Every single episode of Doctor Who watched and reviewed, from the very first episode to the present day.
Join in by leaving your comments below...
Every single episode of Doctor Who watched and reviewed, from the very first episode to the present day.
Join in by leaving your comments below...
Kicking off with hovercrafts, helicopters, and gunfire makes me wish I could see this story. As a youngster, before they invented home playback devices, this was one of my favourite Target books. Although in the book, I never did get Salamander's dodgy accent. Which diminishes his threat a lot as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems with The Enemy of The World - and I'll get to the other one in a minute - is that we seem to have wandered into a spy series. Jamie and Victoria must go undercover! Erm, why? If Astrid's organisation has already gone to the trouble of sorting out security passes and uniforms, why not stick with the people you've already sorted out to wear those security passes and uniforms, rather than giving them to two people you've only just met? And then Salamander helpfully gives a job to not just the man who he thinks has saved his life, but also his girlfriend? It just doesn't ring true.
The story also isn't aided by the cavalcade of the bizarro accents. Troughton's Salamander is by no means the only offender here.
And I'm sure the reason is budgetary, but the answer to the question "Why's Mr Dennish being kept in the corridor here?" ("It's easier to guard him here.") brings echoes of the Security Kitchen from The Ark.
Victoria's undercover skills lead her to deduct that Salamander is an evil man. She can "somehow sense it from all the people here". Well, I'm not sure that'll stand up in a court of law.
The main problem with this story is one of agency. And they hang a lantern on it throughout. It's the we-have-no-evidence-he's-evil loop, and we come back to it again and again. There's no reason to get involved. We have no evidence he's evil. So why not just go back to the Tardis?
Cliffhangers aren't great either, with episode 5 being a case in point. "Who did this to you?" "Salamander!" Um, yeah. There's no physical or emotional threat with that reveal, even if we hadn't seen him do it ourselves not five minutes ago.
And at the end, after the bombs explode and the people downstairs are covered in rubble, their escape is covered with a handwaving "We'll get them out somehow."
The Enemy of the World was especially disappointing for me as I'd loved the novelisation so. Heigh-ho.
Doctor Who goes James Bond on us - and unfortunately its a bit of a failure.
ReplyDeleteI dont think its the concept of doing a spy story in Doctor Who that fails - the central conceit that you can travel anywhere anytime means you can do any story you want - but the crucial thing is that you have to have a good script. And in this The Enemy of the World fails badly. As Piers has pointed out, there are many, many holes in aspects of the story that immediately break your suspension of disbelief. Add to that the acting that ranges from dull to bad and the story is in desperate trouble.
Perhaps a toweringly brilliant central performance could bring up the quality but Troughton, while good as The Doctor, is lumbered with a dreadful accent as Salamander that adds to the low grade overall impression.
And can I just add that the people underground are the stupidest group we have encountered in our travels and fully deserve duping. So no greta investment there.
Its hard to find any good things to say about this as even the better aspects of it are merely less poor. I find it hard to be harsh on Doctor Who but this story for me is a failure, a feeling heightened by the strong run of tales leading up to it. NEXT! 3/10