The Enemy of the World, the fourth serial from the fifth season of Doctor Who, missing for decades from the BBC TV Archive and recovered five years ago from a dusty storage room in a Nigerian television relay station, was previously released on iTunes and on DVD in 2013 as a special 50th anniversary birthday surprise for fans. The episodes themselves were scrubbed up by the Restoration Team but the DVD boasted none of the documentaries, commentaries and featurettes normally associated with classic Doctor Who’s DVD releases. Here’s the inevitable ‘special edition’ which finally allows the story to be properly supported by a range of bonus material which leaves few stones unturned (bearing in mind that many of the key players from a fifty-year-old serial are no longer with us) in detailing the making of a story which has been thoroughly rehabilitated since its discovery.
Once dismissed as a dull and wordy adventure serial dumped in the middle of what’s often referred to as ‘the monster season’ because of its run of fondly-remembered stories featuring many of the best stories of the series’ top tier of alien adversaries (Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Yeti), ‘The Enemy of the World’ is now recognised as an underappreciated gem, a welcome respite from the near-unrelenting string of creature features which surrounded it.
The TARDIS pitches up on a beach in Australia and no sooner has the Doctor stripped down to his long johns and indulged in a bit of seaside horseplay than he and his companions Jamie and Victoria are under attack from gunmen aboard a hovercraft. Doctor Who briefly becomes a cut-price James Bond as the trio are rescued by helicopter and the Doctor is informed that he’s actually a dead ringer for Salamander, a despotic Mexican megalomaniac who has harnessed the power of the sun to generate crops and who has risen to power in the United Zones Organisation. The Doctor is persuaded to impersonate Salamander in order to infiltrate his inner circle and to convince himself that Salamander is as bad as his detractors seem to suggest. Six (distinctly on the cheap) globe-trotting episodes uncover a web of lies, treachery and deceit and the revelation of Salamander’s ultimate deception in an underground bunker in Kanowa.
Enemy of the World is a brisk and inventive story memorable mainly because it’s so entirely uncharacteristic of Doctor Who in 1967. At six episodes it does have a tendency to drag but Whitaker’s script is better than the circumstances of the serial’s making might suggest and Troughton is clearly having the time of his life playing both the Doctor and, in slightly dodgy make-up, the manipulative Salamander. Despite claims that the episodes have been further tidied up they don’t really look much different from the 2013 release but there are some interesting treasures in amongst the extra features, especially the sensitive tribute to Deborah Watling who passed away last year and an interesting if all-too-brief interview with the tireless Philip Morris who discovered the previously-lost episodes. Toby Hadoke’s ‘Treasures Lost and Found’ puts a new spin on the often-dry ‘making of’ format and while it’s a bit contrived and self-satisfied it delivers a poignant and touching end to his quest to find out something new about one of Doctor Who’s least-documented stories.
If you shelled out on 2014’s vanilla DVD release, to double-dip or not to double-dip is the question? In the end, you know you’re going to shell out a second time because it’s classic Doctor Who and it’s worth it and there’s enough entertaining new material here to add a few little grace notes to the recorded history of one of Doctor Who’s most unusual stories.
Extras: Commentary, Treasures Lost and Found (making of), Recovering the past (Philip Morris), Remembering Deborah Watling, Restoration featurette, Jon Pertwee 1991 introduction, 1967 TV trailer, production subtitles, photo gallery
DOCTOR WHO – THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD: SPECIAL EDITION / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: BARRY LETTS / SCREENPLAY: DAVID WHITAKER / STARRING: PATRICK TROUGHTON, FRAZER HINES, DEBORAH WATLING, MARY PEACH, BILL KERR, COLIN DOUGLAS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
