The Panopticon/Giving a Face to James Stevens
Okay, so a few years ago I was able to reverse engineer which character in The Mind of Evil was meant to be James Stevens, the character from the novel Who Killed Kennedy. My findings and images were swiftly deleted by Czech, however, who I'm sure presumed my postings to be wild, unfounded speculation. Fast forward to present day, and I now have a colour copy of episode one, where I originally found Stevens (thanks Babelcolour) and I have decided to post about my findings and attempt to show that what I discovered, and to show that it was more than over-zealous speculation.
Now, when people in the past have attempted to spot James, they have started with the early chapters, where James is at the press conference from Spearhead from Space (TV story). The only issue with searching through this section is, as others have noted, that James is pretty vague about where he is at the press conference. He just recounts what happens (with an odd among of clarity, mind you. Anyone else ever bothered by the fact that everyone in the Whoniverse has 20/20 memory) and takes claim to dialogue that obviously belongs to other characters. There's nothing to point to his identity or even where he is in the room. Everything after this initial scene is just a vague description, meaning that this path is a dead end.
Now, this leaves only one other scene in the book where James claims to be in action during a scene that we actually saw on television, and that is during Chapter Nine, where he sneaks into the initial public test of the Keller Machine - which parallels the same scene in The Mind of Evil line by line.
At the start of the scene, James recalls studying the machine, and comparing it to soemthing more familiar.
"On a low metal trolley sat a squat, upright cylinder made of some opaque plastic or glass, topped with a dark dome. The cylinder was set into a control unit the size of a briefcase. A series of spiralled wires led from this unit to a white plastic dome over a padded leather chair with metal arm rests. The dome's positioning over the chair was not unlike that of a hair dryer in a beauty salon, but there was something altogether more sinister about this contraption. Eventually I realized what the assemblage of machinery most reminded me of - an electric chair."
Note that at the beginning of the scene in Mind, we get a quick shot of a man in a brown coat with long sideburns eying up the Keller machine. This may seem like conjecture at this point, but very quickly it will become clear that this character follows the actions described by Stevens, down to the letter.
"Several prison guards in their black uniforms lurked at the sides of the room to dissuade us from taking a closer look at the device, so I took a chair against the wall and sat down to wait. The seats around me quickly filled up, leaving only two chairs in the front row empty. After a few minutes two latecomers entered, looking slightly flustered. The woman was small, mousy and had a pleasant face. But the man accompanying her was instantly recognizable to me from the times others had described his appearance - it could only be the Doctor!"
Now, here Stevens claims that he took a seat in the back row, and was quickly surrounded by his peers. He then asserts that the Doctor and his assistant sit down in the front row in the only two available seats. Looking at the source material, we can note that when Pertwee and Jo do indeed sit down, and that directly behind them in the same man noted before.
In WKK, James notes down everything that both the scientists and the Doctor says during this scene. We can note that the brown-coated figure does seem to take very close notice of the Doctor whenever he speaks, and that he glances at the Doc and Jo far more often than anyone else in the room.
"Again, he was interrupted by an impertinent voice from the audience, speaking in rich, fruity, rounded tones. I caught sight of the person making the interjections - it was the Doctor. ‘People who talk about infallibility are usually on very shaky ground!"
This basically runs like this up to after the use of the Keller machine. Now, up to this point I think it's clear that everything that I have pointed out is mere speculation -- indeed, with the evidence that I have pointed out, any man in that room could have been James Stevens, just as before. The descriptions in the book make only a vague connection to the scene at all.
However, it is the final part of the scene which concretely proves that this man is indeed Stevens. In WKK, after the experiment is done, everyone in the room but the Doctor, Jo, and the Keller representatives leave. James, however, decides to stay behind to ease drop, pretending to look at the Keller machine.
Around me the audience of observers got up and began leaving the room, whispering excitedly between themselves. Noticing the Doctor and his companion were advancing towards Kettering and the governor, I hung about just within earshot, doing my best to look knowledgeable as I examined the Keller Machine close-up."
Now, let's look at MoE, and examine what the brown-coated man does. As you can see to the right, he stands awkwardly after the others leave, and seems to stare at the Doctor and Jo. After a moment, he walks up to the Keller machine, and seems to bow down to "examine" it. At this point, he is the only person left in the room, and constantly lingers in the background of the shot. After the Doctor leaves, Kettering looks as if he is about to say something, until he stops and finally notices the lone man studying the Keller machine.
"At this point the governor moved to stop the disagreement becoming more heated. Noting my presence in the chamber, he suggested they continue their discussion later."
This makes it abundantly clear that this man noted above continuously in The Mind of Evil was, in fact, meant to be James Stevens. He is the only person studying the machine at the end of the scene, and the only person who sticks around after staring at the Doctor for some time. For conclusive proof that this is meant to be something you can piece together, here is the author's commentary on Chapter 9:
"Much of the chapter is devoted to the events seen in The Mind of Evil. Stevens blags his way into the demonstration of the Keller Machine at Stangmoor Prison and gets his first sighting of the Third Doctor. Much of the dialogue in the middle of this chapter is cheekily lifted from the TV story. If you own a copy of The Mind of Evil, see if you can spot which of the observers is Stevens."
The author of Who Killed Kennedy was a huge Pertwee fan, and multiple parts of the book tie into other scenes in other episodes, including a phone call in Spearhead which Stevens receives in the book. So it's no surprise that he would watch this scene so closely and would try so hard to put in these clues as to which reporter was, in fact, Stevens.
I don't think that there's much discussion to be had on whether this is purposeful; it clearly is. I think the question is if we should count it as totally legitimate. Should we put images from this scene of this person on the James Stevens page? Should we try to figure out what extra this is, and credit him as JS's actor? Should we add a definitive appearance to his page for MoE?
My opinion? I think we should. I think that we should treat this scene as a novelization and take this background character as being one in the same with Stevens. But as there has been some discrepancies in the past, I'll open this discussion to the forum. Is this enough textual evidence to support the idea? Should we take this seriously?
