Doctor Who The Invisible Enemy: Part Four (1963–1989) Online

The downward spiral is complete, what started off as a very decent story, has turned into a bit of a mess. It's just so hard to get past the fact that it's a giant prawn barking orders, no pun intended. There are some positives, it's quite a good Leela story, she has some funny lines, and behaves in character. The hatchlings look pretty grim, and there's a great scene where The Doctor accidentally forgets Leela. Overall though it has a really cheap and nasty feel, the designer of the prawn got it so badly wrong, so bad that it was literally laughable.

At least it gave us K9, I only hope he's TARDIS trained.

An odd start to season 15. The Horror of Fang Rock had its weaknesses, but in many ways it felt like an old style serial (Doctor #2) crossed with the slightly Gothic horror content that the last few seasons occasionally produced. This serial starts interestingly enough, with the Doctor seized by some sort of force which appears to also be seizing humans to make them prepare for a wider outbreak. However from the very start the design and the detail kept me from getting into it. The most obvious example is the 'possessed' effects, which are just hairy hands and the type of eyebrows that men my age tend to get whether we are preparing for a nucleus or not. These look cheap and are endlessly silly.

On top of this the detail of the story is weak. It is a bit of a 'base under siege' affair in some ways but mostly it doesn't really work in the first half. In the second half it just gets daft. The Doctor's clone enters his own head – and not in a theoretical way which one could go with, but in a real 'Innerspace / Fantastic Voyage' way. This element is daft in the concept, and really doesn't work at all in the execution. The design standards don't help but it doesn't do much interesting in there – or at least not interesting enough to cover for the weaknesses. The nucleus itself is a sight to see – a mix of a prawn, a rat, and one of those inflatable dancing men you see outside North American car showrooms. It is hard to take serious, particularly as it is forcibly wheeled around the place. Speaking of which, K9 makes an appearance here, and as much nostalgic charm as he/it brings, it is hard not to notice the limitations of the character even in the first outing. I do look forward to seeing how they manage to find a use for him moving forward.

The cast are mixed. Baker and Jameson aren't as good as the last serial, which is mostly down to the weaker material. The supporting cast are a bit wooden and do not bring much to the table in their characters. The special effects have some okay model work in there, although some of it is pretty rough (the spaceship moving up and down to avoid asteroids for example). The general design is poor though – some ambition perhaps, but not able to pull it off. Thinking back to the design work on Planet of Evil just a season or so ago, it is disappointing – but then on the other hand, this is the late 70's so maybe I expect too much.

All told, a mostly flat serial. There are some nice ideas but none really come together, and instead it is the weak design and silliness that sticks in the mind.

Review of all 4 episodes:

This story is clearly a change in general direction for the series and not a good one. The first part is not bad but is clearly the start of the humour based and rather more childish, lightweight story writing that was forced upon the series by bosses. Part 1 falls into what I would term as the category 'quite fun and enjoyable but not at all outstanding by Doctor Who's very high standards': 7.5/10. Part 2 is in the category of 'OK but a bit disappointing by Doctor Who standards': 7/10. Part 3 then falls quite a lot further down into the category of 'embarrassingly silly and very disappointing by Doctor Who standards': 4.5/10 and Part 4 is almost as bad but not quite as painful as Part 3: 5/10.

The story is a space adventure in which the TARDIS is infiltrated by 'the swarm', an alien intelligence that wishes to spread itself across the universe. The arrival of K-9, the robot dog who becomes The Doctor's companion is notable but the silly and badly carried out idea of cloning and shrinking The Doctor and Leela to fight the virus inside The Doctor's body (an idea re-used to rather better standards in 'Inside the Dalek' in 2014) and the simply awful and embarrassing giant shrimp-like swarm nucleus are real low points. The script and every aspect of Parts 3 and 4 of this story are very poor compared to the series usual expectations. All the more shocking to have this following more than three years of such amazing high quality.

Overall I quite like this story. However I will start this review with some of it's negative points: The story has a low budget feel and feels a bit rushed in places. One of the effects sequences involving a cracked wall in episode three has gone down in Doctor Who history for being a bit shoddy. This is a fair point I suppose. Also, the story does have a B-movie feel at times and some people may argue that the series has dropped in quality after the highs of the Philip Hinchcliffe era. Of course, this was the start of Graham Williams' time as producer. Perhaps a change in style/tone was inevitable. However I must admit that I do find the story generally entertaining. Tom Baker is on fine form and we are introduced to K9. The model sequences in this story look pretty good and the incidental music from Dudley Simpson compliments the story well. The basis of the story uses elements from the 1966 sci-fi movie 'Fantastic Voyage'. Obviously Doctor Who's budget was a limiting factor but I feel the story is done reasonbly well.

Ignoring the cheap sets, this is one of the better episodes of Doctor Who. Its clever and original. The story is weird but fun. The actors are all great. I'd recommend this episode - especially if you're a fan of the show.