Barking to the Void
The two recently recovered Troughton serials, The Enemy of the World, and The Web of Fear, are now up on Hulu. Below each episode is a comment thread. As one might expect, people’s reactions to them are… not always the best informed in the world. Something that sort of amused me was a person grousing below episode three of Enemy that he understood why these were “lost” episodes, as although they were good if you were into people grimacing at each other they didn’t give viewers any of the monsters that they want from Doctor Who. I felt compelled to respond:
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This is an extremely unusual serial, and all the more interesting for it. I mean, you can get the normal monsters in a base of fear in every other story. The Web of Fear is a good example. The Enemy of the World is a pretty cool experiment, showing just how flexible Doctor Who can be. It’s also by one of the show’s all-time best and most definitive writers, David Whitaker.
Whitaker was the show’s first story editor, and as such is responsible more than any other person for Doctor Who’s tone, style, and narrative direction. Doctor Who wouldn’t even be the show it is without David Whitaker. He is also the writer of the previous season’s two serials The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks, generally recognized as the two best things ever done with those particular monsters. So I think the guy deserves a little leeway to try something a little different for the format. He knows what he’s doing, and indeed this is one of the show’s richer, more mature scripts in its original run. If it’s a little weird, it makes the show as a whole all the better for its variety.
That said, it’s interesting that you should comment on episode three, as for 45 years this was the only episode of The Enemy of the World not missing from the archive. Prior to last October, this was the episode on which the entire serial’s reputation was founded. And yes, taken in isolation without the context and momentum of the rest of the story episode three is a little hard to process. It’s a downbeat, strange episode that spends most of its time with a comedy supporting character that we’ll never see again.
As you might expect, prior to the recovery of the rest of the serial The Enemy of the World had a sort of politely uncharted reputation. No one ever really talked about it. It was by one of the show’s best writers and directed by one of the show’s best-loved later producers, but… what was this? Why was it just a bunch of people talking at each other in corridors? Since last October the serial’s reputation has skyrocketed, many people now listing it as if not Troughton’s best surviving serial than certainly one of the greats.
By comparison the response to The Web of Fear’s recovery (save episode three, which is still missing) was rather muted. Yes, it’s nice to have it back, but it’s all sort of… familiar, isn’t it? Whereas in isolation the previously surviving episode of Enemy is a frankly a terrible representation of the story as a whole, the previously surviving episode of Web is an excellent example of what to expect of the next five episodes. Basically, you’ve seen one episode of Web, you’ve seen them all — and if you’ve seen any episode of Doctor Who, particularly any starring Patrick Troughton, you’ve basically seen Web.
Not that Web is a poor serial at all, but there is nothing even remotely surprising or, well, interesting about its recovery aside from the recovery itself. And hooray for that. Even the most historically interesting thing about the serial, the introduction of soon-to-be-Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is muted by the continued loss of his introduction episode. Enemy, though — what a revelation. This just expands the palette of what Doctor Who can be, and viewed in full is an example of some of the show’s greatest talents stretching themselves in bold new ways that we never really see again elsewhere.