Mehendri Solon (short story)

 was the 23rd The Blogs of Doom short story, published in 2019 in Doctor Who Magazine 541. Like other features in the series, it narrated events in the life of a minor Doctor Who TV character before and after their involvement in the Doctor's life.

In this case, the subject of writer Jonathan Morris's attention was Mehendri Solon from The Brain of Morbius. The three scenes took place before and during the events of the TV story itself.

Summary
Mehendri Solon, once a scientist who courted controversy among his peers, now lives in exile on Karn, where he secretly took with him the brain of Morbius, which he surgically extracted from his body before the body in question was atomised by the Time Lords in an attempted execution. Still a new resident, he meets with Maren of the Sisterhood of Karn, asking her why the Sisterhood "like to pass the time" by causing passing spaceships to crash down onto Karn. He ridicules Maren's claim that this allows the Sisterhood to remain inconspicuous, but she shuts him up by warning him that the Sisterhood knows about his own experiments with stitching together the corpses of the downed pilots.

Some time later, Solon runs to the cellar where he keeps Morbius's brain to tell him that he has found a suitable donour for a new head to add to the body Solon has been building. However, Morbius bitterly criticises Solon for having gone the convoluted route of sending the Doctor to get killed by the Sisterhood, instead of simply getting his servant Condo to overpower him. When Solon tries to argue back, Morbius gets caught in a self-pitying loop of bemoaning his lack of senses, and Solon ends up leaving him to his wallowing. He finds Condo waiting for him at the top of the stairs, intending to ask his Master a simple question: why he is so insistent on beheading the donour and then stitching his head on the constructed body, when he could so easily transplant the brain of Morbius directly into the Time Lord's skull and use the whole Time Lord body. Solon is angered at the idea that his work of so many years might turn out to be useless, however, and spitefully sticks with the more complicated plan.

A little later, Solon's moment of exultation as he believes Morbius is about to rise again is spoiled when he unexpectedly finds himself poisoned by a release of cyanide gas, and he dies wondering "Who" could have done it.

Characters

 * Mehendri Solon
 * Condo
 * Maren
 * Morbius

Worldbuilding

 * Prior to coming to Karn, Solon was mocked by his fellow academics.
 * Solon refers to the Sisterhood of Karn as a "squalid brood of harpies".
 * Morbius's new body includes "the posterior of a Birastrop".

Continuity

 * This story focuses on Mehendri Solon's life shortly before, and during, the events of TV: The Brain of Morbius.