The Enemy of the World This story is not known to exist in its original format (6 black-and-white 25-minute TV episodes) in its entirety. 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?

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 plot.

Episodes one, two, and four seem to offer the best bits. The action opening might have been good for television, and seems to have been well done from the level of energy present on the audio recordings, but in the novel it comes off as rather boring reading. 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? Curiosity is not what it should be, until much later on. The doppelganger idea, combined with careful character investigation, is then 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? 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.

Episode three - the only surviving episode that you can 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-existant 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.

The episode hangs off as if 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 of episode four reveals something that must have been cut from the novelisation, 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 motivation 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 absense 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.

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. The idea is great, and dramatic anticipation is built up extremely well, but like so many season two offerings, it fails to deliver in the end.

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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