4. We're In A Miniscope
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zuw9YDFFGuw Mark Gatiss being born in 1966 would seem to indicate that Jon Pertwee is his Doctor. An assumption borne out by him casting himself as Pertwee in scenes ultimately cut from An Adventure In Space And Time, and the number of Third Doctor references in Robot Of Sherwood. As well as the episode having a lot in common with The Time Warrior and the Doctor breaking out some Venusian Aikido moves (which well come to later), we get a brief nod to the 1973 story Carnival Of Monsters. After first meeting the Merry Men and his assumptions about them not being real being stumped by every test he performs on them (whilst assessing that Alan A-Dale has six months to live), the Doctor assumes that the Tardis must have materialised inside a Miniscope. The Miniscope is an illegal device that works as a sideshow attraction by taking intelligent life-forms, making them seventy-two times smaller, and sealing them inside the Miniscope in a controlled environment that replicates the beings natural habitat. The Miniscopes only onscreen appearance so far was in Carnival Of Monsters where the Doctor and Jo were trapped in alien showman Vorgs (the only person in the universe with less dress sense than the Sixth Doctor) Miniscope which also contained Orgrons, Cybermen, and what Vorg claimed to be the only humans in captivity. Which means that the Doctors guess at being in a Miniscope wouldnt make much sense since it would require a real Robin Hood to be held captive in the first place. And on that note, we now invite you to have paranoid nightmares at the idea that somewhere out there is an alien with a device like a Miniscope and that were all trapped inside it.
JG Moore
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JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.
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