The Enemy of the World

Episode 1

Hannah: Six real episodes!
Me: Yep; the next two stories - both six-parters - only had one surviving episode each until October 2013, when almost all of them were discovered in Nigeria just in time for the 50th anniversary. So now we've got eleven out of those twelve episodes, and we can watch two stories that we couldn't have done if we were doing this five years ago.
Hannah: Can you write something in the blog to express my interest and delight, and my bewilderment that people are still finding things?
Me: Don't worry, I'll think of something. Anyway, enjoy this one, because the fact that it even exists is a minor miracle. I'm still not over it, to be honest.

The TARDIS materialises on a beach ("He's landed it upright this time!") and the Doctor gleefully goes for a paddle in his long-johns. Incidentally, the sight of Patrick Troughton frolicking on the beach was one of the major revelations when this episode was discovered; it really makes you appreciate how much of his performance is lost when you've only got the audio. But we don't get much time to appreciate it before the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria are chased down by some murderous trigger-happy Australians.

Hannah: Wow. It looks like a horrible seaside.

Our heroes are rescued by a woman named Astrid.

Hannah: "Astrid"? So they re-used the name for Kylie Minogue?
Me: It's not really re-using names, is it? They've used it twice in 40 years.
Hannah: I didn't even know it was a real name; I thought they just used it in "Voyage of the Damned" because it was an anagram of "TARDIS".

Hannah can't help but notice how unusual this episode is.

Me: What do you think so far?
Hannah: Interesting.
Me: It's very different, isn't it?
Hannah: Yeah, it's very in-your-face. It's very orchestral music, too. Feels like a film score.

She also notices the expiry date on Astrid's pilot's licence.

Hannah: Ah! So it's sometime now?
Me: This adventure is set in the year 2018, so for the first and only time we're watching a story in the year it takes place. And nobody even knew which year it was until these episodes were discovered.
Hannah: That's awesome, because you get to see what kind of ideas they had about the technology we would have by now, like Back to the Future: Part II and the hoverboards. Although this is a sixties-style helicopter, so they haven't really thought that far outside of their own box. And those hovercrafts existed as well, so that's not very futuristic for the sixties either.
Me: Quite advanced for Doctor Who, though. This story has definitely got a lot more scope than usual.
Hannah: Yeah, it's unusual to be able to afford a helicopter and a hovercraft. What corners have they cut to afford that?
Me: Well, Episode 3 is noticeably cheaper than the others; the cruel irony is that it was the only one that existed for 45 years, so most people never got to see any of the expensive stuff until now.

Astrid takes the Doctor and friends back to her living room.

Hannah: That's some disgusting wallpaper.
Me: That must be the kind of wallpaper they had in 2018.
Hannah: I've just noticed Jamie has changed his clothes; he's not wearing his little hoodie anymore. I like him wearing a hoodie and a kilt.

When their pursuers catch up with them, Hannah is amazed that the Doctor's case of mistaken identity still hasn't resolved itself.

Hannah: They must be completely blind; they're shooting at him from up close, and they still think he looks like somebody else.
Me: Well, you don't know how similar they look yet.
Hannah: Is it going to be Troughton playing him? Just like Hartnell got to play the bishop or whatever in The Massacre?

The Doctor is the exact double of Salamander, allegedly a ruthless tyrant who wants to be dictator of the world, but hailed as its benefactor for his efforts to relieve global famine. Once again, the Doctor is suspiciously ignorant of these major global events.

Hannah: I like how he always says they've been out of touch for a while... it's like in The Moonbase when they didn't know that Earth's weather was being controlled, even though it affects the entire planet. Everyone was literally wondering where they've been all this time.
Me: Imagine how you'd react if you met someone who lived in America and looked exactly like Donald Trump, but had never heard of him; that's the level of incredulity we're dealing with here.
Hannah: Yeah, they keep turning up in these places where literally everybody should know something, like the fact that the whole planet has been enveloped in a new Ice Age, and the Doctor has no idea. If you'd been living on this planet, even with one eye open, you'd know about it. He always says he's been away, and everyone always believes him.

Amongst his achievements, Salamander has discovered a way to catch and store the sun's energy and solve many of the world's famine problems.

Hannah: I know why he's called Salamander; it's because salamanders are traditionally associated with fire, and he's some kind of sun god. (long silence) Perhaps. Also, what country is he supposed to be from?
Me: That's supposed to be a Mexican accent.
Hannah: Really?
Me: I'm not saying it's the best Mexican accent ever or anything.
Hannah: I bet Troughton was having fun. Hartnell must have had fun, too.
Me: He was playing the same character for 45 episodes a year, so yeah, it must have been nice to play someone different.

Astrid's boss, Giles Kent, wants the Doctor to impersonate Salamander; Hannah is all for it ("I want to see him dressed in something else") but the Doctor is less willing until Kent calls for Salamander's head of security, Bruce, so that the Doctor will be forced to impersonate his way out of trouble. ("Sneaky bastard.")

Hannah: It's very gripping; it's a modern, upbeat, exciting story.
Me: Most people compare it to James Bond; it's like the Doctor Who version of You Only Live Twice, which came out earlier in the same year. We've got people going undercover, exotic locations, helicopters, volcanoes, high-speed chases...
Hannah: Turtlenecks...

Episode 2

Hannah's attention is focused on Salamander's assistant Benik, played by Milton Johns.

Hannah: He looks familiar.
Me: He's in a couple more Doctor Who stories in the seventies, but I don't think you'd know him from anything else. Unless you recognise him as an Imperial officer in The Empire Strikes Back.
Hannah: Could be. Got a picture? He's not one of the ones who gets throttled, is he?

A quick Google search brings up a repository of Star Wars information called Wookieepedia.

Hannah: Yeah, I think I recognise him. Not that I've watched the Star Wars films all that often, but he has got a distinctive face. Yay, I've recognised a person!

Jamie engineers an opportunity to heroically "rescue" Salamander so that he and Victoria can go undercover and infiltrate his base.

Hannah: Jamie is developing like crazy! He's becoming a proper adventure hero; punching people, jumping out of bushes, and lying to a dictator's face. You'd never know he was he was a boy who had recently been taken out of pre-modern times and thrown across the universe.

Salamander has a knack for predicting natural disasters.

Hannah: So. Not only does he have a monopoly on solar power - because he can direct it wherever he wants - but he also seems to be able to predict volcanic eruptions, which makes me think he's probably using solar energy in some way to trigger volcanic eruptions so that he can influence people. Let's see where this goes. He's definitely doing it on purpose.

I try to convince her that the camera crew went out and filmed footage of an erupting volcano specifically for this episode, but for some reason she doesn't believe me, especially after I admitted that the exploding helicopter in Episode 1 was taken from From Russia with Love. Either way, she's enjoying Troughton's performance as the Doctor's doppelgänger.

Hannah: Troughton has some good faces; his Salamander face is different, almost like a constant snarl, but tamed down so that it looks like he's smiling. I'm curious as to whether there's going to be a giant plot twist, now that we've been convinced Salamander is bad. We've seen his coercion and his finger-clicking commands, but what if he really is trying to save the world and his personality can't be helped? Maybe everyone else is too stubborn to listen to his advice, and he needs to use blackmail and manipulation to carry out his plans.

Episode 3

Victoria is introduced to Griffin the chef, whose Eeyore-like pessimism immediately wins Hannah over: "First course interrupted by bomb explosion. Second course affected by earthquakes. Third course ruined by interference in the kitchen. I'm going out for a walk. It'll probably rain..."

Hannah: I like him.

Jamie suspects Salamander might be causing the earthquakes.

Hannah: Do catch up, I was saying this last time. He does look quite good in military leather, though.

Benik pays a visit to Kent's trailer, and throws his weight around by smashing a framed photograph.

Hannah: Bitch. By the way, that guard's helmet looks like a giant coffee bean. A white chocolate-coated coffee bean.

Then, just to show how much of a ruthless villain he is, he also breaks all the dinner plates in the kitchen sink.

Hannah: Absolute bastards. That's just mean and unnecessary. What's he going to do, open all of the food tins as well?

Benik tells Kent that there's not much point in him staying anymore.

Hannah: Why, because he's got nothing to eat off? I like his character as well. If he thinks he can drive someone out by smashing all their crockery, that's a very strange method of coercion.

Hannah remarks that she's finding a lot of characters in this story to be fairly well-rounded and interesting; the chef, however, is starting to grate (sorry).

Hannah: He's going a bit far now. It's starting to get overdone.
Me: Is that a pun?

Astrid, Jamie and Victoria stage a rescue mission, but it doesn't go very well; the prisoner is shot down, and Jamie and Victoria are arrested. Hannah finds their efforts underwhelming, to say the least.

Hannah: Well, all of this has been a bit shit.

Episode 4

Kent reassures Astrid that the botched operation wasn't her fault.

Hannah: Yes it is, they're shit.
Me: Have you ever tried to break someone out of prison? It's very hard.
Hannah: Then they should try harder.

Hannah is enjoying the spectacle of Doctor Who doing an espionage thriller, but some elements aren't quite working for her.

Hannah: They're trying to have some spy action but they're having the same problem they've always had, which is that the hand-to-hand stuff isn't very good.

After spending her whole life being blackmailed and controlled by Salamander, the defiant food-taster Fariah supplies incriminating evidence to the Doctor and is brutally shot dead for her trouble.

Hannah: This is all very harsh. And she never got to see justice. It's very sad. Poor Freyiwhatsherface.

Salamander opens a secret panel in the wall and climbs into a small capsule.

Hannah: Is it like a Stargate sarcophagus, and he's actually immortal because he keeps going inside a machine that keeps prolonging his life?
Me: No.
Hannah: That's disappointing. Or is it energising him, somehow?
Me: It's a lift.
Hannah: Oh. At least you've got something to write about.

The elevator capsule takes him down to an underground complex.

Hannah: There's people down there! They've got very funky clothes. Look, one of them is wearing a chequered chef's dressing gown.

Salamander has been keeping a team of people hidden away in a subterranean bunker for the past five years, having convinced them that the surface has been devastated by nuclear war.

Hannah: There are people living underground who think that everyone on Earth is dead? This is a really awesome twist. It does raise the question of who built the bunker, though, but I assume they were all killed by Salamander so that he could keep his secrets.

Back on the surface, the Doctor is just finishing his makeover when an unexpected visitor walks through the door.

Hannah: I wish it could be Salamander, even though it clearly isn't because he's down a hole. I can't wait for them to be face-to-face. Maybe it'll happen later.

Episode 5

Hannah: I'm really curious about this underground base. These people obviously weren't born there, so how did he convince them to go down there and how did he convince them to stay down there and that the world is rubbish? Is he trying to destroy the world so that it eventually becomes true? He's far too laid-back for things to be out of his control, especially when smoking his cigar like that; he's clearly got a plan, and it's clearly going fine.

The Doctor's surprise visitor is Bruce (again); the Doctor manages to persuade Bruce that Salamander might not be everything he seems, winning his trust by returning his gun to him after Astrid disarms him. Bruce reasons that the Doctor must be either very clever or a complete fool.

Hannah: Both, because he's the Doctor.

When the story cuts back to Salamander's underground bunker, we still can't get over the very distinctive fashion sense.

Me: I wish we could see the colours of these jumpsuits.
Hannah: I am curious. He's got arrows all over his!
Me: No two are the same, either. There's no uniformity, they're all uniquely weird patterns.
Hannah: Maybe it was a last-minute thing to throw everyone in a bunker, and everyone just had to wear whatever they could get their hands on.
Me: But why have they got their hands on this? One of them is wearing a kimono!
Hannah: They all look spotless as well. This bunker must have excellent laundry facilities.

Their leader, Swann, is starting to have doubts about Salamander and insists on being taken up to the surface. Salamander asks Swann to trust him.

Hannah: A blackmailing serial liar? Of course I don't trust you!

Time to check in with Jamie and Victoria.

Hannah: Oh yeah, they exist. I'd forgotten all about them.
Me: Yes, well, there's a lot going on.

Benik is taking a sadistic pleasure in their imminent torture.

Hannah: He's a proper little shit. He really belongs in a film.
Me: He is in a film; it's called The Empire Strikes Back.
Hannah: I know, I mean this character! In fact, he may even be a little bit over the top. Just a bit.
Me: He's enjoying himself.
Hannah: Well, I suppose you've got to do something to make up for that haircut. He looks like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.

The Doctor tricks his companions into believing that he's Salamander so that he can convince Bruce of their real motives. Then he has to convince them that he's not Salamander by pretending to play an invisible recorder at them.

Hannah: That is very clever, even if he terrified Jamie and Victoria. And obviously he wasn't going to have his recorder in his jacket pocket, so I like him playing the air recorder.

The episode concludes when Astrid finds Swann above ground, dying in the undergrowth near the cave entrance.

Hannah: That's really sloppy work. Kill him in the cave and make sure he's absolutely dead; don't lead him too close to the opening, hit him, and then not make certain that he's actually gone. If you've got all these mad clever plans to take over the world, you don't just hit someone and leave them where they could be found. Hide the body. It's just basics.

Episode 6

After the cliffhanger reprise ("Last week's was better"), and once Hannah has made the unfortunate discovery that I can't make it through this story without singing David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World", we come to the confrontation between Kent and Salamander. Eventually it becomes clear that Kent knows about the bunker, at which point the Doctor drops his act and reveals it was him all along. Hannah is shocked to discover that Giles Kent was a bad guy after all, intent on taking Salamander's place.

Hannah: I didn't suspect him at all. At any point. Even if I went back and watched it all I don't think I could suspect him, even when I already know.

There are actually three Patrick Troughton performances in this story: the Doctor, Salamander, and the Doctor pretending to be Salamander. Another actor might possibly have been tempted to interpret those last two roles in more or less the same way, but when we go back and re-watch the scene knowing that Salamander is really the Doctor, we can see how subtle it is; the differences are obvious when you're looking for them, but also understated enough that we didn't pick up on it the first time around.

Me: There's so much nuance here that would have been completely lost before these episodes were recovered, back when we only had the audio. Look, you can see the difference in his face as well.
Hannah: Yeah, it's kind of screwed up a bit more. Less open. The accent is slightly softer, too. And Salamander keeps saying "eh", but I don't think the Doctor does that when he's being Salamander. What were we watching recently, where someone was trying to do an impression of somebody else doing an impression of someone?
Me: No idea. Are you thinking of the classic Chuck Jones short Rabbit Fire? There's a scene where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck disguise themselves as each other and try to speak with each other's voices, and Bugs Bunny's imitation of Daffy Duck is noticeably different from Daffy Duck's imitation of Bugs Bunny.
Hannah: Maybe.
Me: It's actually really hard to make the two voices distinctly different, and not let them meet in the middle and sound exactly the same; Hank Azaria said he once tried to do it, along with the rest of the cast of The Simpsons, and none of them could manage it.
Hannah: That's because Mel Brooks is amazing.
Me: Mel Blanc. Mel Brooks is the Jewish comedian who made The Producers, Spaceballs and Young Frankenstein.
Hannah: Oh yeah, Mel Blanc, sorry. I knew it was Mel B but it wasn't a Spice Girl.

Kent legs it and comes across the real Salamander in the cave system. Salamander shoots Kent, but he retaliates by pulling a lever that triggers a huge explosion throughout the caves and the research centre.

Hannah: Well that's a bit careless, having a lever that blows everything up. Anybody could have pulled that.

Back at the TARDIS, Jamie and Victoria are waiting patiently. When the dazed and disoriented Doctor finally arrives and they escort him on board, I can tell Hannah is genuinely distressed.

Hannah: Oh god, no! It's Salamander! They've taken Salamander into the TARDIS!

Luckily the real Doctor turns up in the nick of time, and the two Patrick Troughtons fight it out against the TARDIS console.

Hannah: I'm glad they finally came face-to-face. And it doesn't look bad at all! It looks realistic, not like one of them is a man in a wig. When Hartnell was fighting his robot double in The Chase, it didn't look anything like him. And that fight was so slow and staged, it was awful; at least this is quick and they're throwing each other around.
Me: Just think, five years ago we had no idea how they'd done this or how good it looked.

The TARDIS dematerialises with the doors open, and Salamander is sucked out into the time vortex.

Hannah: What a horrible way to die. You shouldn't be able to leave without shutting the doors first; there should be some kind of fail-safe. It's probably another one of those things the Doctor has turned off because he doesn't know how the stupid thing works. He leaves the handbrake on, so it wouldn't be surprising if he's fiddled with the settings and turned off the child-locks.

The episode ends with the TARDIS doors open in mid-flight and the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria desperately clinging onto the console.

Hannah: There's no sense of closure!
Me: That's because it's a cliffhanger ending. To be continued!
Hannah: They can't go back, so it's not "to be continued", it's just "shut the doors and they'll be fine." But we don't know if all the people got out of the bunker, we don't know if the world went back to normal, and we don't know if he died.

The Score

Hannah: So much has happened over those six episodes; I don't think there was too much wasted time, which is often a problem. It feels like we've just watched some kind of three-hour action film.
Me: We have, more or less. Doesn't really feel like Doctor Who, does it?
Hannah: Not really, no. Well, it does, but it's way more in-depth and complicated and it seems like a bigger budget than usual. It feels like...
Me: "Doctor Who: The Motion Picture"?
Hannah: Yes, exactly! It feels like they've taken all the usual themes but suddenly been given way too much money, and they've all gone a bit mad and decided to make this great big epic. Everything's bigger and bolder without being stretched. It's still really, really good; in fact it's too good in comparison to many of the other stories. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's different.
Me: No monsters in this one, either.
Hannah: Apart from humanity.
Me: We've had wall-to-wall monster stories since the historical ones ended, so I thought you might find it a refreshing change of pace. In fact it's barely even science fiction, it's mostly just people.

Hannah: The only things that are wrong with it are quite small, like the very convenient coincidence that makes the entire plot work; the whole story hangs on the idea that the Doctor and Salamander look exactly the same. But I'm actually okay with it, because that's what all stories are; they're all "what if". "What if the Doctor looks like another man?" The story is well-told and enjoyable enough to get away with it.

Me: Well, it worked in The Prince and the Pauper, so if it's good enough for Mark Twain it's good enough for Doctor Who. Anyway, the William Hartnell and Peter Capaldi versions of the Doctor both look like other men, so it's possible that the Time Lord regeneration process uses existing people as organic blueprints and randomly selects them.
Hannah: Yeah, that's possible. And they also happen to bump into themselves at some point through some weird flaw in time and space.
Me: Well, he does get around a bit.
Hannah: Anyway, I don't mind. And the weird little comedic moments were fun; a little bit of salt and pepper sprinkled in. Because it was the chef, haha! See what I did there?

She's never been the same since our friend Sam told me she'd been reading the blog, and recklessly uttered the words "Hannah is funny."

Hannah: Hugely enjoyable. It's a completely different kind of approach to everything; there's action in other stories but it's usually sort of laid-back between those bits, whereas this is more like an action-thriller all the way through, and there are so many different strands of the story all happening at once. You get those things in other stories, but this one has got everything and it's all turned up to eleven. Overall, everything was just brilliant; I thoroughly loved every part of it, so I'm going to give it...

10/10

Hannah: This is one of those stories that makes me really happy that we're doing this. Thank you for showing it to me.
Me: So you're not grateful for seeing most of the others?
Hannah: It's on a different level. I'm enjoying everything, but then you show me one that's this good and I take back all the shit I've said about sixties television acting that I might have said previously. It's not Avengers: Infinity War, all CGI and shiny and modern, but it's brilliant in its own way.

Just for good measure, I decide to show her the DVD extra where Toby Hadoke goes on a treasure hunt to find out some new information about the production. I've already watched it and the ending reduced me to tears, so I'm hoping Hannah will find it equally moving.

Me: Are you crying?
Hannah: (wiping her eyes) No.