The Invisible Enemy

How they must have hated Bob'n'Dave back in 1977. Were someone to have drawn up a list of the do's and don'ts of Doctor Who scriptwriting circa Season 15, as one supposes they must have done, then it might have looked something like this:

1. Small, enclosed settings please. Try and work round the characters, as per Terry's "Fang Rock" story. The cash is a bit tight this year, so no huge rocket stations or space hospitals!

2. No robots. Bob had to re-write an entire script last year because we couldn't afford to build one. And we don't want that happening again.

3. Try and stick to stories set in the past - future settings only mean more expense (see '1', above)

4. Try not to write any parts specifically for Freddie Jaeger - he was bloody awful in "Planet of Evil".

I suppose it wasn't all their fault, although the pair always did have a habit of overstepping the budget, no matter what era it was. "Hand of Fear" hardly wound up in a cash-strapped season, yet it still looks like the cheapest thing on show that year - coincidence? You simply can't write like this at the best of times - not only did Doctor Who not NEED a robot dog, a super-sized virus creature and a journey through his own body now, the show would have struggled to realise them at any time during its history, TV Movie era included. I include K9 deliberately overlooking hindsight - a daft idea is a daft idea no matter how successful it becomes, just as you are still unwise to buy a lottery ticket even if you win. K9's success lay in the genius of its compact, cute-looking design, and even then we don't know how much of this season was sacrificed to bring the little scamp to life (think "Underworld" and "Invasion of Time" here). On paper, it's still a foolhardy venture. What made them think a robotic companion would be easier to realise than a giant rat?

And especially at the time when "The Invisible Enemy" was made. If the Tom Baker era is a game of two halves, one side serious and expensive the other jovial and recession-plagued, then "The Invisible Enemy" is slap-bang in the middle; it marks the exact point where they could no longer afford to do everything they wanted, but significantly is a good four stories away from the point at which they realised it. The Key to Time was mostly structured to take belt-tightening into account - there are noticeably less monsters and, Douglas Adams aside, fewer demands on resources. More significantly, humour was brought in as a replacement for horror. "The Invisible Enemy" fails because it has neither.

Season 15 is Doctor Who's messy realisation that it would have to change to keep up. Some stories try and overcome the problem by charging at it headlong and wind up looking war-damaged as a result ("Underworld", "Invasion of Time") whilst "The Sunmakers" intelligently worked a way around the dilemma and set the emphasis on wit and parody instead of monsters and scale of production; you can cut back on your effects budget, but majesty of dialogue costs nothing. "The Invisible Enemy" depends on something Doctor Who didn't have at the time - endless money and special effects, and so is both ham fistedly written and produced. What were they thinking of?

A learning curve for all then. Don't hire Bob'n'Dave again, stop using Freddie Jaeger and don't put the emphasis on movie-sized special effects. You'll only end up looking silly.