 Roger Delgado, who plays The Master, did not appear in the first episode.
Chinn Lee, who played the part of Pik Sen-Lim, was the wife of writer Don Houghton, who also wrote "Inferno".
This story contains the first use of on-screen subtitles in Doctor Who (not counting the silent film style caption cards displayed in the "The Daleks' Master Plan" episode "The Feast of Steven") as The Doctor converses with the Chinese delegate Fu Peng in Hokkien.
This story features a guest appearance by Michael Sheard who is more famous for playing the part of Mr. Bronson in the children’s school drama Grange Hill. Michael Sheard would return to Doctor Who four more times; as Laurence Scarman in the 1975 Fourth Doctor story "Pyramids of Mars", as Supervisor Lowe in the 1977 story "The Invisible Enemy", as Mergrave in the 1982 Fifth Doctor story "Castrovalva" and as the headmaster in the 1988 Seventh Doctor story "Remembrance of the Daleks".
The Doctor describes UNIT as having been set up to 'deal with new and unusual menaces to mankind'. It is providing security for the First World Peace Conference. Despite the attacks on the Chinese and American delegates, it will retain the job for the second conference in "Day of the Daleks".
The Brigadier and Captain Mike Yates are heard to use call signs 'Jupiter' and 'Venus'. The Brigadier's helicopter has the call sign 'Windmill 347'. Two new members of UNIT appear: Corporal Bell, The Brigadier's female adjutant (who is also in "The Claws of Axos"), and Major Cosworth. Corporal Bell was originally meant to recur throughout several stories.
When Jo Grant beats The Doctor at draughts, he says that the game is 'too simple'. He prefers three dimensional chess.
The first time The Doctor is mentally attacked, the Keller machine focuses on the recent events that occurred when The Doctor witnessed the destruction of the alternate Earth in "Inferno". He tells Jo as he recovers, ‘Not long ago I saw an entire world consumed by fire…’.
On the next two occasions, the machine selects a checklist of his foes. These included a Dalek ("The Dalek Invasion of Earth"), Koquillion ("The Rescue"), Ice Lord Slaar ("The Seeds of Death"), a Zarbi ("The Web Planet"), a War Machine ("The War Machines"), a Silurian ("Doctor Who and the Silurians"), an Ice Warrior ("The Seeds of Death") and a Cyberman ("The Invasion"). For this series of mental images yanked from The Doctor's mind BBC publicity photographs were used. During these hallucinations, Dalek voices are heard chanting for subjugation, extermination, and destruction. Also considered, for this sequence, but unused were the Slyther ("The Dalek Invasion of Earth"), the Servo Robot ("The Wheel in Space") and a Sensorite ("The Sensorites").
An insight into The Master's motivation and his relationship with The Doctor is given when the Mind Parasite turns on him and attacks him with images to evoke his deepest fear: The Master is confronted with and recoils from images of a gigantic Doctor towering over him and laughing maniacally down at him. In "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords", the Tenth Doctor is infused with psychic energy and towers over The Master, who cowers in fear.
For the filming of the hijacking of the Thunderbolt missile the production office had been able to secure the loan of a real (but unprimed) Thunderbird 2 SAGW missile from the 36th Heavy Air Defence Regiment out of Horseshoe Barracks in Shoeburyness, Essex, in addition to a number of troops who would play The Master's men (eight marines had also been made available for the Dover Castle sequences). Unfortunately, the soldiers were dressed in military raiment rather than convict garb, prompting Script Editor Terrance Dicks to add a line in episode five wherein Captain Mike Yates explains that the criminals had been wearing fake uniforms.
Portions of this story, primarily for those portraying Stangmoor Prison, were filmed in and around Dover Castle; additionally, some location footage had to be re-filmed due to damage to the negatives, such as fight scenes which included members of the crew on camera.
Due to a number of extra expenses - most notably the additional day filming at Dover Castle and the last-minute addition of the helicopter to the climax of episode six - pushed the already costly "The Mind of Evil" well over-budget. Consequently Producer Barry Letts elected not to use Director Timothy Combe again on future Doctor Who stories. Timothy Combe went on to work on programmes such as Z Cars and The Brothers.
"The Mind of Evil" was also Don Houghton's final contribution to Doctor Who. Soon thereafter, he joined Hammer Films as a writer and producer, contributing scripts to a number of movies such as The Satanic Rites of Dracula. For television, he wrote episodes for programmes including Sapphire and Steel and created the Scottish soap opera Take the High Road.
"The Mind of Evil" is unique amongst the Third Doctor stories in that the BBC holds no complete colour copies of any of its episodes. Three short clips (totalling four and a half minutes) of restored colour footage from the opening of episode six does exists based on an off-air domestic NTSC recording retrieved from America. No complete recordings of this story have been located yet to enable a full re-colourisation to be made.
A black and white version of this story was released on VHS video in May 1988. This release included the four and a half minutes of restored colour footage, from the opening of episode six, as a bonus extra after the story.
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The Firsts:
The first use of on-screen subtitles in Doctor Who.
The first time we witness The Doctor being mentally attacked
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(Position = 65 out of 159)
(Position = 92 out of 200)
