A televised adventure featuring the Second Doctor, Jamie, and VictoriaWritten by David Whitaker and directed by Barry Letts
Polarity Rating: 4 out of 5
To the chagrin and frustration of Doctor Who fans everywhere, there lies a number of gaping holes in the canon, the most obvious being many of the episodes in the fourth and fifth series. At some point in the sixties or seventies, someone at the BBC (probably with a long-seated grudge against Patrick Troughton in particular) went on some kind of bender and elected to destroy a large handful of episodes from the First and Second Doctors' eras. Up until a few years ago, a few single episodes tended to pop up now and then, the most astonishing being the discovery of all four episodes of "Tomb of the Cyberman." "The Enemy of the World" contains six episodes, yet only one was recovered, and the story remains available solely on CD from the BBC (apart, of course, from telesnaps rendered by fans with an elementary understanding of editing with their VCR as well as a great deal of time to waste). Ironically, this very fact probably serves as something of a saving grace to the story.
"The Enemy of the World" uses one of those plot devices that always turns up in any adventure series: the evil-doer who just happens to be a dead ringer for the hero. Doctor Who used it previously in "The Reign of Terror," and it was used to a lesser extent in "The Chase" (ugh!) and "The Android Invasion." I've always thought this was silly and horribly contrived, but Patrick Troughton's performance here as the evil Mexican politician Salamander is top-notch and a joy to behold. The plot seems inspired by the James Bond movies that were rising in popularity in the sixties, with the Doctor and his companions landing sometime in humankind's future, where an ostensibly beneficial diplomat named Salamader is pulling the strings behind the scenes to secure his own rise to dictatorship. He delights in poisoning those who refuse to do his bidding, blames innocent lackies for circumstances beyond their control so he can replace them with evil stooges, and pretty much spends the first four episodes delighting in doing everything evil but twirling his moustache and tying Victoria to the tracks in the face of an oncoming train.
For much of the story, the Doctor plays second fiddle after Jamie and Victoria, who dive head-first as undercover employees in Salamander's operation; Jamie finds himself employed as a bodyguard while Victoria becomes an assistant to Chef Griffin (kudos to Reg Lye for a hilarious and memorable performance as Griffin). Just when all the cloak and dagger and double-dealings start getting tiresome (particulary when you know you have two more episodes to sit through), writer David Whitaker deals a surprise double-punch in the fifth and sixth episodes that made me almost clap my hands in delight like a giddy schoolgirl.
"The Enemy of the World" is the first "missing" televised story I've listened to in its entirety, so it was a treat to listen to a Second Doctor adventure after I thought I'd cashed my viewing list by seeing every available episode (I only learned recently that all the missing stories are available on CD). Six episodes can sometimes be quite a drudgery (hello, "The Time Monster"), but this story never loses its pacing.
As mentioned earlier, Patrick Troughton obviously has a blast playing the villain, and his usual portrayal of the Doctor seems to be overshadowed by Salamander, but one tends not to mind with the subplots involving Jamie and Victoria. In fact, the Doctor makes seems uncharacteristically hesitant to involve himself in the action in the first couple episodes, but this was probably so Troughton could showcase himself as Salamander first. Carmen Munroe as Fariah also gets an honorable mention and, as another reviewer mentioned, seeing a strong black woman in a position of power was something of a groundbreaker in 1967.
But there is a problem, and I feel almost guilty mentioning it. We can all hate the folks at the BBC for scrapping all those reels of film, but after listening to this story on audio and then reviewing the surviving third episode (available on the "Lost in Time" DVD boxed set), I was unbelievably disappointed by the shoddy production design, which looks like it was slapdashed together by the stage crew of a high school drama department. For instance, there's a slightly sad and disturbing scene in which one of Salamander's stormtroopers rampages a confused and scared citizen's home. The scene would have had more impact had the poor fellow had more in his home than, say, a cupboard of fragile dishes hanging right by the front door. And, of course, a lone portrait of Salamander on an otherwise blank wall which just begs the characters to comment on it.
I realize it's a bit uncharacteristic for fans to pick apart the production values of Doctor Who, but this story is a remarkable example of how the substance of the plot really rises over the wobbly sets, making it a testament to the quality of the show in its early years.
The CD release of "The Enemy of the World" is part of the BBC Radio Collection, and was presented with linking narration by Frazer Hines, who played Jamie. It doesn't sound like time has been kind to Mr. Hines, although that may just be the change in his accent, but he does a superb job, making both unobtrusive remarks about simple blocking points and passionate details about fistfights and action sequences.
Fun Facts: Patrick Troughton's son, David, played one of the guards in fifth and sixth episodes. Frazier Hines' cousin, Ian, also played a Central European guard in the second and third episodes. I was also a little surprised to learn that the readers of Doctor Who Magazine ranked this story 139 out of 200 in the October, 2009 poll. Would it have ranked higher if we were able to see all six episodes?
