Machine was simply going to be just that, a machine. During rewrites of the episodes, Terrance Dicks noticed that, due to plot holes that resulted from the editing process, it seemed to be acting like a self-willed, living thing and thought Sure, Let's Go with That.
  • In the original script, the Brigadier, who had been captured and hypnotized by the Master, ordered the missile to a location where it would be hijacked.
  • The Keller Machine was supposed to be defeated by one of its own weapons, the image of a disturbing creature, which the Doctor reflected back at with the missile transport’s mirror.
  • More focus was to be put on the overarching political tensions between the United States and China, including Chin Lee trying to frame an American emissary for the murder of Cheng Teik.
• Working Title: The Pandora Machine, Man Hours and The Pandora Box.
• You Look Familiar: Michael Sheard makes his second guest appearance as Dr. Roland Summers.

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