The Invisible Enemy - Episode 1

As I got the DVD for this story off my shelf, I noticed that it was a 12 certificate. I wonder whether this fact will become evident later on. This story sees the debut of K9 but he doesn’t appear in this episode (thankfully). There is an interesting opening scene which sees three astronauts being hit by what looks like lightening. After making no reference to leaving an empty lighthouse, the action picks up with the Doctor and Leela in a familiar location. The old console room returns to the show which is a shame really because it seems like we’ve gone from a nice atmospheric console rom to a white over-lit room.

There are plenty of things that I will be saying aren’t very good in this story so I am going to start with the positives because there are more than you would thing. Firstly the models are all quite good. It’s clear that this is at the beginning of the season because it looks quality and also the effects used to show how the thing is transferred from one person to another.

The Doctor appears to be affected by the conscious and at first it doesn’t look like he’s been affected and Leela also looks like she has been affected but I think because she’s a bit dim she isn’t smart enough to be affected. It’s second time lucky a short time later when he is possessed. This story features the return of Michael Sheard who is always dependable and starts off as a nice guy but that doesn’t last long and I just don’t think that I can buy that he is a baddie.

Now for the bad things. I think that changing words so that they sound like real words but aren’t spelt the same is slightly annoying as it doenst do anything except make it look like people in the 1970’s thought that we would have all lost the ability to spell things in the future. Also the dodgy eye make up looks silly. That is pretty much all that I can say about this story in terms of positive or negative. I know that there will be plenty of opportunity to find fault in this story. There is going to be a run of about twelve episodes or so where I wont be very positive because I have never thought highly of these stories in the past. There is always the possibility that things could change but there is one story in particular that I highly doubt this. I will end on a positive and say that the cliffhanger is quite good. The Doctor appears to be about to shoot Leela when he is possessed so unless Leela turns around at the last minute, it would appear that she isn’t going to last long. Obviously we know that she will be fine but this is one of those rare instances where I don’t mind the fact that I know she will be alright cause she’s one of the lead stars.