Doctor Who - The Invisible Enemy

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If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion. This story was released on DVD on 16 June 2008 in the K9 Tales Box Set. It was released in the box set alongside K9 and Company. Optional CGI Effects - Option to watch serial with some of the original effects shots replaced by new computer-generated images Rating: 4/5 prawn-possessed astronauts suffering horrific internal injuries from a knife wielding maniac.

According to Matt Irvine, the model used for the cratered surface of Titan was a re-use of the model used for the surface of the Moon in Space: 1999. ( DCOM: The Invisible Enemy) Several pieces of furniture on Titan Base are reused from that series as well. Bob Baker and Dave Martin got the idea for a sentient virus as the antagonist from a newspaper article on virus mutations. The idea of diseases impacting the mind and imagination came from an article in Scientific American. K9 draws the infected away while the Doctor sneaks up on the spawning tanks. Lowe confronts him and makes him lose the antibodies, but K9 uses the last of his power to shoot Lowe, who is absorbed by the swarm. Leela kills Safran with her knife while the Doctor alters his plan and rigs the refuelling tanks to blow. After the Doctor nearly leaves without Leela or K9, the trio escape the base just in time to see the massive explosion, amplified by the methane in the atmosphere, from orbit. This story featured more extensive model work than any previous Doctor Who story. ( INFO: The Invisible Enemy)Leela tells the receptionist that the Doctor is from Gallifrey. The receptionist believes it to be in Ireland. K9 stuns Marius so the Doctor has time to examine his own blood and discover that Leela's clone has left him with antibodies against the virus. He replicates the antibodies and cures Marius, who can replicate the cure for his staff. The Doctor plans to eradicate the virus spawning on Titan, but Leela insists they simply blow it up. When the cure is ready, the Doctor borrows K9 from the Professor and heads for Titan Base. Originally, the Nucleus' emergence into the macroscopic world was to trigger the transformation of its infected victims into similar creatures.

In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times awarded it two stars out of five, contrasting it with the Philip Hinchcliffe era and describing it as "a kidified, Poundland Star Wars". He felt "many of the effects are excellent" but observed a "precarious juxtaposition" between good and bad effects and "the ambition of the serial as a whole". He praised the story as a "romping yarn" which "brings out the best in veteran designer Barry Newbery", but criticised "unbelievably incompetent" action scenes, as well as "harsh lighting" and "pristine white sets". He also commented on Louise Jameson as looking "unsurprisingly ill at ease" despite giving "her usual 100 per cent". [2] DVD Talk's John Sinnott disliked the way K9 was used too conveniently and found the plot too similar to Fantastic Voyage (1966), but less well done. He praised the visual effects of the inside of the Doctor's head, but criticised the other sets. [8] Commercial Releases [ edit ] In print [ edit ] Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy Oh, God, the Doctor's furry hand. Spare us. Not to mention that silly face fuzz they all start sprouting.This story returned the Fourth Doctor and Leela to the original TARDIS console room from the beginning of season 14, now with a considerably updated appearance, with the changes in its features and the fact the Doctor had reverted to using a different console room all this time being explained as a deliberate attempt to redecorate the console. And then there's the dialogue. Dear God, the dialogue. It's fantastically clunky. The actors do their best, but Christ, it's an uphill battle. And that brings us to the worst insult of all, which is the truly ghastly characterisation of the Doctor and Leela. The Doctor, bad as he is, still gets the better deal: it's not that he's out of character, exactly, more that the power and impact the character usually has is totally missing. They fight off the infected humans, but are again without sufficient weaponry to destroy the Nucleus, or its many children, which are about to hatch as "macro-sized" beings, like the newly macro-sized Nucleus. The Doctor jams the door they are behind and rigs a gun to fire into a cloud of oxygen gas he is releasing and escapes. As intended, when the Swarm finally forces open the door, the blaster fires, igniting the oxygen in Titan's methane atmosphere and destroying the Swarm and the base. The Doctor suggests a "kind of St. Elmo's fire" is responsible for the halo of light that momentarily surrounds him. When Marius's nurse meets Leela and K9 in the corridor, the camera and crew members can be seen reflected in her head-mirror.

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. The introduction of K9 Mark I marks the beginning of an almost seven-year span of stories featuring at least one non-human companion which lasted until the departure of Turlough, a native of Trion, and the destruction of Kamelion, a shape-shifting android, in Planet of Fire in 1984. By the time the ship reaches Titan Base, the three crewmen have been infected also. They kill the resident crew and reveal their slowly changing faces. When the station supervisor, Lowe, realises the men he knew are now trying to take over the base, he sends out a distress call. Informed Self-Diagnosis: An odd inversion in that the Doctor's self diagnosis confirms Professor Marius's analysis, rather than the other way around.Thirdly: any remotely insectoid species previously seen in the show could return as a swarm: the Wirrn from ‘The Ark in Space’ (which are similar to the Alien from the film Alien– except giant wasps), the Vespiforms from ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’, the Zarbi and/or Menoptera from ‘The Web Planet’, the Malmooth from ‘Utopia’, the Metatraxi from the lost stories of Season 27, or possibly just all the bees that disappeared in Series 4. Maybe Goronwy’s bees from ‘Delta and the Bannermen’. As for the rest of Invisible Enemy, where do we start? Well, there's the plot, which is stuffed with enough bad science to get Einstein revolving in his grave on high rotate. It'd take us all day to list all of it, but particularly enraging is the witless way they deal with their Fantastic Voyage ripoff. So the Doctor and Leela clones go on a day excursion inside the Doctor's brain, do they? Uh huh. How, exactly, are they breathing in there? And why is it when they disappear they leave various bits and pieces, like Leela's knife, behind? (Not a particularly good idea in itself, we'd have thought. Any sudden movements and the Doctor's going to get a needle through the synapse.) contribution to the series had been the previous season's The Hand Of Fear. Their starting point was a Fantastic Voyage" Plot: At one point, the Fourth Doctor has himself and Leela cloned and shrunk down so he can be injected into his own brain, and fight the monster that's nesting inside it. Early Region 2 versions of the box set feature a fault on The Invisible Enemy disc. A scene from half way through episode 3 is skipped and appears after the closing credits. 2|entertain was aware of the problem but decided to go on with the release as planned. They fixed the problem for later copies of the DVD box set.

Leela and the Doctor decide to create clones of themselves, which will then be shrunk and inserted into the Doctor. There they will destroy the Nucleus and escape through a tear duct. In the meantime, Leela and K9 fight off the infected staff of the hospital. The plan goes awry, allowing the Nucleus to escape and become human sized. The Nucleus and the infected staff leave for Titan Base so the Nucleus can spawn. The Invisible Enemy is the second serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 1 to 22 October 1977. The serial introduced the robot dog K9, voiced by John Leeson. In the serial, an intelligent virus intends to spread across the universe after finding a suitable spawning location on the moon Titan. Malevolent Masked Men: The infected shuttle crew have their space helmets when going to kill those on the base. On lifting the visors, we see how the Virus has altered them. Somehow Doctor Who vs the Giant Prawn lives up to it’s expectations, It sounds like it’ll be terrible, and it is! From the generic space ships slowly flying around intro to the fetish-wearing hospital, it’s a pile of ‘meh’ that is more a trudge that a joy. Several unrelated points/observations now follow:Pushy Gun-Toting Villain: Lowe (under control of the Nucleus) becomes this when he attempts to force the Doctor at blaster-point into the Nucleus breeding chambers as food. To my mind this story prefigures the move of Tom Baker from slightly scary and very-alien alien to silly Doctor – not a good move The Swarm remained dormant in the TARDIS' computer until the Doctor's seventh incarnation. Shortly afterwards, the Doctor returned to Titan Base in the company of Ace and Hector Thomas in 4920. The TARDIS had been commandeered by Hector, who had fallen under the control of the Swarm. It ensured its own creation by returning to the Bi-Al Foundation, where it mutated from the Saturnian plague. ( AUDIO: Revenge of the Swarm) Visual Effect - Mat Irvine meets up with his old colleague Ian Scoones at Bray Studios to talk about the visual effects for The Invisible Enemy A virus lurking in deep space infects the crew of an earth shuttle on its way to Titan. The infected humans kill the crew they are supposed to be relieving, except for one man, Lowe, whom they infect. They begin preparing the base for breeding. Meanwhile, the TARDIS has been invaded by the same virus, and the Doctor becomes the host for the Nucleus of the Swarm. After he attempts to kill "The Reject" Leela (who is immune), the Doctor realizes what's happening and puts himself into a self-induced coma to keep from being taken over completely. Leela, accompanied by Lowe, rushes him to the Bi-Al Foundation hospital asteroid using the TARDIS, where she hopes Professor Marius will be able to find a cure.