The Enemy of the World Pinch me, 'cause I'm still in shock from actually seeing this long lost story in its entirety on DVD! DVD NTSC Region 1 NEW for May 20, 2014! DVD PAL Region 2 NEW for Nov. 25, 2013! CD Audio - 2 discs

(Doctor Who Story No. 40, starring Patrick Troughton) written by David Whitaker directed by Barry Letts produced by Innes Lloyd featuring a few classical library music tracks 6 episodes @ 25 minutes each Story: Landing on a beach in Australia in the 2010's, and quickly swept up in a deadly spy game, the Doctor discovers that he is the spitting image of a sly Latin-American politician who is suspiciously rising to greater and greater power. How is Salamander able to predict natural weather disasters with such accuracy? Will Budapest hand over control of the central European zone next? And will the Doctor agree to impersonate Salamander to discover the truth?

The DVD's include:

• Six digitally remastered complete original episodes! (#1,2,3,4,5,6)
• Coming Soon trailer for the DVD of "The Web of Fear" (the next story)

This story represents a much needed relief from the monster-threat base-defense formula that had taken over Doctor Who writing at this period. It is a truly welcome breath of fresh air, as a character-driven political thriller set in the near future, with a doppelganger twist thrown in for Patrick Troughton. Unfortunately, it does not turn out to be all that great a story. As with "The Power of the Daleks" (story no. 30) before it and "The Wheel in Space" (story no. 43) afterwards, writer David Whitaker focuses a little too much on characters, particularly ones who will wallow in their own flaws, and not enough attention is paid to crafting a solid, riveting on-screen plot.

Episodes one, two, and four seem to offer the best bits. The action opening works fairly well on television, offering some unique visuals for Doctor Who at this time, and incoming director Barry Letts makes an impressive debut here. There's a good level of energy present on the audio as well, but this is not as atmospheric or unique as other Doctor Who shows, and in the novel the action opening comes off as rather boring reading. Episode One really needs to be seen to be appreciated. Narratively, since nobody knows who's Who yet, there's just too much confusion and silliness in it for my liking. As for the series regulars, the sequence raises a question that should have remained resting in peace: why bother to step outside the TARDIS? If you get to see the Doctor's beach antics, there's entertainment value here, but if only reading or listening, curiosity is just not what it should be, until much later on. The doppelganger idea, combined with careful character investigation, is pushed to the forefront of the discussion. Add a threat and a surprise...... and if this doesn't build good anticipation for the rest of a story, nothing will! Great stuff.

Episode two continues nicely where the previous one left off, and goes on to demonstrate much of the main scheme of the story, which isn't too far off of some of the wilder theories I've heard about Hurricane Katrina. Has reality been inspired by fiction? Google the HAARP project, and you may see some disturbing parallels. In this Doctor Who story at least, we get a nice twist of sci-fi elements on a grand scale, deftly used by those who have something to gain here. A classic ploy, making for good drama here as it usually does wherever it is used.

Episodes one and two (particularly two) are also notable for their use of complex visuals composed of layers of elements, this time through using a back-projection system with a pre-filmed insert playing behind the actors in the video studio. Though much of the studio material featuring in this era of Doctor Who is almost claustrophobic in its use of tiny spaces (and stories like "The Web of Fear" play on this to their own atmospheric advantage), "The Enemy of the World" takes a different tactic in artificially blowing the space open with these trick shots. Very nice, and thoroughly more appropriate for this story. It's easy to see how this story's director Barry Letts would go on to become such a strong advocate of the BBC's then-experimental CSO chromakey process when he takes over as producer in the colour era of the early 1970's. But apart from some very interesting model work debuting in episode four, the visuals for "The Enemy of the World" seem to be decidedly less complex and inspiring in the following episodes.

Episode three - previously the only surviving episode that you could watch instead of just listen to - is largely okay, proceeding logically from the consequences of the previous instalment, but not being entirely understandable all on its own. The acting is of a high quality by all participants, and of course Patrick Troughton's indulgence in his new alter-ego role is first-rate and very enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately, this leaves the Doctor with virtually nothing to do in episode three, and he spends half of his sole remaining scene hiding under the scenery. What's worse, the dialogue explaining Denes's situation is too little and goes by too quickly to make an impression on those who hadn't seen previous episodes - the lack of reprise of episode two's last scene adds to this problem. David Whitaker once more allows our protagonists to use heaps of dishonesty to try to solve their problems, while he and his characters both seem blissfully unaware that this is what is getting them into more and more trouble again and again. But worse, episode three's most built-up story beat then goes without resolution in the final episode three product. This is not the work of Australian censors; this time around director Barry Letts cut the vital scene himself. Thus episode three virtually commits its own suicide of quality.

Music is virtually non-existent in episode three, which barely adds more than a dash to Denes's dinner along with the salt. It's not bad, but I can't say that it works well either - it somehow manages to seem out of place. Other episodes fare better, with episode one's action sequence getting good backing, and Bela Bartok's lovely piece used for many scenes in the final three episodes. Douglas Camfield is about to steal that latter piece along with the Cybermen's unofficial Space Adventure theme for the next story.

Many of the cliffhangers in this story are fairly well written, but don't seem to have much dramatic punch to them in the way they were realized on screen. Episode three's cliffhanger is really the only one that actually seems to work well for me.

The episode hangs off as it builds enormous anticipation for a juicy, dicey political intrigue conflict to follow, which is great. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort actually follows, making one wonder: Where's the plot? The audio (and now video) of episode four reveals something that must have been cut from the novelization, but of course we'll only reveal that in the in-depth analysis version of this review.

But episode Four is not lost at all, what with yet another fresh new sci-fi element getting thrown in and explored. Excellent stuff! Character motivation is very questionable though, and not explained well in the novel at all. The publishers pared Ian Marter's novel down far too much, but even so, I don't believe the right stuff was in the television script to begin with. At least at this point, one can still believe that all the various motivations will become more obvious in later episodes when the time is right to play certain cards.....

Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling take a holiday, and Patrick Troughton makes up for their absence well by providing enough of an active, heroic Doctor and a sci-fi-concept-and-character-revealing Salamander to keep the ball rolling full steam ahead. A few questions are answered surrounding one key character between this episode's cliffhanger and the next one's first scene, and a few more questions about other characters are raised. The story is definitely still strong at this point.

"The Enemy of the World" falls apart in the final two episodes. Patrick Troughton doesn't really get enough of the right things to do in either of his two roles, as the plot becomes padded and has little idea of where it is going. Again, I think Whitaker himself got so absorbed in the lies that his various characters had told, he forgot what the truth about the situation was half of the time, and pursued too many distractions from what should have been the main plot. The Doctor should be Salamander's biggest concern, and vice-versa, but this is instead still being ignored by the script and tip-toed around by the production team, likely wary of their limits in realising Troughton's double role.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the film camera eventually chewed up half of the split-screen material, and the long-awaited meeting of hero and villain in this story is too short and anti-climactic to really deliver on what had been set-up in earlier parts of the story. At least these days we can continue on to watch the next episode and most of the next story, which does at least deliver a half-decent bit of explanation and payoff.

On video, the story seems to have a decent energy to it that keeps the pace up much better than in the audio-only CD version or in the novelization, which helps to mask some of the inadequacies of plot or character motivation, and the first five episodes seem to move along entertainingly enough. But quality does seem to decline as one goes along, and the last episode falls apart quite a bit.

As a very recently re-discovered story, this one has been rushed through restoration and onto DVD release quite quickly, without any real extras on the DVD at all. Though the ability to finally watch the entire story will be attractive enough to many die-hard fans to get them to buy this one, I'm always going to be a bit sorry that it wasn't re-discovered several years earlier, such that its late director Barry Letts could have participated in a set of audio commentaries and interviews, and had a unique interaction with the Troughton era regulars to counterpoint all the excellent ones he has had with those from his own Pertwee era team.

This fantastic concept for a story just doesn't seem to have been done true justice at any stage: scripting, production, film archiving at the BBC, or novelizing. ...Or now DVD special features. That said, it does work considerably better when one can view the entire story, and it has enough points of merit to it that it might just be able to successfully challenge some of its closest rivals in season five's ranking. However, its sloppy ending still hangs like a dead albatross around its neck. The idea for the story is great, and dramatic anticipation is built up extremely well, but like so many season two offerings, it fails to deliver in the end.

"The Enemy of the World" USED TO BE a story with most of its episodes missing....

Now ALL of the episodes have been recovered, making this yet another rare COMPLETE Patrick Troughton story.
All six episodes have undergone film restoration, and are now available on DVD!

DVD NTSC Region 1 U.S. NEW for May 20, 2014!	DVD NTSC Region 1 Canada NEW for May 20, 2014!	DVD PAL Region 2 U.K. NEW for Nov. 25, 2013!	The DVD's include: Six digitally remastered complete original episodes! (#1,2,3,4,5,6) Coming Soon trailer for the DVD of "The Web of Fear" (the next story)

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The complete story - Special Edition with extras:
Will this special edition ever get a proper North American release?
DVD NTSC Region 1 U.S. Special Edition	DVD NTSC Region 1 Canada Special Edition	DVD PAL Region 2 U.K. Special Edition NEW for March 26, 2018	DVD PAL Region 2 Germany "Der Feind der Welt"

Special Edition DVD Features include:

• Six complete original episodes (#1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) - with even more digital remastering for 2018
• Plus extra features:
  • Audio commentaries on all episodes including Frazer Hines (Jamie), Mary Peach (Astrid), Milton Johns (Benik),
    Gordon Faith (Guard Captain), and make-up designer Sylvia James. Moderated by Simon Harries.
  • "Treasures Lost and Found" production featurette with Hines, Peach, and
    debuting actor David Troughton (Guard at Kanowa [and son of Patrick Troughton] ). Investigated by Tobe Hadoke.
  • "Recovering the Past" interview of Philip Morris, revealing how he rediscovered the episodes in Africa.
  • "Remembering Deborah Watling" featurette
  • Pop-Up Production Note Subtitles by Martin Wiggins
  • Photo Gallery
  • DVD ROM .pdf material includes scripts for all six episodes.

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Doctor Who: Lost in Time - Patrick Troughton 2 DVD discs (also included in Lost in Time Boxed Sets)

Coverage on The Enemy of the World includes:

• Episode 3

Audio CD - Doctor Who - The Enemy of the World.

Doctor Who: The Troughton Years introduced by Jon Pertwee 1 VHS video tape

• One complete episode:
  • Episode 3

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Read the Buyers' Guide Review for the next story: "The Web of Fear" Home Page Site Map Star Trek Sliders Doctor Who Patrick Troughton Era Episode Guide Catalogue