Who Review: The Invisible Enemy
There’s a strange, sentient virus lingering out in space, looking for a suitable host. It infects a passing space cruiser, which then makes a landing on the nearby Titan Base, infecting most of the crew. One of the last to be infected sends out a distress call which is intercepted by the TARDIS, which happens to be within range. This means, of course, that the TARDIS is also within reach of the virus. Passing through the TARDIS console, the virus attacks the Doctor, but rejects Leela. The Doctor is momentarily dazed, but doesn’t appear affected… for now. The TARDIS crew land on Titan Base to investigate the distress call, only to find most of the crew dead, and the virus-controlled cruiser crew hunting them down. The Doctor, it seems, is a most suitable host for the virus’s Nucleus, so they want to keep him safe until it’s time for the Nucleus to spawn. As the infection takes hold of the Doctor, Leela gets him to the nearest medical facility. But how to fight a microscopic enemy that transmits through eye contact, and for which there is no known antidote? With the help of Professor Marius and his mechanical dog, K-9, the Doctor and Leela risk their lives to take the most extraordinary journey, to fight the enemy within…
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
There was a cartoon series my older brother and I used to enjoy watching when we were young called “Fantastic Voyage.” It was originally made in the late Sixties, but repeated in the Seventies, which is when we saw it. The cartoon series was based on a movie of the same name, featuring a team of special agents in some kind of flying craft that went on special missions to fight all manner of ne’er-do-wells. The hook was that they, and their vehicle, were miniaturized. This meant they could fight microscopic baddies, as well as regular-sized ones. It was a cool, albeit short-lived, show. And one can’t help thinking writers Dave Martin and Bob Baker were inspired by it for this particular Doctor Who serial (though neither has admitted this to be the case).
“The Invisible Enemy” suffers, I think, from ideas way beyond its budget. Despite the best intentions of the writers, producers, and designers, there is no way they could, at that time, accomplish on screen all the ambition that Baker and Martin put into their script. To give them credit, they did the best they could with what they had, combining Color Separation Overlay (green screen), model shots, and duct tape and bailing wire to try to pull off something half credible. This means for the 21st century viewer to appreciate the story, s/he needs to pay a lot more attention to the plot and the dialog than to the visual execution.
That’s not to say all the visuals are terrible. The signs on Titan Base, and on the medical center, are all spelled phonetically (e.g., “EGSIT” and “ISOLAYSHUN WARD”). Baker and Martin clearly have a thing for space ship signage. In their Third Doctor story, “The Mutants,” the signs on Skybase One include directions for “Mutants” and “Overlords” as well as reminders to wear an oxymask before going outside. Also, K-9, the robot dog, works well visually, even if it is a bit clunky and noisy. It seems K-9 ended up joining the TARDIS crew to justify the cost of making it. K-9 stays on board for the next 2-3 years, much to Tom Baker’s chagrin. Tom hated working with K-9 because he always had to crouch down to get in shot when talking with it. But the kids loved the tin dog so he put up with it.
However, some of the effects just don’t cut it. The big fluffy white balls that are supposed to be the Doctor’s antibodies are hardly convincing. But worse of all has to be the Nucleus itself, especially in its man-size form. It looks like a giant shrimp, and not a very scary one at that. I don’t know what the designer was going for, but I’ve seen more frightening things in the bath tub. It might have made a killing as a soft toy, however.
I’m no scientist, but I’m sure a neurologist would have a field day with all the “inside the brain” scenes. All that talk about the left and right sides of the brain not being able to see each other–I’m fairly certain that’s not entirely the case. Indeed, studies have shown that if one side of the brain shuts down, the other side will compensate, so there must be some interaction. Maybe this is as much as scientists understood back in 1977. Or maybe Baker and Martin were victims of bad pop science. Or maybe I’m wrong and this is totally accurate!
In any case, “The Invisible Enemy” is not a bad story, a bit ambitious, but perhaps a little cringeworthy for modern sensibilities. As the first K-9 story, it has some historical merit, but aside from that, I would say this is one for the die-hards, but not to everyone’s taste.
