Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World

So nice to meet me.

Double trouble again.

Season Five, Story 4 (story code PP)

Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor
with Frazer Hines (Jamie) and Deborah Watling (Victoria)

Written by David Whitaker
Directed by Barry Letts
Producer – Innes Lloyd
Script Editor – Peter Bryant

Broadcast Dates, Viewership, Appreciation Figures

• Episode 1 – 23 Dec 1967 (6.8m, 50%)
• Episode 2 – 30 Dec 1967 (7.6m, 49%)
• Episode 3 – 6 Jan 1968 (7.1m, 48%)
• Episode 4 – 13 Jan 1968 (7.8m, 49%)
• Episode 5 – 20 Jan 1968 (6.9m, 49%)
• Episode 6 – 27 Jan 1968 (8.3m, 52%)

How To Watch

• All six episodes are available for on-demand viewing on BritBox, and on the Doctor Who – Classic YouTube channel.
• Frequently in rotation on the Pluto.tv Classic Doctor Who channel
• 2013 DVD release shortly after the official announcement of the rediscovery of previously lost episodes 1, 2, 4-6.
• Episode 3, at the time the only episode in the archive, was included on the 2004 Lost In Time DVD release and the 1991 VHS release "The Troughton Years"
• The Loose Cannon reconstructions of the then-missing eps 1, 2, and 4-6 have largely disappeared from the internet.

Synopsis

The TARDIS arrives on an Australian beach in 2017. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria's seaside frolicking is observed by three men in a hovercraft, who believe the Doctor to be a man they're looking for. Despite the stern forbidding of their superior, Astrid, they pursue and attempt to kill our heroes. Astrid arrives in a helicopter to rescue them and they meet her boss, Giles Kent. They explain that the Doctor happens to be the doppelgänger of an influential politician, Salamander, who is widely popular for his scientific achievements in relieving global famine, but according to Kent (a disgraced former colleague of Salamander) he has been solidifying his power, eliminating or discrediting his opponents, and is plotting world domination. The Doctor hesitantly agrees to impersonate Salamander and infiltrate his base to gather evidence to expose him.

Jamie and Victoria win Salamander's wary trust, and observe his arrest of the Central European Zone leader Denes for failing to warn the region about volcanic eruptions Salamander had previously predicted, and is later killed in custody. Salamander's food taster Fariah smuggles out classified documents for the Doctor and Kent, but is also killed. Salamander's Security Chief Bruce realizes someone is impersonating him and later finds the Doctor, but starts to suspect that his boss is corrupt. Salamander, meanwhile, has a secret shaft down to a deep underground bunker staffed by a large team of scientists, and has convinced them for several years that human civilization has been destroyed by a nuclear war. At Salamander's behest, they have been creating natural disasters on the Earth's surface, believing they are fighting against the mutated survivors.

Eventually the Doctor susses out that Kent wants him to murder Salamander, which he refuses. Ultimately he exposes what he has suspected all along: Kent is just as corrupt and power-hungry as Salamander, and was using the Doctor to get him out of the way so he could become world leader. Kent confronts Salamander and after a gunfight he sabotages the base, dying in the process, but Salamander escapes. He stumbles into the TARDIS and briefly fools Jamie and Victoria until the Doctor arrives and confronts him. After a struggle, Salamander inadvertently activates the controls and is sucked out the open doors into the space-time vortex as the others hold on for dear life.

Blather

This was a unique story in several aspects.

"Enemy" was ill-served for decades because the only surviving episode was not particularly blessed with brilliance. The 2013 rediscovery came at a time when all the missing stories had been reconstructed with audio, stills, and surviving film segments by groups like Loose Cannon, so many fans already had experienced the story through these recons. Now we had the first opportunity to compare a fully restored story to its reconstruction.

This is no knock on Loose Cannon nor John Cura's telesnaps, to be certain, but the still images don't capture what a fast-paced, inventive, and visually stylistic story this is thanks to Barry Letts' direction. All the wonderful things we missed! The Doctor running toward the water and stopping to jump and kick his heels together mid-air, the POV shot from the helicopter pulling away as the three would-be assassins shoot at us. Night-time location shooting! Even in the studio, the back-projected image of Jamie approaching before he meets the Doctor and Astrid at the bench. Whereas "Tomb" perhaps took a dip in peoples' estimation when it was recovered, "Enemy" is now one of the better-regarded Troughton stories. It's certainly one of his better complete ones.

It stands out as the only story in Season Five, and indeed, one of the few non-historicals to date, to not have a monster or an alien villain. The baddie is completely home-grown. And oh look, another Troughton-era villain that's eerily evocative of current events: a scientist/engineering whiz who is dangerously corrupt and is plotting to position himself as world leader. It has the feel of an entirely different show, almost like The Avengers, or a spy caper for the kiddie set.

Even the leads are wildly out of character. The Doctor doesn't use any scientific genius or futuristic gadgets, nor does he stand on an ethical soapbox; he gathers evidence and bides his time. Jamie doesn't get confused by modern technology (other than the helicopter), and indeed is remarkably self-reliant. Victoria doesn't scream helplessly, her interplay with Reg the Chef is actually fun (even if the humor is mainly based on her uselessness as a cook), and she does stand up to Salamander, throw his evil deeds in his face, and starts pummeling him before realizing it's actually the Doctor.

Jamie is terrible at charades, but he tries.

Salamander's villainy is much more rooted in his psychological manipulations and power games than his tech skills (most of which he farms out to the poor sods in his secret bunker), which makes him a unique villain in Doctor Who. No death rays, no cybernetic parts, no killer computers, he's... just a really nasty human.

The Doctor's unwillingness to commit to help is intriguing. Even from the beginning he's very wary; to be fair, Astrid doesn't exactly sell the idea ("It will probably cost you your life. Oh, but it will be worth it!"), and her associates had just tried to murder him and are about to try again. I love the look on Troughton's face as he pauses and finally says "I don't think so, no." He only agrees under duress. He's suspicious of Kent from the start, correctly guessing that he contacted the base's security forces in order to compel him to pose as Salamander. Even with the mounting body count – Denes, Fedorin, Fariah etc. – he still doesn't fully embrace the idea that one side is good and the other is evil. Finally we understand that he's figured out that Kent is just as much a power-hungry villain as his rival.

"And you're the good guy, then?"

And then there's the whole doppelgänger bit. As in "The Massacre," Salamander's resemblance to the Doctor is entirely coincidental, though this time it's far more essential to the plot. I must acknowledge that it's a little bit of a stretch by today's standards to imagine that the fact would not go unnoticed that Salamander is Latino and that the Doctor (or at least Troughton) is not, and that all that he needs to pass for Salamander is a mildly racist accent and a comb. A contemporary story with this plot would be soundly and justly thrashed.

"And now they want me to cast Charlton Heston as a Mexican..." (Orson Welles, "Ed Wood")

Lett's visual panache in the opening episodes starts to flag, especially once we get to episode three. That's where the threads start to show. The cringe sets in when they once again advertise the limitations of the budget:

BRUCE: Why is Mister Denes being kept in the corridor here?
CAPTAIN: Easier to guard him, sir.

No it bloody isn't, they just didn't have the studio space or the budget for the additional set. Then later on, the sequence where Salamander boards the capsule down to the secret bunker takes bloody foreverrr.

And another shoutout to current events; the people in the bunker have been brainwashed to believe they are fighting back against radioactive mutants when it's just innocent people trying to live their damn lives, and when Swann finds the scrap of newspaper about the sinking ship (it just occurs to me now – was the shipwreck their fault?), Salamander persuades him that well, yes, there still is a society, but ooh they're evil and decadent, so they deserve to die. They almost beat Astrid to death because they're so certain she's radioactive. They've sunk all their beliefs into one demagogue, and, well, it looks like (presuming they get dug out in time) they're going to need some serious deprogramming and therapy after.

Shoutout to Carmen Munroe, the first black woman in a credited role on Doctor Who. In keeping with the classic series' unfortunate tendencies, she dies midway through. But she does get a particularly venomous last line, practically spat in Benik's face.

"Sometimes we do what we have to do."

Also a shoutout to Milton Johns who's jolly fun as the campily slimy Benik. After several episodes of oozing malice, the tables are turned on him at the end and he instantly demands a jury trial, sniveling "It's my right!" You can picture him pathetically blubbering on the way to the firing squad.

I remember reading somewhere decades ago that the final confrontation between the Doctor and Salamander was considered a failure by Barry Letts, so I'd always imagined that the split-screen and editing somehow was done badly (see, for comparison, the laughably incompetent showdown between the Doctor and his robot duplicate in "The Chase"), so I was quite delighted upon the rediscovery to see that they actually pulled it off quite well. Letts' disappointment apparently was that the equipment to achieve the split screen was complicated and clunky, and as such they only managed to produce a handful of useable shots where it's clearly both Troughton (as opposed to Troughton and a double).

And for a story with minimal science fiction elements, the idea that his ultimate fate was that he was ejected into the space-time vortex is quite ironic. The shot of Salamander sliding across the TARDIS floor and out the door is effective and chilling.

Everyone praises Troughton's performance as Salamander, but I'm like... yeah, it's called acting. Troughton is a very good actor; his work as the menacing, conniving Duke of Norfolk in The Six Wives of Henry VIII – which he did almost immediately after Doctor Who – is amazing. We get so used to associating Troughton (and all the other actors who play the title character) with the Doctor that we forget that this is just one role in a long and illustrious career. Hartnell did a lot of great film work too; track it down. Tom Baker was haunting as Rasputin, etc. My point is that it shouldn't be a shock that actors have range. Watch any of the Doctors in any other show.

All in all this is a quite effective story even if some elements have not aged well, and it's a refreshing change from a long stretch of hulking monsters and a sinister element of sameness. The action elements work relatively well, and the scenes where Jamie and Victoria aren't quite sure if it's the Doctor or Salamander also produce an air of uncertainty and menace. This was a further case that an Earthbound story could be effective.

Tidbits

Jamie and Victoria are absent from episode four; they were written out to allow Frazer and Deborah a week's vacation.

This is the last story for producer Innes Lloyd; Peter Bryant moved into his position. Derrick Sherwin became the new story editor, and as he did not intend to stay in the position long, hired his friend Terrance Dicks as his assistant to train him to take over.

Mary Peach nearly backed out of the role of Astrid, prompting a re-write of the later episodes to make her the one who finds the hidden bunker.

Apparently Salamander does not perish in the space-time vortex; his further dastardly adventures continue in multiple novels and comics.

Haven't I Seen You Somewhere In The Future?

• Milton Johns (Benik) also appears as Crayford in "Android Invasion" and Castellan Kelner in "Invasion of Time"
• George Pravda (Denes) also appears as Jaeger in "The Mutants" and Castellan Spandrell in "Deadly Assassin"
• Christopher Burgess (Swann) also appears as Prof. Phillips in "Terror of the Autons" and Barnes in "Planet of the Spiders"
• Colin Douglas (Bruce) also appears as Reuben (and the voice of the Rutan) in "Horror of Fang Rock"
• Andrew Staines (Sergeant) also appears as Goodge in "Terror of the Autons", the Ship Captain in "Carnival of Monsters" and Keaver in "Planet of the Spiders" – he was also Barry Letts' nephew
• David Troughton (uncredited guard), son of Patrick, would also appear as Pvt Moore in "The War Games," King Peladon in "Curse of Peladon," and Professor Hobbes in "Midnight"
• Continuing the nepotism theme, Frazer's brother Ian Hines played an uncredited guard, and would later play a clockwork soldier in "The Mind Robber"
• Simon Cain (Curly) also appears as a Silurian (and uncredited UNIT Private Upton) in "The Silurians"
• honorable mention to Bill McGuirk (guard), who was also credited as a policeman in "Terror of the Autons" but his scene was edited out prior to broadcast
• Harry Fielder (uncredited guard) appeared in several stories in small roles, occasionally credited

Does the BIPOC character survive? No (Fariah dies in episode four – I'm not counting Salamander.)

Sausage Factor: 85.7% (18 of the 21 credited actors are male)

Rating: Three out of Four Sinking Holiday Liners
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John Geoffrion is a semi-retired semi-professional thespian, a professional data guy, and a Dad. He usually falls asleep to the Classic Doctor Who channel on Pluto.tv

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