August 19: The Invisible Enemy Parts Three & Four

Erm.

It's not that these two episodes are bad, it's just that they're not particularly interested in telling the story that the first two seemed intent on telling.  The majority of part three is focused on the miniaturized Doctor and Leela clones wandering around the Doctor's brain, looking for the Nucleus of the Swarm that's taken up residence inside.  It's not an terrible idea, and the sets are suitably imaginative, but the endeavour is somewhat thwarted by all the jokey bits inside.  It doesn't feel tense; it feels like a casual stroll through the Doctor's brain, as he makes facetious comments and shows off to Leela -- and the fact that no effort is made to make the countdown even close to being in real time doesn't help this sedate feeling any.

It also feels rather padded; Marius is infected by the virus and clones and miniaturizes Lowe so that he can also be injected in the Doctor and stop our heroes' clones, but this ultimately feels like an excuse to use up the episode's allotted time, rather than any sort of serious threat.  Then the whole episode ends ludicrously; after the Doctor and Leela confront the Nucleus of the Swarm, the infected Professor Marius takes whatever escaped from the Doctor's tear duct and brings it to full size.  Only it's not the Doctor and Leela -- it's the Nucleus, which looks like a giant mutated shrimp.  And it's not a very terrifying shrimp either.

The Doctor chats with the Nucleus of the Swarm and its minions.
(The Invisible Enemy Part Four) ©BBC

Part four has some running around as the Nucleus heads back to Titan to spawn, while the Doctor works out how to stop it.  It turns out that, no, it actually was an antibody in Leela's blood that made her immune, and they're able to successfully cure Marius with it.  Then it's off to Titan to stop the Swarm from spreading.  The Doctor is going to use the antibodies, but when those are destroyed, he just blows the whole place up instead.  So, that was easy, I guess -- it certainly didn't look like a life-or-death struggle.

Then it's back to the Bi-Al Foundation to return K-9 to Professor Marius -- only Marius can't take K-9 back to Earth with him, so he offers the metal dog to the Doctor.  The Doctor doesn't seem terribly thrilled (and it's worth nothing that Tom Baker seems to have no idea how to talk to this prop -- he's significantly less certain when addressing K-9 than any of the actual actors), but Leela is very pleased, and the TARDIS departs while Marius makes an excruciating "joke" about K-9 being "TARDIS-trained".

There's some good potential in this story, and the first couple episodes are quite good, but once we enter the Doctor's brain things go downhill.  The brain sets are imaginative, yes, but they really need to be spectacular to pull this off, and they're just not up to the task -- and the lack of suspense in these scenes doesn't help any, as the show starts to stop taking itself seriously.  There's a sense of Bob Baker and Dave Martin throwing in scenes because they think they'd be cool, rather than for any logical reason (which includes basically all of part three).  And, perhaps more egregiously, the ultimate solution to the problem is just to blow it up, rather than to do anything clever or memorable.  The Invisible Enemy certainly tries, and there are some good moments, but it can't quite achieve what it wants to do.  "Ambitious" is a suitable word to describe this story; so is "silly".