The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Invisible Enemy
The Invisible Enemy: Part One (01/10/17)
I'm not going to say this week was disappointing, but it wasn't as good as it has been recently. It's a very Sci Fi story and some of the model work and design was very good. However, some of it really wasn't.
The story idea is okay so far. It looks like a station relief crew destined for a base on Titan in the year 5000 encountered a cloud containing some form of intelligence which intends to use the base to multiply. They killed the crew they were replacing and went after the base controller, but he set off a Mayday and escaped.
The TARDIS materialised nearby and received the Mayday, the Doctor and Leela in the old console room (!), but the TARDIS drifted into the cloud and the Doctor became infected by a Nucleus, although Leela was rejected. He seemed oblivious of it until they reached Titan and the infected crew zapped him with electricity from their eyes and activated the Nucleus.
Meanwhile, Leela found the base commander and they hid in the Mess. The commander had already shot one of the infected, then Leela knifed another one in the back. However, it seems that guy passed the infection on to the commander who's run off and left Leela about to be shot by the Doctor!
The weird, silvery fronds around the eyes aren't bad on the infected crew; the fronds around the Doctor's wrists are slightly better. It's another Bob Baker and Dave Martin story and, frankly, isn't as good as their last one. It may be because '...Fang Rock' was so good, but it all looks a hell of a lot cheaper and more poorly designed than anything in a long while. Even 'The Android Invasion' looked better!
Leela is exhibiting her sixth sense again, which nicely ties in with 'The Robots Of Death', but so far she's about the only decent thing in it - even Tom seems to have dropped his game, not nearly as good as in the last few stories.
But I'm not disappointed. It's different, it has a good central idea, and hopefully next week it will improve. Fingers crossed!
The Invisible Enemy: Part Two (08/10/17)
Hmmm. This is a weird one. It doesn't look great; there's something a bit naff about the design, and it seems like the Director isn't entirely sure what he's doing. Leela and Lowe (the base commander) took the Doctor to the Bi-Al Foundation on a meteor orbiting Pluto to be seen to, where Lowe then infected some of the medics.
Meanwhile, the Doctor has been attended to by Professor Marius who has an assistant in the form of a robot dog called K9. The Doctor has come up with an idea to miniaturise clones of himself and Leela and inject them into his body (eh?) in order to combat the intelligent virus which has infected him... Meanwhile, the virus has infected another shuttle which randomly wandered into its cloud and crashed it into the Bi-Al Foundation.
Honestly, there's not much more to say! The Doctor looked pretty good with his infected furry face, and Louise Jameson is actually quite stunning with blue eyes instead of her original brown contact lenses, but it's all rather underwhelming. Fuck me! I've barely even filled a page!
The Invisible Enemy: Part Four (15/10/17)
Not quite as bad this week, but still a bit of a disappointment. Some pretty awful CSO in the first five minutes gave way to better, but there were some odd design choices for the interior of the Doctor's mind which his and Leela's clones spent the episode wandering round.
Meanwhile, Leela was helped by K9 in defending the lab while Lowe and his infected posse attacked. K9 killed one of them, but it infected him (temporarily - I don't know how as he's a robot!) and he stunned Leela, allowing Lowe and the others to get in and kill Doctor Parsons. The Nurse escaped, but Marius got infected and cloned Lowe and sent the clone after the clone Doctor and Leela. The Nurse saw this and told Leela and K9 who decided they needed to wait and observe, rather than go in and kill all the infected while they were trapped in the lab.
Inside the Doctor, his clone found the Nucleus of the Swarm - a huge turd with a white, scaly claw by the look of it, and learnt of the Swarm's plan to conquer not only Humanity but, through them, the universe. Leela's clone killed Lowe's and returned to the clone Doctor just as their existence ran out, allowing the Nucleus to escape (somehow) via the Doctor's tear duct wherein Marius retrieved it and put it in the matter transferring machine and grew it to Human size. For some reason, it's decided to manifest in the shape of a giant prawn.
Tonnes of plot holes and dodgy science (like how come Clone Doctor and Clone Leela can feel what their original counterparts feel on the outside?) but some interesting ideas at the heart of the story about expansion and how the Human race keeps multiplying like a virus and infecting the universe. It's just a shame it looks so shoddy! Especially since it's only the second story of the series. I really hope this isn't an example of the style and quality of the new production team because it really doesn't compare to the last series.
The Invisible Enemy: Part Four (22/10/17)
Well, that was certainly the weakest story in a long time. Not truly awful, like Tom Baker's debut, but still pretty poor. The Nucleus was vaguely menacing, returning to Titan to ensure its eggs hatched so it could swarm throughout the universe, but it looked incredibly silly and it felt like the story had only been partially thought through.
The first half of this episode was spent trying to find an anti-virus to use against the Swarm, during which Leela asked why they couldn't just blow the base up and eradicate the lot. The Doctor reasoned that the Swarm had as much right as anyone to survive, just not in macro form. Fair enough!
The second half was spent trying to release the anti-virus on Titan and failing, at which point the Doctor blew the entire base sky high! Just like Leela had suggested! At which point I'm not sure what the moral of this story was; if at first you don't succeed, blow it up?
Stranger still was the choice at the end to have Marius returning to Earth and asking the Doctor to take K9 with him in the TARDIS. I imagine having not been able to take a real dog to Pluto and having built K9 at the Bi-Al Foundation he intends to get a real dog back on Earth. It's not like I have anything against K9, but it is quite noisy when it moves around and, whilst I see the benefits of having a talking robot dog as a companion, able to help sort things out, I do think it might slow things down a bit, and it is a bit silly.
Nevertheless, time will no doubt tell how this pans out. If nothing else, it'll be nice to have more than one companion in the show again, even if one is a metal dog!
I'm not going to say this week was disappointing, but it wasn't as good as it has been recently. It's a very Sci Fi story and some of the model work and design was very good. However, some of it really wasn't.
The story idea is okay so far. It looks like a station relief crew destined for a base on Titan in the year 5000 encountered a cloud containing some form of intelligence which intends to use the base to multiply. They killed the crew they were replacing and went after the base controller, but he set off a Mayday and escaped.
The TARDIS materialised nearby and received the Mayday, the Doctor and Leela in the old console room (!), but the TARDIS drifted into the cloud and the Doctor became infected by a Nucleus, although Leela was rejected. He seemed oblivious of it until they reached Titan and the infected crew zapped him with electricity from their eyes and activated the Nucleus.
Meanwhile, Leela found the base commander and they hid in the Mess. The commander had already shot one of the infected, then Leela knifed another one in the back. However, it seems that guy passed the infection on to the commander who's run off and left Leela about to be shot by the Doctor!
The weird, silvery fronds around the eyes aren't bad on the infected crew; the fronds around the Doctor's wrists are slightly better. It's another Bob Baker and Dave Martin story and, frankly, isn't as good as their last one. It may be because '...Fang Rock' was so good, but it all looks a hell of a lot cheaper and more poorly designed than anything in a long while. Even 'The Android Invasion' looked better!
Leela is exhibiting her sixth sense again, which nicely ties in with 'The Robots Of Death', but so far she's about the only decent thing in it - even Tom seems to have dropped his game, not nearly as good as in the last few stories.
But I'm not disappointed. It's different, it has a good central idea, and hopefully next week it will improve. Fingers crossed!
The Invisible Enemy: Part Two (08/10/17)
Hmmm. This is a weird one. It doesn't look great; there's something a bit naff about the design, and it seems like the Director isn't entirely sure what he's doing. Leela and Lowe (the base commander) took the Doctor to the Bi-Al Foundation on a meteor orbiting Pluto to be seen to, where Lowe then infected some of the medics.
Meanwhile, the Doctor has been attended to by Professor Marius who has an assistant in the form of a robot dog called K9. The Doctor has come up with an idea to miniaturise clones of himself and Leela and inject them into his body (eh?) in order to combat the intelligent virus which has infected him... Meanwhile, the virus has infected another shuttle which randomly wandered into its cloud and crashed it into the Bi-Al Foundation.
Honestly, there's not much more to say! The Doctor looked pretty good with his infected furry face, and Louise Jameson is actually quite stunning with blue eyes instead of her original brown contact lenses, but it's all rather underwhelming. Fuck me! I've barely even filled a page!
The Invisible Enemy: Part Four (15/10/17)
Not quite as bad this week, but still a bit of a disappointment. Some pretty awful CSO in the first five minutes gave way to better, but there were some odd design choices for the interior of the Doctor's mind which his and Leela's clones spent the episode wandering round.
Meanwhile, Leela was helped by K9 in defending the lab while Lowe and his infected posse attacked. K9 killed one of them, but it infected him (temporarily - I don't know how as he's a robot!) and he stunned Leela, allowing Lowe and the others to get in and kill Doctor Parsons. The Nurse escaped, but Marius got infected and cloned Lowe and sent the clone after the clone Doctor and Leela. The Nurse saw this and told Leela and K9 who decided they needed to wait and observe, rather than go in and kill all the infected while they were trapped in the lab.
Inside the Doctor, his clone found the Nucleus of the Swarm - a huge turd with a white, scaly claw by the look of it, and learnt of the Swarm's plan to conquer not only Humanity but, through them, the universe. Leela's clone killed Lowe's and returned to the clone Doctor just as their existence ran out, allowing the Nucleus to escape (somehow) via the Doctor's tear duct wherein Marius retrieved it and put it in the matter transferring machine and grew it to Human size. For some reason, it's decided to manifest in the shape of a giant prawn.
Tonnes of plot holes and dodgy science (like how come Clone Doctor and Clone Leela can feel what their original counterparts feel on the outside?) but some interesting ideas at the heart of the story about expansion and how the Human race keeps multiplying like a virus and infecting the universe. It's just a shame it looks so shoddy! Especially since it's only the second story of the series. I really hope this isn't an example of the style and quality of the new production team because it really doesn't compare to the last series.
The Invisible Enemy: Part Four (22/10/17)
Well, that was certainly the weakest story in a long time. Not truly awful, like Tom Baker's debut, but still pretty poor. The Nucleus was vaguely menacing, returning to Titan to ensure its eggs hatched so it could swarm throughout the universe, but it looked incredibly silly and it felt like the story had only been partially thought through.
The first half of this episode was spent trying to find an anti-virus to use against the Swarm, during which Leela asked why they couldn't just blow the base up and eradicate the lot. The Doctor reasoned that the Swarm had as much right as anyone to survive, just not in macro form. Fair enough!
The second half was spent trying to release the anti-virus on Titan and failing, at which point the Doctor blew the entire base sky high! Just like Leela had suggested! At which point I'm not sure what the moral of this story was; if at first you don't succeed, blow it up?
Stranger still was the choice at the end to have Marius returning to Earth and asking the Doctor to take K9 with him in the TARDIS. I imagine having not been able to take a real dog to Pluto and having built K9 at the Bi-Al Foundation he intends to get a real dog back on Earth. It's not like I have anything against K9, but it is quite noisy when it moves around and, whilst I see the benefits of having a talking robot dog as a companion, able to help sort things out, I do think it might slow things down a bit, and it is a bit silly.
Nevertheless, time will no doubt tell how this pans out. If nothing else, it'll be nice to have more than one companion in the show again, even if one is a metal dog!
As with quite a few of Bob Baker and Dave Martin's stories, the ideas simply can't be brought to life (convincingly) on a BBC budget. In some regards they give it a good try, but as you say, with only limited success. All of which makes the story stand in stark contrast to the run of stellar episodes before it, and stand out - again, as you mention, like Robot and The Android Invasion for not really fitting in. But then the tone is shifting, and this is the first indication if where it's going.
ReplyDeleteAnd part of that, of course, is K9. I agree that on this evidence the decision to include him as a regular seems odd and rather unpromising, but these things take time to gel, and if nothing else we can be glad that John Leeson brought some stability to relations off-screen...
I can see what they were thinking with this story - the series had (in recent years) done King Kong, Frankenstein, Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, Forbidden Planet and Fu Manchu, so Fantastic Voyage feels like an obvious next step but it just falls flat. I think the only times Baker and Martin really ever succeeded was with The Sontaran Experiment which was helped by its brevity and location filming, and The Hand Of Fear which, likewise, had great locations coupled with some gorgeous design (which let down Axos and The Three Doctors). Unlike elsewhere this season, the difference in style and tone looks cheap so it's a shame that after such a long run of stunning and captivating serials, the Williams era stumbles at the second hurdle. There would be better things to come, but this didn't feel very promising.
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