Doctor Who - The Invisible Enemy

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Easter Egg: K9 appears on Larry Grayson's Generation Game. To access this hidden feature, press left at Visual Effect on the Special Features menu to reveal a hidden Doctor Who logo. Michael Sheard (Laurence Scarman) as usual does a good job as Lowe, although it's a thankless part. Bob Baker and Dave Martin originally hoped that much of part three could be made on location, with the Doctor's mind represented by college cloisters or a stately garden. In the Titan Base and Bi-Al Foundation sets, all signage is written phonetically in what the script calls "Finglish" — thus, for example, signs read "IMURJINSEE EGSIT" and "ISOLAYSHUN WARD" instead of "Emergency Exit" and "Isolation Ward". ( INFO: The Invisible Enemy)

Mega-Microbes: The miniaturized clones of Leela and the Doctor confront the virus inside the real Doctor's brain. Later, the virus is taken out of the Doctor and enlarged to human scale. The TARDIS is infiltrated by the Swarm - a space-borne intelligence that wishes to spread itself across the universe - and the Doctor is infected by its nucleus. The ship then materialises on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, where the human occupants of a refuelling station have also been taken over. This story featured more extensive model work than any previous Doctor Who story. ( INFO: The Invisible Enemy) The Doctor is taken to Professor Marius, an expert in alien diseases, who at first dismisses the Doctor as a spacenik. Lowe fakes an eye injury and infects a doctor with the virus. They begin infecting more staff members. Marius becomes much more interested in the Doctor's case when his robotic dog, K9, reveals the Doctor's extraterrestrial origin and that he is infected by a virus residing in the mind-brain interface. The Doctor wakes himself and discusses the virus with Marius and K9, who was built by the professor to replace Kelso, the dog he left on Earth. They decide that the virus thrives on intellectual activity. Since Leela is an instinctive being, it cannot infect her.

A space virus finds the ideal host in the Doctor.

When K9 first meets Leela, a reflection of a moving crew member can be seen on the front of the cloning booth. Doctor Marius and his robot dog, K9, helped the Doctor while Leela protected them from infected staff armed with guns that should never have been in the hospital. Nevertheless, gun battles raged. Working titles for this story included [The] Invisible Invader, The Invader Within, and The Enemy Within. [2]

The story re-introduced the "primary" TARDIS console room, now slightly redesigned by Barry Newbery. It had been abandoned for the wooden, "secondary" control room in the previous year's season opener. It would remain in use, with modifications, until season 25.

Broadcasts

To my mind this story prefigures the move of Tom Baker from slightly scary and very-alien alien to silly Doctor – not a good move Rating: 4/5 prawn-possessed astronauts suffering horrific internal injuries from a knife wielding maniac.

Good bits? The debate over the right to exist or be conquered, exploring instinct vs intellectual, and comparing humans to a plague. Unfortunately though, the story just misses inspiring the viewer to more deeply contemplate these issues. Visible Boom Mic: When the Doctor is congratulating himself on blowing up the Swarm, the shadow of a boom mike can be seen.Not Themselves: The Titan relief crew initially, then the Doctor. Leela can tell the difference instinctively. Love the haphazard way the crazy German Doctor scoops cloned Doctor and Leela into his syringe. How are they not crushed and drowned? They fight off the infected humans, but are again without sufficient weaponry to destroy the Nucleus, or its many children, which are about to hatch as "macro-sized" beings, like the newly macro-sized Nucleus. The Doctor jams the door they are behind and rigs a gun to fire into a cloud of oxygen gas he is releasing and escapes. As intended, when the Swarm finally forces open the door, the blaster fires, igniting the oxygen in Titan's methane atmosphere and destroying the Swarm and the base.

Shrink Ray: The Doctor and Leela are shrunk with a shrink ray based on the same technology as lets the TARDIS be bigger on the inside, allowing a bit of handwaving about the issues of shrinking living things.

Here’s another of my guilty pleasures. There’s really nothing great save the concept, yet I enjoy it tremendously every time. However it’s a contrast to most other guilty pleasure stories, in that I feel this one becomes slightly LESS interesting the more I watch it. Leela tells the receptionist that the Doctor is from Gallifrey. The receptionist believes it to be in Ireland. If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion. The introduction of K9 Mark I marks the beginning of an almost seven-year span of stories featuring at least one non-human companion which lasted until the departure of Turlough, a native of Trion, and the destruction of Kamelion, a shape-shifting android, in Planet of Fire in 1984. The Invisible Enemy was the second serial of season 15 of Doctor Who. It saw the first appearance of K9.