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Post by Cyggy on Mar 5, 2022 3:35:35 GMT
Please rate and discuss this story here.....
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Post by Cyggy on Mar 12, 2022 0:45:01 GMT
Very imaginative story - albeit indebted to "Fantastic Voyage" a fair bit. But let down by the budget somewhat. And can't pretend that I wasn't a huge fan of K9 from the moment that he turned up!
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Post by Black Orchid on Mar 13, 2022 15:30:31 GMT
Episode 1 is good, shame about the rest.
The worst story since The Space pirates.
6/10
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Post by johnnybear on Mar 28, 2022 7:06:57 GMT
No way, I love this story! The future of man jumping across the stars is at odds with the Pertwee future history stories like Frontier in space and Colony in space and wasn't even The Mutants set in the 28th century? The Swarm and it's plans to dominate the macrocosm as well as the microcosm was good and with a few more pounds thrown in it could have looked even better! My only gripe was why did the Nucleus look like a brown blob with a tentacle inside the Doctor's brain yet having changed into a giant Prawn when removed from the tear duct? Was it something that it took from the Doctor's body before it had to vacate or just an oversight on the production teams side? JB
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Post by GC on Mar 31, 2022 4:50:34 GMT
Guess its a bit of a Fantastic Voyage knock off and gets stick for the prawn thing but I've always enjoyed it and found it fun. Loved K-9 when I was a kid and all that "contact has been made!" with those big, bushy Dennis Healey-esque eyebrows stuff creeped me out back then. Yeah I've got a soft spot for this one.
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Post by johnnybear on Mar 31, 2022 6:43:48 GMT
K-9 was great in his first appearances. He got a bit annoying later on but I was sad to see him go in 1981 and glad to see him back with David Tennant in 2006!!! JB
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Post by Cyggy on Jul 9, 2022 17:32:30 GMT
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Post by Cyggy on Jul 11, 2022 16:24:41 GMT
A Visible Invisible Enemy
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Post by dsjr on Jan 16, 2024 9:19:36 GMT
Halfway through this one and enjoying it so far - I seriously don't remember watching this and can't even remember having this on VHS (I must have done, but it'd have been played but once and stored away). Looking at what's to come in later episodes I'm seriously not so sure, but we shall see...
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 16, 2024 17:33:41 GMT
Looking back, I wish they'd continued having Leela wear different outfits that would be "contemporary" to whatever location and time they were in. She did in this one, however, the outfit she wore looked CHEAP and as if it came off a kiddie cartoon. Something more "Cathy Gale" or "Emma Peel" was called for.
The story of Dave Martin's dog being run over leading to the creation of K9 reminds me of the plot from the pilot episode of ASTRO BOY. Although that Japanese cartoon series looks like it's for kids, there's a lot of really deep heart & emotion in there. The pilot episode is a tragedy, because his inventor goes insane either before or after he build a robot "son" to replace his dead one. When his new "son" doesn't eat, or GROW like a real human boy, the man completely loses his mind, and SELLS his creation to a circus, where he's treated like a slave. There's an awful lot of serious social commentary in there. An ongoing recurring plot idea is whether robots who can think for themselves should have "human rights" or not. This was decades before it was handled (AS AWKWARDLY AS POSSIBLE) on Star Trek: TNG.
I recall Baker's Doctor got really obnoxious toward Leela in this story. I wonder how much of that was in the script and how much he just made up himself on the spot?
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Post by Future-Diver on Jan 17, 2024 8:38:11 GMT
Halfway through this one and enjoying it so far - I seriously don't remember watching this and can't even remember having this on VHS (I must have done, but it'd have been played but once and stored away). Looking at what's to come in later episodes I'm seriously not so sure, but we shall see... "That's the trouble with computers. Always think in black and white. No aquamarines, no blues, no imagination".I watched the first episode of The Invisible Enemy the other night and mostly enjoyed it. It's always nice to see Michael Sheard in Doctor Who but the space virus/alien possession 'Contact Has Been Made' scenes got a bit boring and the Bi-Al Foundation sets looked a bit like Space 1999 done on the cheap. Still, Leela is funny and charming in this, and I still say that Season 15 was underrated. More to follow...
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Post by dsjr on Jan 17, 2024 10:05:39 GMT
Just think how they could ruin this story today with all the cgi available and with hammy camp acting.....
Just finished it. HUGE ambition with tuppence to spend and I think they did an excellent job if you don't look too hard. This seems the start of very bright set lighting though but this was in the days of futuristic scenes being almost brutal in the harsh whites and chromes. Alien and the dingy Nostromo interior was still to be seen..
Did Tom and Louise really not get along off set (Tom's ego?)? They hide it well on screen I think...
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Post by Servo on Jan 17, 2024 11:29:59 GMT
Well the effects are pretty crap. The Doctor and Leela battle a giant prawn and Lowe grows cabbages in the Titan hothouse (he should’ve grown carrots as well and made a damn good coleslaw, none of that kale shit here). So any updated effects would certainly help. In fact most of this season could do with updated effects.
K-9 shoots down a polystyrene wall. The effects are so bad at times it’s kind of endearing.
And then the space ship and Titan model work is pretty good (relatively speaking), so I think we know where the budget went.
The Fantastic Voyage homage scenes are also a bit iffy, but these days when I see those bits I can’t get Noel Fielding as Amy Winehouse out of my mind.
I think this is Michael Sheard’s best performance in Doctor Who. He’s really quite good when he’s possessed by the prawn, after starting off as Lawrence Scarman Mark 2.
Looks mostly crap but still looks better than Underworld.
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Post by Future-Diver on Jan 19, 2024 10:02:37 GMT
"I've heard it all before. You megalomaniacs are all the same".
Watched all four episodes and came to the conclusion that it's probably the weakest serial of Season 15 - I used to think that honour belonged to 'Underworld' but 'The Invisible Enemy' is slightly worse. It looks cheap, painfully over-lit and the Nucleus is one of the daftest, least convincing Who monsters I've ever seen*. I quickly got bored of hearing 'Contact Has Been Made' all the time and although not irredeemably bad, 'The Invisible Enemy' was always going to appear mediocre, sandwiched between two Horror-themed classics (Fang Rock and Fendahl).
On the plus side, this story introduced K9 to the world, the scenes inside the Doctor's brain are colourful and surreal, while Leela looks very fetching in that green, futuristic nurse's uniform (a disguise worn briefly in Episode 4).
*Maybe even worse than the Taran wood beast.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 19, 2024 15:31:56 GMT
I recall the last time I decided to watch my entire WHO collection, that I would SKIP any stories I didn't like or felt I'd seen too many times. (That was about half the Peter Davison stories, and half the Colin Bakers.) I've done this twice with STAR TREK (the real one) and the whole series gets better when you do this!
Big surprise: when I got to the Tom Baker era, I only skipped ONE story. And it WASN'T this one!!!
The one I did skip was just one that I'd seen too damned many times, and was SO relentlessly downbeat, hopeless & violent, that I just couldn't put up with it anymore. But "The Invisible Enemy", at least, had some entertainment value.
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