“The Invisible Enemy” is an adventure of the fifteenth season of “Doctor Who” classic series, which aired in 1977. It follows “Horror of Fang Rock” and it’s a four parts adventure written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin and directed by Derrick Goodwin.
The story
A group of astronauts reach the base on Titan but during their jounery an alien infection has affected them. A kind of virus takes control of their bodies and spreads using them to hit the crew of the base, which is selected from the Nucleus, the mind of the infection, to manage its breeding.
The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) are in the area when the infection strikes at the Tardis. The Doctor is hit but he resists it longer than humans while Leela is rejected by the virus. The Nucleus chooses the Doctor as his host and between their minds begins a battle for control of his body. The Doctor directs the Tardis to the nearest hospital space station, where he asks for help to Professor Marius, assisted by his robot dog K-9.
Extras
This DVD contains a good amount of extras. There are typical contents such as production subtitles, a gallery of pictures from this adventure, the Radio Times Listings and a promo of the “Doctor Who” DVDs soon to be published.
There are various comments in the adventure alternative audio track by protagonist Louise Jameson, actor John Leeson, co-author Bob Baker and special effects designer Mat Irvine.
Dreams and Fantasy. A documentary about 20 minutes long on the production of this adventure that includes a walk with K-9.
Studio sweepings. A behind the scenes showing the recording of some scenes of this adventure. It’s a bit of a filler but it can still be useful to see how some shots were handled with special effects that used the CSO technology.
Visual Effect. Special effects designer Mat Irvine meets his old colleague Ian Scoones to talk with him about the special effects of “The Invisible Enemy” and other stories.
Blue Peter. K-9 “Blue Peter”.
CGI Effects. The option to see this adventure with some new CGI special effects that have replaced the original ones. These aren’t major changes but there’s definitely some visual improvement.
Trailers and Continuity. Some BBC promo and announcements aired in occasion of the transmission of this adventure.
There’s also an “Easter egg” with a clip about K-9.
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When Graham Williams became “Doctor Who” producer, he was forced to drastically reduce the elements of violence and horror present in previous seasons, which had aroused a bit of controversy. For this reason, it was decided to focus more on the humor, in this in agreement with Tom Baker.
Initially, Graham Williams wanted to produce a series of adventures linked together but realized that there wasn’t enough time to do it in the fifteenth season. As a result, he and script editor Robert Holmes commissioned Bob Baker and Dave Martin to write a normal stand-alone adventure.
The two authors were inspired by a newspaper article on virus mutations to create the idea of an intelligent virus as the villain for an adventure. To this basic concept they added the idea taken from the movie “Fantastic Voyage”, in which a group of scientists is miniaturized to a microscopic level and injected into the body of a man.
Dave Martin had a dog, who unfortunately was recently run over by a car. The author thought that if the dog had been armored it would have survived and that gave him the idea of a robot dog to be included in the script that became “The Invisible Enemy”.
Thus K-9 was born, albeit with various problems in its construction and use during filming. Initially, the idea of using an actor to move K-9 was considered, just as the Daleks, but in the end it was decided to build a radio-controlled model of reduced size.
The biggest problem was that K-9 could move only on a sufficiently smooth ground but in “The Invisible Enemy” this wasn’t an obstacle. Given the efforts made to create it and immediately realizing that the children would liked it, it was decided to keep it and this is the reason why at the end of this adventure it joins the Doctor.
“The Invisible Enemy” required several special effects and this was a big problem. The models of the spaceships were well made by the standards of the time but the reproduction of the interior of the Doctor’s brain is so-so. Especially the Nucleus is rather laughable and this isn’t a good thing considering the fact that it was supposed to be a threat.
As if that weren’t enough, director Derrick Goodwin gives the clear impression of not being able to capitalize on the element at his disposal and ends up making the special effects look even worse than they actually were. The error was first of all at production level because for an adventure with lots of special effects they needed to choose a director who knew how to handle them.
Even the screenplay for “The Invisible Enemy” has its flaws. The character of Leela had been developed during the previous adventures but here she’s rather dull, often little more than an extra who watches what’s going on. Let’s say that in general the characters aren’t the story’s strong point.
“The Invisible Enemy” is basically a series of ideas put together in a manner sometimes uneven. A curiosity is the use of in phonetic English that appear in the sets during this adventure so for example “Entrance” becomes “Entruns” and “Exit” becomes “Egsit”. Personally, I was more distracted than intrigued.
In my opinion, “The Invisible Enemy” had good potential because in the first episode there’s tension with the intelligent virus attack to Titan base but also to the Doctor. Problems arise in later episodes, with the cloning part handled in an absurd way and from there it goes from bad to worse with the ridiculous Nucleus. A dramatic story ends up turning into a pantomime.
It’s for these reasons that “The Invisible Enemy” has a negative reputation. Overall, it seems to me an average product of the classic “Doctor Who” series for the mix of positive and negative elements. Unfortunately it tends to mediocre because its flaws tend to overshadow its positive sides and the quality goes down after the first episode. It has its importance in the show for the K-9’s debut, everything else is far from memorable.
The DVD is a product all in all good, with some interesting extra, in particular the ones produced specifically for it. The other extras are basically fillers so in the end like in the adventure there are ups and downs.
This DVD is part of a box set together with “K-9 and Company” – available on Amazon UK
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