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The Mentors |
Reviews
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The Mentors |
The Mentors: The Vilest of Them All by Antony Tomlinson 19/6/03
The Mentors are one of my favourite Doctor Who villains - in fact I think they are probably the nastiest, most original and most cleverly fleshed out forces for evil to blight the series since the Daleks. My reasons for loving to loathe these creatures are numerous.
For a start, I love their two TV stories (both by Philip Martin). The first, Vengeance on Varos, is an absolute classic (despite a rather erratic performance from Colin Baker). Indeed, it is perhaps the greatest critique of democracy, the pliability of the masses and the use of market powers to exploit the poor that I have ever encountered in fiction. It also boasts a stunning performance from Martin Jarvis in particular.
Mindwarp (aka The Trial of a Time Lord episodes 5-8) is a typically less well regarded story. However, I don't care, because it happens to be one of my favourites. As well as providing a terrific performance from Colin Baker (who presents a far more convincing portrait of the "evil Doctor" than he did in The Twin Dilemma) it is one of the nastiest Doctor Who stories ever (up there with The Caves of Androzani and The Dalek Invasion of Earth). In it, we see a world where it is normal to treat people as cattle and on which the threat of death is never absent for anyone. Nevertheless, this claustrophobic environment is made more watchable - as well as more chilling - by the colourfulness and the grim humour that pervades the tale.
Regardless of the quality of their stories, however, the Mentors are a fascinating alien species in their own right. So let's examine the nature of Philip Martin's incredible creations.
Physically, the Mentors are cold blooded, fish-eating amphibian creatures who breath air and who must keep their skin moist by using water jets, or by basking in pools. The top half of their bodies are humanoid, but instead of legs, they have stumpy, slug-like tails that stick out in front of them as they sit (some of these have scorpion-like stings on their ends). Their heads are decorated with thick crests and their skin-tones vary from almost black to light green or beige. They are a wonderfully alien proposition, and one of the series' greatest designs.
Their society is also fascinating. The natural habitat for the Mentors seems to be by the pink seas of their home planet, Thoros Beta. Indeed, it is suggested in Mindwarp that certain Mentors still live as fishermen, remaining close to the waters of their home world. However, the planet is actually ruled by a technologically advanced elite of Mentors whose main preoccupation is commerce - and these Mentors live on dry land, often in caves. This elite relies on humanoid slave labour (mostly from neighbouring Thoros Alpha) to carry around their aquatic bodies, to keep them moist and to act as bodyguards. By doing this, the Mentors can conduct business negotiations with land-based species, and take trips to other worlds in order to make business deals.
The commercial obsessions of the Mentors allow them to act as perhaps one of the least sympathetic - and thus most villainous - of all the Doctor's enemies. Most of the Doctor's opponents conduct their schemes for reasons that are at least vaguely laudable: some act to survive (like the Ice Warriors or the Silurians); some act due to their ideals (the Sontarans with their military creed or the Daleks with their ideas about racial purity); and some act merely out of scientific curiosity or a thirst for novelty (such as the Rani or the Meddling Monk).
The Mentors, however, conduct their vicious and inhuman schemes for one, basic and rather unenlightened reason - that is, money. Like the equally reptilian Gordon Gecko of the 1980s film, Wall Street, the Mentors want money for its own sake. They do not need it to survive (they seem to have everything that they need on their home planet). Neither do they have any desire for luxury - they actually seem to live rather simply, demanding few comforts beyond moist skin and a diet of fish. Instead they seem to hoard money purely for its own sake, using it for nothing more that the generation of even greater sums of profit.
The Mentors are of course a representation of the most devoted type of capitalist (as described by the sociologist, Max Weber). They have avowedly decided to make the purpose of their lives the creation of profit, regardless of any pleasures that this wealth might allow them. Indeed, the creation of wealth seems to them a duty more important even than their own comfort or survival. For instance, the Mentor Leader Kiv puts himself through hellish surgery in order to improve his brain power, purely because he feels it is required "to generate mega-profit". At the same time, Sil is sent off to other worlds with environments that are hostile to him and populations that he despises in order to act as the Galatron Mining Corporation's business representative. In all, the Mentors' philosophy is best summed up by a comment made by Kiv to Sil, "we could all end up dead - no, worse than that - poor."
Of course we all know people like this - people who battle away in unhappy jobs, put themselves through stress and obsess their brains with finance because they feel that it is more important to make money then to actually find happiness. We can thus feel some pity for the Mentors. Indeed, I can imagine how their obsession came about: these pathetic amphibians probably realised that the only way that they would ever have any influence in the affairs of the universe was to battle away to improve their own economic prospects. They thus decided to put this aim before even their own happiness.
However, our sympathy for the Mentors can only go so far. For, just as they subordinate their own lives to the pursuit of profit, they also have no regard for the lives or happiness of others.
In simple business terms, the Mentors are utterly ruthless. Mentor Sil exploits the isolation of the planet Varos in order to lie about the market price of their main export, zeiton 7. Thus, even though this planet should be rich, it ends up selling its most valuable resource to Sil for next to nothing (a situation rather reminiscent of the current trade in coffee). Later - in Mindwarp - Sil goes on to use the Doctor's knowledge of the future to conduct an unashamed piece of insider trading.
The Mentors are also utterly unscrupulous in what items they are willing to trade. In Mindwarp we see the Mentors selling futuristic weapons to an iron age community on Thordon and in Vengeance on Varos, we see Sil taking an interest in a trade in what can only be described as "snuff-movies". The Mentors are also willing to interfere in the political systems of other "less-developed" planets (such as Varos, or Krontep) merely to ensure that it is to them that profits eventually flow (again, a pretty familiar story from our own world, particularly as regards the trade in oil).
The Mentor's evil is not merely expressed in unscrupulous business dealings, however. They are also notable for their utter disregard for nature. The Mentors will use any kind of surgery or genetic manipulation in order to improve their ability to create wealth. They are happy to manipulate the minds of others (as with Yrcanos), or to create changes in cell structures (as with Peri). Mentor Kiv is even willing to treat himself in this way through brain surgery - something that eventually leads to his own suffering. Nothing, it seems, is sacred in the Mentors' search for wealth.
The Mentors are, of course, willing to use less subtle means to get their way. They are quite happy to torture people, to conduct executions and to use gunboat diplomacy to secure wealth. They also rely on slave labour, using the entire population of their neighbouring planet as a pool of slaves - destroying their brains in order to ensure their compliance - just as the Daleks do in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Thus, despite their mundane ends, the Mentors seem no less ruthless than the Doctor's very greatest enemy.
Even the Mentors' personalities are utterly vile. In line with their capitalist philosophy, they seem to have adopted the manners of a typical bourgeois household: Sil - like some twisted form of middle-class housewife - spends much of his time sniping at others for their ugliness, their primitiveness and their lack of distinction. Furthermore, like some businessmen in a lap-dancing club, Sil also delights in voyeurism (although his tastes almost always tend towards the sadistic).
In fact, the only Mentor we ever meet whom exhibits any characteristic with which we can sympathise is the elderly, green Mentor in the pool in Mindwarp. This old fellow wants nothing more than peace and quiet - although he's quite happy to wish death on others in order to achieve it. But then the beauty of the Mentors - unlike robotic, or militaristic races - is that they all have their own individual personalities.
Perhaps the Mentors are not such a bad bunch after all - after all, we've only seen a few, rather unpleasant examples of this fascinating race. Unfortunately, until Philip Martin does another Mentor story, we'll never find out any more about this uniquely evil and beautifully imagined alien species.
Hopefully one day Philip Martin will get the opportunity to create another confrontation between the Doctor and the Mentors (perhaps Colin Baker and Nabil Shaban will work together again, this time in the Big Finish studio). Until then, I'll simply look forward to Martin's non-Mentor Eighth Doctor Audio adventure, The Creed of the Kromon, out in 2004.
NOTE: I have not included any discussion of the novelisation of the unmade story, Mission to Magnus. Unfortunately, though I have read the book, I did so about twelve years ago and can't remember much about it. That said, I do seem to recall that it did little to add to Philip Martin's overall account of the Mentors.