Doctor Who
The
Invisible Enemy
It’s a
common and understandable refrain that, barring The Horror of Fang Rock, Season 15 is a bit of a dog’s dinner. Image of the Fendahl and The Sun Makers have their defenders, but
the rest are frequently labelled failures or disastrously unfulfilled in their
ambitions. Certainly, particularly antipathy is reserved for the pair of Bob
Baker and Dave Martin-scripted contributions, The Invisible Enemy and Underworld.
In the case
of the latter, I get it. I mean, Underworld
commits the worst of sins, in that it’s unconscionably dull (after the first
episode, which is quite good). The
Invisible Enemy, though, could hardly be considered boring. The brickbats tend
to come from other – and every – directions, such as its scant regard for
scientific verisimilitude and internal logic, and most cardinal of all, its
shoddy production values. None of which ultimately mar the story for me; I even
genuinely think the giant prawn is a masterpiece of freaky mofo, OMFG design
work. He’s the screen’s absolute best over-sized prawn until District 9 came along.
In The Television Companion David J Howe
and Mark Stammers summarised, “Reviewers
over the years have struggled to find a good word to say about it”. The
Discontinuity Guide called it “An
ambitious project which has the look of grand folly…” Wherever you glance
at a series survey, be it Doctor Who Bulletin in 1985 (123rd out of
123 placed stories); DWAS in 2003 (145th out of 163), or Doctor Who Magazine (164th
out of 200 in 2009) The Invisible
Enemy is to be found languishing, unloved. I’m not intending to celebrate the
story unconditionally here, but I do feel the balance deserves redressing
slightly.
Leela: Never
mind Doctor. I’ve found the answer. Knife them in the neck.
If there’s
a true stumbling block for The Invisible
Enemy, rather than perennial problems with the show’s effects or failings
with coherence, it’s the Doctor-companion relationship. Leela had pretty much
exhausted her potential by the conclusion of her trio of Philip Hinchcliffe-produced
stories, and unlike the more generic companions, the combination of her fraught
relationship with the Doctor and Louise Jameson’s highly mannered delivery make
for a mostly unpleasant rapport between the mainstays, one that permeates the
story.
It doesn’t help that – and Bob Holmes was still script editor, so there
isn’t much excuse – she continually drifts in and out of over-enunciated primitivism
and more modern colloquialisms (“Doctor,
what was all that?”) depending on the needs of the scene. Her harping on
about her instincts has already become an annoying crutch, although it’s at
least noteworthy that she’s knifing people left, right and centre here, as you
tend to forget she’s still so kill-happy during the “softened” Williams tenure.
This
presumably came at the height of Baker being a bit of an arse to Jameson,
before they sorted things out during Fang
Rock, and you get that sense of unvarnished frostiness throughout, underlined
by a more detached than usual role for the Doctor, being as he’s either
possessed or comatose for much of the first two episodes. He’s manoeuvred into
more serious mode, which isn’t the most assured ground for a series unable to
manufacture the necessary atmosphere to go with it. The result is a season
that’s easily the most detached and remote of Baker’s era; there probably are
some people who like the fifteenth the best of his seven, but I’d wager they’re
few and far between.
Professor Marius: Yes,
perhaps it is a matter of intelligence.
One thing
about The Invisible Enemy, though, it
includes several decent gags about Leela being thick. That the virus can’t take
her over because she’s too dumb for it (although, later Baker and Martin – or
Holmes – switch this around, revealing she’s carrying antibodies, which is
convenient for the Doctor; I prefer her just being dumb). Except, as with the
inconsistency of her dialogue, she’s also required to be smart for the sake of plot
convenience (She takes cloning very much in her stride; “What will happen to me? The real me?”) Occasionally, a witty
exchange will stand out, but there’s little of the vibrancy that can be found
in the best Baker-companion relationships here; Leela notes literally of the
mind-brain interface, that it is different like the land and the sea, and that
“It’s very deep”, to which the Doctor
responds “Yes, sometimes I don’t quite
understand it myself”.
I can’t
argue with accusations of logical failures here, be they why the virus doesn’t
just take over the Titan crew off the bat, or infest the computer systems of
Bi-Al and then open all the doors. Or the bizarre workings of cloning/the
Kilbracken technique (and its moral ramifications) and miniaturisation. Or why
the Nucleus wants to go supersize, where it will surely be less effective (who/how’s
it going to infest at that size?) Or the Doctor’s arbitrary argument for
putting a stop to the Nucleus (“But you
want to dominate both worlds, micro and macro”). And maybe it’s just nu-Who fatigue, but the centrality of the
Time Lords to everything is one over-sampled by the Bristol Boys; the Nucleus continually
addresses the Doctor as “Time Lord”,
and instantly seizes upon the prospect of dominion over space and time.
But, and
it’s an excuse I wouldn’t be letting off, say, The Moonbase with, so it isn’t just
that, I find it quite easy to suspend disbelief in the The Invisible Enemy because it rattles along so purposefully;
there’s a snowball rolling down a hill effect to the cumulative weight of wild
ideas, such that you’ll either go with them or reject them totally. I can quite
happily go with them.
Actually, I
note About Time did slate the
story as dull, so maybe some people do find it that way. In counterpoint,
Gareth Roberts charitably concluded in DWM 290, “But at least The Invisible Enemy is exciting” while comparing one
Season 15 “effects-heavy run-around with
no really memorable characters” to another, Underworld. Ah look, here’s Martin Rian-Tobias from In-Vision; “a rather run-of-the-mill threat to dominate the universe. But it’s
fast, exciting and fun” (I’ll leave out his comments on K9; “one of the most juvenile elements ever seen
in the series” was Craig Hinton’s summary of the story’s newcomer in DWB
83).
And I do really like the Mind-Body interface.
It’s the kind of nutty leap that perversely meshes pseudo-science with the sheer
nonsensical. I note that, while K9 treats this realm as a bona fide fact,
Marius, clearly less smart than his pet, is less certain (“If it exists”).
There are appealing
signs of Holmes’ jaded, used futurism too, in the dialogue (“A glorified garage attendant in some
planetary filling station”, “Welcome
to Titan, your welcome to it”, “He’s
probably one of those good for nothing spaceniks”) but they fail to
translate into the visuals. The greatest bugbear levelled at the story is fair;
the design (and the lighting, of Bi-Al, not so much Titan and inner-Doctor,
where it’s fine) mostly sucks, the creative use of phonetics aside (ISOLAYSHUN WARD), and it’s the clearest signifier
of the shift between Hinchcliffe and Williams eras. From sub-2001 space suits to unadorned corridors,
it’s cumulatively rather cheap and tatty, in contrast to the (mostly) pretty
good model work. The possession make-up falls short too, lacking the necessary
unsettling quality.
But there’s
a good line in tension running through the first episode, which is largely
devoted to Lowe (Michael Sheard) on the lam, until he’s taken over; the story
begins inexorably and bleakly, and you could quite see the early stages spruced
up and smartly turned out during the previous season. Indeed, structurally The Invisible Enemy bears some
similarities with The Deadly Assassin,
what with its out-there third episode, and positing the Doctor in a
non-traditional position (he goes inside himself to save himself from a
corrupting force that will override his sense of self). Like the later Underworld, The Armageddon Factor and Nightmare
of Eden, and The Hand of Fear
before it, the Bristol Boys are adept at shifting locations. Here we go from
Titan, to Bi-Al, to the Doctor’s body…. and back to Titan again. As such, it’s
Episode Four where the story falls apart.
Three, yeah
it might have been more psychedelic. It would have benefited from some Michael
Ferguson, Claws of Axos freakiness. But
there’s enough strangeness on display to make up for the disappointment that “Into the land of dreams and fantasies, Leela”
doesn’t lead to anywhere very fantastic at all (prior to this, the sight of “The mind, unsullied by a single thought”
is the most outré the episode gets), aside from a clawed hand. And a winningly weird
projected effects sequence with pillars and columns flying about.
The Nucleus of the Swarm: The age of man is over, Doctor. The age of the virus has begun.
I’m good
with the caricatured, Germanic overplaying by Frederick Jaeger as Marius,
although I know many (most?) aren’t. His final line is a stinker (“TARDIS trained” indeed), but the story
needed a big performance. No one else makes any impression; Sheard is always
good, but he has a nothing role once he is possessed. And, while the Nucleus
has a very groovy, augmented vocal styling courtesy of John Leeson (something
along the lines of a reverb “Boola goola boola”), and rocks like a daddy, he
doesn’t actually show up until the finale, and then doesn’t get to do anything
really impressive, aside from sitting on a tea tray (which is, actually, pretty
impressive) and becoming worryingly aroused as he exclaims “The time for spawning is very close!”
Episode Four
essentially comprises Leela imploring the Doctor to blow everything up, including
some Quatermass IV test footage, him
resisting, and then submitting. Douglas Adams went the last part of that route
more satisfyingly in The Pirate Planet
a season later. Then there’s the odd moment where the Doctor takes off in the
TARDIS without Leela; it isn’t particularly funny, translating more as filler
than anything to savour.
The
parallel between humanity’s great breakout and the virus’ is unsubtle to say
the least, but Baker and Martin were never ones to nurse delusions of
substance; they’re just good at stringing ideas together. Of which, they most
likely fancied sticking The Ark in Space
in a blender with Fantastic Voyage. I
do quite get the disaffection for The Invisible Enemy, but I find it largely
irresistible, warts and all. K9 arrives fully-formed, achieving an instant
rapport with the other leads, mainly thanks to Leeson’s plaintive tones. Derek
Goodwin keeps up the pace (as Louise Jameson, insightful as only a pyramid
scheme seller can be, observed of the director). And it has a fantastic
freaky-assed prawn.
