Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 479: The Invisible Enemy, Episode One

Dear diary,

Thing I’ve always thought I’d known about The Invisible Enemy Number One - It’s K9’s debut! Hooray! Obviously, it’s a story in which he’s completely central to the plot.

Thing I’ve always thought I’d known about The Invisible Enemy Number Two - It’s set in a fairly bland-looking white sterile, typically ‘space’ environment for the most part, with an excursion into the Doctor’s brain, just to break things up a bit.

Thing I’ve always thought I’d known about The Invisible Enemy Number Three - It’s not very good, by most accounts.

Based on this first episode alone, I seem to have been wrong on all three of those counts. For a start, K9 doesn’t even turn up in this episode. I assume he’ll be along later on in the story. This does slightly make me worry, mind. Like Jamie or Nyssa, K9 was made a companion after work had begun on the story. It’s not a tale written specifically to introduce him. I worry, though, that since he’s not in at least a quarter of the story, he may turn up, trundle around a bit, then hop aboard the TARDIS all fairly arbitrarily. I’ll hold back on that thought for now, and muse on that some more once he’s actually arrived on the scene.

That’s the only downside to being wrong about this story, though, because what we’re given here in these first 25 minutes is far more interesting than I was expecting. This was one of those stories which I entered into with a slightly bored feeling. I try to keep an open mind when entering into any new story during this marathon, but I’ve spent years hearing that this is… well… not the best story every produced. Plenty of images from the recording leave me with that worry, too, as it seems to be something of a let down in the set-design department - lots of plain, boring, space design, and lacking in the style or charm of something like Nerva.

What we get here is very different - it’s still fairly typical as ‘futuristic’ designs go, but it’s nicely lit and feels quite lived in. There’s something almost Pertwee-esque about the space ship at the beginning, and I’m rather taken with the whole thing. And then we’ve got those model shots.

I’ve learned since watching that this story had a higher budget for the model work than any story before it - and that really shows on screen. From the shots of the spaceship in the asteroid field, to being ensnared by the… whatever-it-is in space, coming in to land, and then watching the ship defend into the moon… Yeah, this is some very impressive work. I’ve been full of praise for Doctor Who’s model work for ages, now, but it’s always lovely when something can come along to really make you sit up and take notice. I said during The Robots of Death that they’d need to start upping their game to keep me noticing these things, and it looks like they’ve really done that!

The other thing that I need to praise during every story is the character of Leela. Are you sick of hearing it yet? I’m sorry, but she’s brilliant! Even here, in her fifth story, she’s still very true to the original concept - and that really impresses me. Watching her learn to write is fun enough, but it’s bringing in that hunter sense, that she simply knows something is wrong, which really works for me. She’s only around for the rest of the season, so you’ll not have to hear me bang on about her for too much longer - she really is the best thing about the programme at the moment, though, and I’m glad that they’re setting her in some really great stories.