DOCTOR WHO:  THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

commentary by Judy Harris

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#19:  THE INVISIBLE ENEMY (4 Parts)
ORIGINALLY AIRED:  10/1/77 to 10/22/77
WRITTEN BY: Bob Baker and Dave Martin	
DIRECTED BY:  Derrick Goodwin
PRODUCER:  Graham Williams	
SCRIPT EDITOR:  Robert Holmes
	

This is the story which introduced K9, one of the Doctor's best loved traveling companions--especially among the children in the audience--and also the one who traveled with him the longest.

This show also points up what a strong character Leela is. The Doctor is out of commission for a goodly portion of the story, but the plot still moves along briskly. Leela's inherent characteristics of hunter, tracker and defender are well illustrated.

Surprisingly, Leela and K9 made a good team; you would think two such different personality types wouldn't mesh. But Leela can respect K9 as a fellow warrior, who goes bravely into battle and uses his weapons efficiently. At the same time, K9 serves as a surrogate Doctor--someone Leela can go to with her questions, who never criticizes her for asking, and who generally gives her a useful answer.

In parts 3 and 4, there is a well done homage to the glossy fantasy film, THE FANTASTIC VOYAGE, in which the Doctor and Leela take a trip in miniaturized form through the Doctor's brain. And an acceptable explanation is given for the instant and short lived clones of the Doctor and Leela which make this miniaturized journey.

An effort was made to give a futuristic feel to all the backgrounds by lettering signs with phonetical spellings. For example, EXIT was spelled EGSIT.

En route to a base on Titan, an unrealistically roomy shuttle--carrying the relief crew of Safran, Silvey and Meeker--goes off course, encountering an unidentified organism, which enters the computer guidance system. The shuttle's computer indicates it's been taken over by saying, "Contact has been made."

In the TARDIS, Leela, wearing the Doctor's hat, carries a coatrack draped with several of the Doctor's coats into the familiar white walled control room, which she's never seen before. "Number two control room--been closed for redecoration. I don't like the color," the Doctor says. "White isn't a color," Leela tells him. "That's the trouble with computers--always thinking in black and white--no aquamarines, no blues, no imagination," the Doctor replies, raising his voice and leaning closer to the TARDIS controls to make his point.

The TARDIS materializes but doesn't stop (whatever that means) in the solar system between Jupiter and Saturn. It's about 5,000 AD, the year of the Great Breakout, when Leela's forefathers "went leapfrogging across the solar system on their way to the stars--asteroid belt's probably teaming with them now--new frontiersmen, pioneers, waiting to spread across the galaxy like a tidal wave--or a disease."

"I thought you liked humanity," Leela says. "Oh, I do, I do, some of my best friends are humans," the Doctor replies, "When they get together in great numbers, other lifeforms sometimes suffer."

The shuttle lands on Titan in a miniature sequence which resembles an inferior parody of Gerry Anderson's SPACE: 1999 series. The relief crew don spacesuits and pick up guns.

Most of the men already on Titan are in the mess hall. The infected relief crew shoot them dead. When they remove their helmets, they have a feathery-scaly growth around their eyes--the outward symptom of contamination by the organism which attacked the shuttle.

Station Supervisor Loewe checks the mess on his video monitor and sees the bodies. He talks to Safran on a videolink. Safran doesn't respond to his name, but says the station is suitable for "the purpose." Loewe sends out a mayday, puts on his spacesuit and leaves through an emergency exit.

Back in the TARDIS, Leela practices writing her name on a chalk board. "Soon as I reset these coordinates, we'll go somewhere really interesting," the Doctor promises. Just then he picks up the Titan distress signal.

"Quadrant 62WHI12129990EX41," the Doctor checks the coordinates, while Leela crouches on the floor next to him, worriedly chewing on his scarf. She can feel something's wrong.

As mentioned in THE HAND OF FEAR, embedded in one or more of Tom Baker's shows is the phone number of the BBC DOCTOR WHO offices. And here it is again: WHI-1212.

The Doctor then intercepts another message from Titan--this one from Safran to disregard the mayday. Leela says this voice is evil and inhuman.

The organism attacks the TARDIS, surrounding the Doctor in a blue glow and causing the controls to spark a few times. When the Doctor peers over to check what's wrong, the contamination passes from the TARDIS to him, and he falls over unconscious.

The voice of the organism is heard telling the infected crew on Titan to prepare for the host of the Nucleus.

The TARDIS arrives on Titan. The organism tries to infect Leela but fails, so it tells the Titan crew Leela has been rejected and must be destroyed.

The Doctor wakes up in a dazed condition. "Hello, Nanny," he says to Leela, telling her, he's "rightly perfect, thank you yet, Lanny." He opens the TARDIS doors, but is so disoriented he walks right into them. "That's odd," he says.

Leela shuts the doors, feeling something's wrong. Loewe gets back into the base and shoots Silvey. Safran and Meeker chase him and lock him in the cryogenic chamber.

The Doctor exits the TARDIS and blows a duck call to see if anyone's around. Leela finds Silvey's body. They split up; the Doctor finds Safran and Meeker who tell him they are preparing the incubation hives for breeding from the Nucleus he carries. They make eye contact with him, and he echoes their plan to destroy the reject--Leela.

Leela lets Loewe out of the cryogenic room; he's covered with ice, so she takes him to the mess and gives him something warm to drink.

Meeker and Safran give the Doctor a gun to kill Leela. He calls her but Loewe persuades her to hide. Meeker goes to the mess to kill Leela, but Loewe draws his fire, and Leela kills Meeker with her knife. Before he dies, he infects Loewe just by eye contact.

His hand covered with the feathery traces of his infection, the Doctor stalks Leela. He has a mental battle with the Nucleus and succeeds in temporarily overcoming it; the growth disappears from his hand. "I'm fighting for my mind," with "some kind of organism that attacks the mind, the intelligence. It's trying to take me over, Leela, trying to change me." The Doctor tells her, "I need help; I must withdraw into myself to save strength." He goes into a cataleptic state, kneeling on the floor.

Loewe, now infected, contacts Safran and promises to kill Leela. He pretends his eyes have been hurt by a blaster flash, so he can wear protective eyewear, so Leela won't see the feathery scales on his face.

Loewe suggests Leela take the Doctor to the Center of Alien Biomorphology--the Bi-Al Foundation--in the asteroid belt, on asteroid K4067. The Doctor comes out of his trance long enough to give Leela the coordinates: "Vector 19 Quadrant 3743800..."

So much for the isomorphic controls of the TARDIS mentioned in PYRAMIDS OF MARS. Although it is not actually shown, somehow Leela and Loewe pilot the TARDIS to the Bi-Al Foundation. The asteroid is a laughable model with a large red cross on it.

The Doctor is carried off on a gurney and placed in a service hatch which whisks him to level 11X4, where he's datalyzed in an isolation chamber, while Leela deals with the bureaucratic Admissions clerk.

Professor Marius, an expert in Extraterrestrial Pathological Endomorphisms, is in charge of the Doctor's case. He consults with his computer, K9, which is shaped like a dog. K9 speaks, but in addition he has a thin paper readout, like a tickertape, which comes out where his tongue would be. From his nose a gun barrel protrudes, when necessary. His ears are small rotating metal shapes, which resemble radar dishes. He has a computer display screen in his side, and a long straight tail, like an automobile antenna, which he can wag.

K9's findings indicate the Doctor is in a self-induced coma. He also tells Marius the Doctor has two hearts and a symbiotic self-renewing cell structure, which rather makes the Doctor sound like a puncture-proof tire.

During an encephalograph, K9 detects an unidentified viral type infection with noetic characteristics seated in the mind-brain interface, having no ascertainable mass or structure. Marius thoughtfully explains noetic means "only detectable during consciousness."

The Doctor revives and tells Marius his trance was induced for "self preservation. Whatever it is I'm suffering from seems to thrive on intellectual activity," adding, "Nonthinking is the only way to shake it off, but I can't stay mindless for eternity, can I?"

When the Doctor hears the viral infection is noetic, he exclaims, "That's why it attacked the TARDIS computer first; it was showing the greatest amount of mental activity; I was just idling, so to speak." Leela wasn't affected because "she's all instinct and intuition." The Doctor returns to his trance.

Loewe infects an eye consultant and the two of them infect two more doctors. The Virus contamination is instant and total.

Gun in hand, Leela searches for the Doctor and finds K9 guarding him. Marius tells K9 Leela is a friend. She is datalyzed by Marius to find out why she is immune, but he can detect nothing out of the ordinary.

Marius prepares to operate--without anesthetics!--on the Doctor to try to remove the Virus, but the Nucleus senses it is in danger, so it causes a shuttle to crash on the asteroid. Marius is forced to postpone the operation to help out in the ensuing emergency.

The crash causes the Doctor to fall off his gurney, but he revives long enough to get back onto it. The crash has also cut off the level of the isolation ward where the Doctor is being held, so Loewe and the three infected doctors must use a service shaft to try to get to him.

The Doctor revives to ask K9 the state of the art on cloning techniques, and learns successful experiments were first carried out in the year 3922. Replicates don't maintain existence for long because of possible unsolved psychic stress problems. The longest recorded clone life was 10 minutes 55 seconds.

Marius reaches the crashed shuttle and discovers the crew have all been infected by the Virus. He orders the whole area cryogenically cocooned.

Loewe reaches level 4 and engages in a gun battle with Leela. Marius returns and the Doctor asks to be cloned. "If you don't clone me now, and the Virus gets to me, it'll take the whole center with it," the Doctor says.

Leela can't hold Loewe off any longer, so Marius sends K9 to help.

Marius agrees to use the Killbracken cloning technique. This is not, in the strictest sense, a clone, but a shortlived carbon based imprint--a sort of 3-dimensional photograph--by which both the heredity and experience (and, as it turns out, the clothes!) are transferred, but the duplicate is unstable. The photocopy twin will deteriorate and expire after a maximum of 10-11 minutes.

The Doctor insists Leela be cloned as well, because she's immune and a huntress. By now, his face and hands are completely covered with the feathery scales.

The Doctor's clone goes to the TARDIS on level 2--seemingly having no trouble getting past the cryogenically cocooned level 3, which has cut off the isolation ward on level 4--and returns with the Relative Dimensional Stabilizer. This RDS is part of the TARDIS control system, which allows the Doctor to cross dimensional barriers--allowing him to change shape: larger or smaller, as he wishes.

Loewe contacts Marius on a visiphone and delivers an ultimatum: if the Doctor is not released in 2 minutes, Loewe will destroy the Foundation.

Marius operates the RDS, reducing the "clones" of the Doctor and Leela to micro dimensions. He scoops them both up and injects them into the Doctor's real body. The Doctor hopes to emerge through a tear duct with an antidote.

Inside the Doctor's brain, Leela wonders why they aren't wet. "Because we're too small to break the surface tension," the Doctor tells her. An electronic blip flashes by. "Just a passing thought," the Doctor says, "Electrochemical reaction in the synapses. Leg wants to move."

The model of the Doctor's brain is pretty convincing, especially the view showing his neural pathways. The Doctor and Leela travel along his neural pathway between the spinal cord and the cerebellum, looking for a bridge between his left and right brain lobes. "Keep your eyes open for tissue deterioration," the Doctor says. "Like this?," Leela replies, kicking at something. "That's me you're kicking," the Doctor tells her angrily.

Outside, the real Leela and K9 prepare to defend the Doctor. K9 makes a barrier to delay Loewe and Leela thanks him. "There's no need for gratitude. I am an automaton...without emotional circuits, only memory and awareness," K9 tells her.

It's somewhat interesting to trace the swings in K9's mental state. In this initial outing, he's sort of a mechanical Mr. Spock, with no emotions. Future scriptwriters tend to humanize him and, depending on who's writing the story, he varies greatly in his degree of machinelike sangfroid.

Back in the brain, the cloned Doctor says, "Doesn't look like the most advanced computer system ever, does it?" Leela asks what a dangling bit is, which resembles a piece of frayed carpeting. "That is why my brain is so much superior to yours," the Doctor replies haughtily. Leela senses danger, but the Doctor doesn't heed her. "I know this brain like the back of my hand," he tells her, adding his brain is much more complex than a mere human one: "Left and right sides, working in unison via highly specialized neural ganglia, thus combining data storage and retrieval with logical inference and the intuitive leap."

"That's a reflex link," the Doctor continues, pointing, "whereby I can tune myself into the Time Lord intelligentsia--a thousand superbrains in one," although he lost that particular faculty when he was expelled from Gallifrey.

The Doctor discovers recent damage--evidence of the path the Virus took. Leela is attacked by the Doctor's phagocytes, which resemble hairy balloons. Phagocytes are cells which engulf foreign material and consume debris and foreign bodies. It's the Doctor's own body defense system. To distract these cells, the Doctor touches two of his ganglia together, sending a message his liver is disintegrating, so the cells dash off.

Outside, K9 is taken over by the Nucleus. He shoots at Leela, who falls and hits her head, knocking herself out. K9 then becomes nonfunctional and goes into a regeneration cycle.

Inside the Doctor's brain, the miniaturized Leela uses her tracking instinct to lead the Doctor to the gap between one side of his mind and the other. "The gap between logic and imagination. You can't see one side from the other side," the Doctor tells her. The Doctor starts across the mind-brain interface and disappears from her view. Leela, clutching his scarf, follows.

Outside, Loewe enters the isolation chamber, kills Marius' associate Dr. Parsons, and infects Marius. K9 revives Leela. He tells her he was temporarily overpowered, causing his motivational circuits to be in confusion, but he's thrown off the Virus now.

The cloned Doctor and Leela reach the other side of his brain where a pleasant breeze seems to be blowing. "Bracing, isn't it?" the Doctor notes. "The interface, the mind unsullied by a single thought." He tells her they're headed "into the land of dreams and fantasy."

Outside, the infected Marius clones and miniaturizes Loewe and injects him into the Doctor. Leela goes back to face the miniature Loewe, while the Doctor advances to meet the Nucleus. It is small and black, with one eye and one arm. "You're trespassing, you know. Treading on my unconscious, affecting my metabolism," the Doctor tells it.

The creature tells the Doctor it's the Virus of the Nucleus of the Swarm. It has been waiting for millennia for the right carriers to come along. "Carriers!," the Doctor bridles, "What do you mean carriers? I'm not a porter!" The creature intends to conquer not only space but also time through the Doctor.

The cloned Loewe and Leela fight; he shoots her and she stabs him. He is killed by the Doctor's phagocytes.

"Get out of my brain," the Doctor tells the Virus, just as the time runs out for the clones to disintegrate. Marius uses a slide to catch a microscopic something at the Doctor's tearduct and restores it to full size. Instead of the Doctor and Leela, it is the Virus, now looking like a shrimp with a multicolored, bristled body, two eyes, two antennae and four arms.

The Doctor is cured; his feathery scales disappear. He revives and calls the Virus a "pathetic crustacean." The Virus gloats now that it has entered the macro world. "I've heard it all before," the Doctor says, "You megalomaniacs are all the same."

Leela puts makeup on her face to look as if she had been infected by the Virus and dresses in a green plastic pantsuit and white helmet and boots like the medical staff. She rescues the Doctor from the Virus; and she, the Doctor and K9 get into the TARDIS. But they can't go anywhere, because the dimensional stabilizer is still in the isolation ward.

The Doctor asks K9 to knock out Marius with his photon beam weaponry. "Good dog," the Doctor tells him. The Virus takes off for Titan in a shuttle with Loewe and the infected doctors.

The Doctor uses a sample of Leela's blood to make an antidote to the Virus. For some reason, Leela's clone did not completely disappear. Instead it was absorbed into the Doctor's bloodstream and passed on Leela's immunity to the Doctor. "All we've got to do is isolate it, analyze it, duplicate it and inject it into Marius," the Doctor tells her, and the Professor will cure all the others.

It works; Marius is cured. "Sometimes my brilliance astonishes even me," the Doctor modestly states.

Marius produces a strain--C531--of the antibodies lethal enough to attack the Virus, but Leela wants just to blow up Titan. "That's your answer to everything, isn't it? Knock it on the head," the Doctor tells her, more concerned with preventing the destruction of "the delicate balance of the whole cosmos."

The Virus makes it to Titan and is pushed on what are obviously wheels to a breeding tank to spawn. Its eggs look a bit like the ones in ALIEN, only round.

The Doctor asks Marius if he can borrow K9. Throughout K9's time on the show, you never actually see him enter or leave the TARDIS. The idea is conveyed by sound effects as well as by reaction shots of the other performers.

The TARDIS arrives on Titan and Safran warns the others. The infected humans have developed a resistance to radiation and Leela's blaster has no effect, but K9 kills one; the little computer's reserves are very low.

K9 decoys the guards away from the breeding tank. "Good dog," the Doctor tells him. Loewe shoots the box of antibodies out of the Doctor's arms. Just as Loewe is about to push the Doctor into the breeding chamber where he'll be fed to the newly hatched Viruses, K9 shoots him, and the Doctor pushes Loewe in instead.

K9's juices are used up, so the Doctor puts a leash on him and pulls him along. In reality, the mechanical prop was radio controlled on the same frequency as the BBC cameras and initially ran amok in the studio, instead of hitting its mark and traveling in the path laid out during rehearsal. It's surprising this leash gag didn't show up more often in K9's early shows, until the mechanical kinks were worked out of the prop.

Leela kills Safran, stabbing him in the neck. The Doctor asks her to take K9 back to the TARDIS. He rigs some contraption on a time delay and takes off in the TARDIS with Leela and K9. The entire Titan base explodes. "Methane atmosphere, mix well with oxygen and run. That was a good idea of mine, K9, to blow it up," the Doctor boasts. When Leela protests it was her idea, the Doctor replies, "Well, then, you should be feeling very happy."

The Doctor takes K9 back to the Professor, but Marius has to return to Earth shortly and asks the Doctor to take K9 with him. While Leela tries to talk the Doctor into agreeing, K9 takes the decision on himself and enters the TARDIS.

In one of the limpest joke endings of the entire series, Marius remarks, "I only hope he's TARDIS trained." The TARDIS dematerializes.

Michael Sheard, who plays Loewe, played Rhos in the Hartnell story THE ARK; Dr. Summers in the Pertwee story THE MIND OF EVIL; Mergrave in the Davison story CASTROVALVA; the Headmaster in the McCoy story REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS; and Lawrence Scarman in the Tom Baker story PYRAMIDS OF MARS.

Frederick Jaeger, who plays Professor Marius, played Jano in the Hartnell story THE SAVAGES and Professor Sorenson in the Tom Baker story PLANET OF EVIL.

Brian Grellis, who plays Safran, played Seprah in the Tom Baker story REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN and plays the Megaphone Man in the Davison story SNAKEDANCE.

Jay Neill, who plays Silvey, plays Klimt in the future Tom Baker story UNDERWORLD.

John Scott Martin, who inhabits the Nucleus costume (while John Leeson provides the voice), has played Daleks, Kriz the Solonian in THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS, a Mechanoid, a Mutt, a Robot, a Zarbi, as well as other background roles.

Roy Herrick, who plays Parsons, played Jean in the Hartnell story THE REIGN OF TERROR, and provided a voice of Xoanon in the Tom Baker story THE FACE OF EVIL.

Pat Gorman, who plays a Medic, has played an Auton, a Cyberman, a Primord, a Sea Devil, a Silurian, a Thal and other background characters.