C093 The Invisible Enemy

‘The Invisible Enemy’ featured great model work as a space virus traveled to a base on Saturn’s moon, Titan. The Nucleus was a fascinating antagonist for the Doctor. Drawn to intelligence, it selected him as its host and entered his brain to learn about Time Lords and how the Doctor would escape its microworld. The virus’ subsequent growth was the exception the Doctor cited to negate the Nucleus’ right to survive and thrive in humans’ macroworld.

Leela sensed a message countermanding a distress call from Titan was fake. Immune to the virus, she instinctively considered it evil. It marked her for death, long before she suggested blowing it up.

The infected Doctor battled the Nucleus mentally, hesitating to kill Leela and warning her of the irresistible impulse to fire his laser gun at her. Later, he implausibly came out of a self induced coma to help Leela pilot the TARDIS to a hospital in the asteroid belt. There, he proposed cloning himself and Leela to inject their shrunken doubles into his head to combat the virus.

Doctor Marius and his robot dog, K9, helped the Doctor while Leela protected them from infected staff armed with guns that should never have been in the hospital. Nevertheless, gun battles raged.

Models and sets depicting the interior of the Doctor’s head made ‘The Invisible Enemy’ look great. Shrunken clones inoculated the Doctor upon entering the microworld, where the virus had every right to survive, as, in the macroworld, the virus aspired to spread through time and space. The Nucleus’ growth and ambition, in the Doctor’s view, amounted to an invasion and invitation to destruction. This story’s most significant element, though, was both a prop and a character since K9 boarded the TARDIS.

One of the Tom Baker serials I know least, I had to rewatch this to recall the details. This is a middling story, not amazing, but with some interesting parts, especially the Doc walking around in his own brain. What I thought was most interesting about this story is how Troughton-esque the story is. The base with a plague, the make-up for the infected people, and Professor Marius being the shouty scientist, all feel like a throwback to 60s Who. I give it a 3.0, interesting for historical value, rather than the story itself, although I do hope you refer to this as the story where the Doctor catches crabs, or at least some kind of giant shrimp.

Here’s another of my guilty pleasures. There’s really nothing great save the concept, yet I enjoy it tremendously every time. However it’s a contrast to most other guilty pleasure stories, in that I feel this one becomes slightly LESS interesting the more I watch it.

Good bits? The debate over the right to exist or be conquered, exploring instinct vs intellectual, and comparing humans to a plague. Unfortunately though, the story just misses inspiring the viewer to more deeply contemplate these issues.

K-9 is awesome of course, but he’s plagued with power problems, which unfortunately precedents THE major trope that lessens his usefulness in the future.

While the doctor and Marius’s interaction is delightful, the usual banter between he and Leela is plain and terse, lacking the usual witty banter. The interplay between characters is sorely lacking, thus the dialog fails to back up the insightfully intellectual themes. This earns this week’s retro rewrite. Yes you heard me, I’d rewrite almost all of the dialog, especially Leela’s.

All these troubles aside, I still enjoy this episode a boatload, which puts me in a sort of conundrum. Do I have the right to rate this story the way I feel about it, or should I rate the way I feel is realistic? Is doctor who a virus and am l infected? Is the mis-spelled writing on the wall? Should we just blow it all to pieces and steal the family dog? Mind, brain, mind, brain, mind, brain…ah hell. 3.3