Mike Hall
But then again I've seen a lot worse. Certainly the weakest in a long line of recent 'monster' spin-offs from "Doctor Who", that started with "Shakedown - Return of the Sontarans" in 1994, and went through "Downtime" (1995), "Auton" (1997) and "Auton 2 : Sentinel" (1998). Although the premise is an appealing one (a sci-fi take on 'three men stuck in a lift'), the limited budget and the fact that the aim was to shoot the whole production in one day meant that the end product was a great disappointment. Miles Richardson is wonderful as the Draconian and Sophie Aldred is passable as the human. Sadly Toby Aspin - after delivering a wonderful performance as Commander Steg in "Shakedown" - is really terrible as Commander Sarg, who - far from the squat hissing trolls featured in "Doctor Who" - played Sarg as a very loud roaring character. And even then, not a terribly well played loud roaring character. Worst of all has to be Bryan Robson's 'Alien', who looks so terribly laughable in that mask, it is impossible to take him seriously. As a bonus on the only available release of "Mindgame" is "The Making of Mindgame", a 37 minute production about this 30 minute film, which is happily a lot more entertaining than it's subject matter. It goes along way to explain why "Mindgame" turned out so bad, detailing the hideous production problems that beset Reeltime's small crew. And when viewed in that context.. it somehow doesn't seem as bad as it first appeared.
