Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World (1967 – 1968)

Though it has a low rep with fans - partly for the sin of being the only serial in its season not to feature a monster, but perhaps also for pulling that creaky old hero-is-the-double-of-a-baddie gambit - this trip into unusual areas for Doctor Who (influenced by the superspy craze of the 1960s) plays quite well, perhaps because it comes up with a whole new premise for its second set of three episodes. It's another 1960s Doctor Who near-future of rubberised suits, borrowed vehicles (a hovercraft) and a global society dominated by a single technology (here, the earthquake-volcano-climate control device used by the villain), with Patrick Troughton playing not only the Doctor but the snarling, nasty Mexican schemer (Salamander) out to take over the world (the sort of one-off baddie gig Troughton had played in many adventure or mystery shows before landing the Who gig) and there are the usual scenes in which each double impersonates the other (including a finish that has Salamander pose as the Doctor and sucked out into the timestream for a memorable death).

The travelers fall in with Bill Kerr and Mary Peach (with an amazing beehive and karate licks), the dissidents in this world and are impressed into a plot against the dictator. After some byplay in the dictator's Australian enclave, with a pretty black food taster (Carmen Munroe) and an outrageously sadistic-camp security bod (Milton Johns), a whole new plot opens up as Salamander goes down to 'the records room', which turns out to be an underground society influenced by The Damned where people think a nuclear war is raging above and that the natural disasters they are causing are in the service of the cause. Throughout, the Doctor resists Kerr's arguments that the villain should be assassinated - leaving aside his willigness to kill non-human tyrants like the Daleks - which pays off in a last-episode revelation that Kerr is also a baddie, who has helped set up the whole scam, and merely hopes to replace the villain as master of the world.

From the single surviving episode, it doesn't seem to have the resources to create a hi-tech future – but at least it has narrative surprises, and gives Troughton some ham to chew (though the Doctor and Salamander only meet to snarl at each other at the finish).
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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