Doctor Who Is CLASSIC: The Invisible Enemy

Before we get into Doctor Who's past, let's take a moment to acknowledge some recent news.

In the middle of the Emmy nominations for this year was a nod for Doctor Who... for choreography?

Yep, "The Twist At The End" from "The Devil's Chord" earned Doctor Who it's first ever Emmy nominations. 

Well, that's new! 

Now it's time to hop in the TARDIS for trip to the past to October 1977 for this edition of Doctor Who Is CLASSIC! 

"The Invisible Enemy"

by Bob Baker & Dave Martin   

While travelling through the space near the outer planets of the Solar System, an invisible enemy gets into the TARDIS and attacks the Doctor. The enemy is a sentient virus known as the Nucleus of the Swarm, the mind behind a host of viruses roaming through space. 

The Nucleus rejects companion Leela due to her savage nature but sees the Doctor has a perfect vessel to lead his viruses to rampage through space and conquer the galaxy.  

The Doctor is able to fight off the infection just long enough to help Leela guide the TARDIS to a nearby medical space station.  

There the Doctor meets a physician named Professor Marius and his robot dog, K-9. Time is running out for the Doctor as the Nucleus continues to ravage his body and take it over completely. 

Also other space travellers infected by the virus have arrived on the space station and more and more people are being subsumed by the microscopic threat.  Leela and K-9 do all they can to hold back the infected army but the numbers are overwhelming. 

In a moment of lucidity, the Doctor directs Marius to clone the Doctor and Leela and then inject those clones into the Doctor's body to fight the Nucleus. They gotta move quick as clones do not last very long. And the Nucleus is closing in on total control of the Doctor's mind and body. 

Has everybody got that? I'm not sure I do.

Anyway...

Tiny clone Doctor and tiny clone Leela go in search of the Nucleus which is an icky looking bug critter brought to life as only a 1970's BBC TV budget can. 

Good news: the clones save the Doctor from the Nucleus before the clones evaporate into nothingness.

Bad news: the Nucleus has escaped and gotten enlarged into a human sized icky looking bug critter.  

The Nucleus and his viral enthralled humans steal a space ship to leave the space station to journey to Saturn's moon, Titan,where the Nucleus will gestate in Titan's methane atmosphere to produce a whole mess of human sized icky looking bug critters like himself.  

Leela suggests blowing up their space ship.

The Doctor comes up with another plan that I won't go into here because it doesn't work but it does kill about 10 minutes of story time in episode 4.

The Doctor blows up the space ship. 

Prof. Marius offers K9 to the Doctor as a thank you for saving them from the icky bug critters and the Doctor and Leela leave with their new companion in the TARDIS.

This is my first post of Doctor Who Is CLASSIC! about a 4th Doctor story with Leela as a companion.  Leela is an extraterrestrial warrior woman who was keen to solve problems with fists, knives and whatever weapon she could get her hands on. The Doctor did what he could to temper her violent tendencies but did not hesitate to unleash her whenever a monster needed it's ass kicked hard. 

Her leather bikini ensemble didn't hurt either. 

In the classic era, not all companions were pretty young girls from present day Earth as they tend to be in the modern series. In addition to Leela, Romana, Adric, Nyssa and Turlough were all aliens.  

This episode introduces us to K-9, the tin robot dog who would be the Doctor's faithful companion for the rest of Tom Baker's run on Doctor Who. For the record, Tom Baker HATED K-9 but he got along fine with K-9's voice actor John Leeson. 

 

Except for season 16 in 1979, Leeson has been the voice of K-9 even into the 21st century when K-9 returned for the episode "School Reunion" and subsequent appearances in The Sarah Jane Adventures.   

"The Invisible Enemy" has a lot of cool sci-fi concepts that run afoul of the limits of technology and the notoriously cheap 1970's BBC TV budget. The writing team of Bob Baker & Dave Martin were long time contributors to Doctor Who who produced competent scripts but lacked the panache of writers like Robert Holmes and Terrance Dicks.  

All in all, it's a solid story that does well by Leela and gives us a   delightful first appearance of K-9.  

________________________

Let's close today's post with a reprise of the Emmy nominated "There's Always A Twist At the End".