"instead of a piercing blast, it produced only a raucous squawk"

DOCTOR WHO AND THE INVISIBLE ENEMY
by Terrance Dicks

Something’s always confused me about ‘The Invisible Enemy’ or, more precisely, about reactions to it. Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood articulate an oft presented challenge to the logic of its events, suggesting the nucleus’s motives in escaping the Doctor’s mind and becoming macroscopic ‘are questionable’, surely rendering it more rather than less vulnerable (3). I’d always assumed the reason was that the Doctor, inadvertently and without even knowing of their existence, is on the verge of absorbing Leela’s antibodies and nucleus is effectively on the run by whatever means necessary.

    The novelisation makes this reading a bit trickier, at least initially. Unlike on TV, the Doctor takes a blaster off Leela and opens fire on the nucleus (4) before collapsing and muttering about his escape route (5), despite having no chance of making it before expiring and, more starkly, having no new information that I can work out that would make his return to the macroscopic world for a few seconds at all worthwhile anyway. I’d assumed this was a cunning ploy on the Doctor’s part to make the nucleus feel threatened where it was and the lead it to an escape route which would make it vulnerable. However, it later turns out the nucleus’s knowledge of the escape route has nothing to do with the dying Doctor’s words (6), so that’s not what’s going on.

    Let’s assume then that the reasons for the nucleus making itself more vulnerable remain the same as on TV, namely that it is no longer safe within the Doctor’s mind, but that, unlike on TV, this is a state of affairs brought about knowingly and deliberately by the Doctor by going into his mind and shooting at the nucleus. Leela’s antibodies become nothing but a bonus in this scenario, allowing him to survive a second attack later (7). All of which means the novelisation’s even better than the broadcast episodes because not only does everything make sense but the Doctor’s actually active in solving the problems he encounters!

    By this point, you’ve probably noticed I’m working quite hard to defend this one. I definitely remember reading this a long time before I ever saw it, and I remember liking it rather a lot. Now, I can’t suddenly pretend ‘The Invisible Enemy’ is actually a great story, but I do want to offer a bit of a counterweight to the general opinion that this, at a story level, was doomed regardless of its production issues (8) – essentially, I want to try and justify how it was possible for the book to offer such promise…

    Rewatching the broadcast episodes, a couple of surprises do stand out. The first relates to the virus, whose personality feels a lot less accidental in the book, going on ‘a long, ranting speech of self-justification’ (9) just before making its fatal flaw and going macroscopic, still ‘constantly complaining’ (10) once its achieved its seeming dream and pursuing its final goal ‘in a slavering frenzy of impatience’ (11) rather than in any scheming way. It makes sense that its grotesque sense of self-importance should get the better of any reason because it sees itself not as an ambitious microbe but as a god, hence any insult to it is ‘blasphemy’ (12). Crucially, it doesn’t possess those with whom it makes contact, as seems to be the case on TV, but converts them to its cause, Marius, for example, described as having his ‘loyalties […] now devoted to the Purpose’ when infected by the virus (13), with greater fanaticism coming with longer exposure (14).

    This alters the nature of the Doctor’s infection – what he suffers isn’t so much possession as subjugation. And, though Rob Shearman at least may feel the initial contact comes across more comically in the novelisation than on TV (15), I’d argue the overall effect is much more affecting. When the Doctor makes ‘a desperate appeal’ to not kill Leela (16), Baker makes the decision onscreen to play it as rather distant (17), emphasising the concentration necessary to back; the novelisation meanwhile, with its scattering of adjectives, suggests a more plaintive, impotent cry. On a similar note, the Doctor’s eventual order to ‘Kill her’ is far more controlled onscreen (18), in contrast to the feverish tone in the novelisation (19), losing the possibility that it is the Doctor’s mind itself that has become perverted to the cause. Perhaps, with this being the first story to enter production under Graham Williams (20), this was an early sacrifice to the new directive to, according to Shannon Sullivan, ‘tone down the programme’s levels of violence and horror’ (21)..?

    The second surprise comes in the nature of the Doctor and Leela’s relationship. I was a bit disingenuous in my Doctor Who and the Face of Evil blog when I suggested there was no way of misreading Leela’s

rescue of the Doctor in ‘Image of the Fendahl’ – as a kid, I always did

read them as a bit of a couple. However, I don’t think it was ever

because of that scene, nor indeed because of the barely concealed

resentment that apparently seethed between the two actors (22). The

answer, which for some reason comes across more strongly in the

books, lies in how much their interactions resemble screwball

comedy.

    To facilitate this, the Doctor’s become more boorish than at least

Tom Baker’s ever been before, dismissing Leela’s ever-correct

warnings and developing a constant ‘bad temper’ as a character trait (23), plus more of a bore (24) and something of a blundering buffoon (25). Leela, meanwhile, is unconventional (26), joyously at home in a world of adventure (27), quietly competent in areas beyond her expertise, such as piloting the Tardis (28), and hyper-competent in those within it, able to detect the virus even over an intercom (29) and utterly immune to infection from the get-go (30).

    In terms of their relationship, the novelisation reveals the Doctor’s ‘great respect’ for Leela’s abilities (31), if one he not only won’t voice but which seemingly prompts his rudeness to her, Leela’s affection and concern for the Doctor, which leaves her ‘unwilling to leave the Doctor’ even as she wants to flee the sight of the clones (32), and the fact that, despite all this, they can never quite get on, Leela apparently actively trying to engage the Doctor when asking about Titan, something that only causes him to snap at her (33). On top of everything else, there’s clearly a sense of competition between them, Leela’s challenging the Doctor’s plan to kill the virus motivated by the inkling that ‘she'd caught the Doctor out’ (34).

    And she’s right. Doubly so. Not only does this all culminate in the Doctor’s plan going skewiff and him having to adopt Leela’s plan to just blow everything up (35) but also, frankly, the Doctor’s solution – to kill the virus with a specially adapted offshoot of Leela’s antibodies – isn’t morally any superior to just blowing everything up. Rob Shearman gets, understandably, into quite a tangle in the way the story not only resorts to a big explosion but spends most of its last episode pointing up this flaw (36), but it makes perfect sense through the prism of the leads’ relationship – all the Doctor’s cleverness and attempts to take the lead, dismissing the halo that appears around him in the Tardis, leaving Leela behind on Titan, getting Marius to create and shrink clones, developing a serum to kill the swarm, either come to nought or make matters worse and he’s left with nothing but Leela’s simple and effective solution. No wonder the best interplay in the whole story is the very un-Doctor Who exchange: ‘“Shall we try using our intelligence?” “Well, if you think that's a good idea”’