We watched the new CGI version off the DVD.
Christ, this is shit. It's like crap Star Trek but embarrassing because I care....
The leading actors are clearly playing for kicks. Michael Sheard gives up visibly in p2. Frederick Jaeger doesn't even try.
The spaceship crew (Bryan Grellis, Edmund Pegge and Jay Neill) are struggling with some very shit lines.
There's obvious plot info dumping in several scenes. There's awful drama.
The costumes are unremarkable,: space suits, space doctors and nurses and Prof Marius.
The 'prawn' at the end of p3 ruins the final episode. Most viewers find this ridiculous because... well, it's fucking ridiculous. It's moves it's arms as if it's singing.... This is the worst DW monster since at least the Krotons. There's worse in the 80's (hello Joconda!) but this might be a new low for the show.
Notable use is made of Gerry Anderson studios for the space scenes in the original version. This has the effect of making it look just a little like Space 1999. Significntly all these shots are replaced in the 2008 DVD cgi version.
The "fantastic voyage" style miniaturised sequence in p3 is tedious to watch, badly portrayed and relies on some very cheap sets and props and too much CSO.
The last ep is awful. Badly directed, plotted, acting is under par, effects are handwaving and incomplete. Writing is poor. The Marius sign off 'joke' about hoping K9 is TARDIS trained is like a kick in the nuts.
The plot is about a biological kind of alien threat (in space) which is least a little innovative. But it is portrayed by the 'taken over' humans who bleat a catchphrase ("contact has been made") in a very pantomime fashion. This is a trick Bob Baker and Dave Martin used first last year ("Eldrad. Eldrad must live") and will repeat ('The quest is the quest"). It needs to stop, Bob and Dave....it's been done and is looking transparent.
The director is a newcomer who doesn't seem to know what DW is. Derrick Goodwin has an impressive record as a serious theatre director but the demands of DW are not just theatrical, clearly.
The other major thing in this is the robot dog.
I'm not a supporter. I remember in 1979 when I first saw this on TV feeling very crestfallen about this. Invisible Enemy is not great and this makes it worse.
DW did not do cute stuff very well. The 3rd Doctor's yellow car or the cuddly Yetis required great leaps to be taken seriously by either viewers or the producers/cast. An unnecessary robot dog that kills plots and in several stories to come (Full Circle, Power of Kroll, Image of the Fendahl) merely acts as a thing to remove or disable early in the story is obviously a bad and indulgent idea.
The best argument for K9 is it's a companion because the cost of the prop is then spread over several serials budgets. That's not an argument. It's a accounting trick. It's still a bad idea.
The politics of DW production right at this moment are clearly very sensitive. However you want to argue about it, Philip Hinchcliffe was removed due to politics from the upper management. (His admitted overspending antics on Talons merely confirms this.)
Graham Williams has effectively been given a licence to muck up (if he cuts the violence). The knife in the back in p1 (and the multiple deaths by "electric" tentacle in Horror..) make me wonder about this.
15 years into the series and the BBC management do not understand what they have with DW and are content to let it rot rather than face the specious arguments of Mary Whitehouse. The show has just finished it's best two and most watched series with regulars on top form and writers/producers delivering.
Graham Williams is either complicit pawn or willing collaborator with this 'politics'. Either way he is the weakest producer DW has ever had and made the job for his successor much harder. The next DW producer to argue against this is JNT (whose line is every complaint Mary makes adds a few million to the viewing figures...) But he too will face his own 'Waterloo' on this issue (hello Series 22....)
By the mid 80's this will deteriorate into the Jonathan Powell vs JNT catfight which ends the series.
The immediate result in Invisible Enemy is Tom doing 'bot of a shick', "contact has been made", the comedy Professor Marius... and K9.
Not a new lowest ever but certainly a contender.
ABM Rating 1.50/4.00
LJM Rating 0.99/5.00
SPJ Rating 1.55/10
No. 92 (out of 93)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
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