THE INVISIBLE ENEMY
FEATURE BY JONATHAN HELM
Some Doctor Who stories are bigger than others. Over the decades there have been many occasions when the series presented stories on a grander scale than the norm. Although Doctor Who has always had a modest budget, this has never curtailed the writers’ vision or dampened the enthusiasm of the visual effects teams. In the first of an occasional series, we’re going to examine some of these epic productions from an effects perspective and speak to some of the people involved in achieving miracles on a miniscule budget. Our first target is 1977’s The Invisible Enemy, which was broadcast in the middle of Star Wars mania. At the time, The Invisible Enemy was the most ambitious Doctor Who story every attempted. To this day it remains one of the hardest shoots in the history of the series and it pushed the production team to the limit. We’ve spoken to some of the key players, both in front of and behind the cameras, as well as members of the new series production team to establish if there is such as thing as Doctor Who being ‘too ambitious’.
THE NUCLEUS OF THE SWARM…REBORN!
The Nucleus of the Swarm is often held up as the worst aspect of The Invisible Enemy. Inspired by a newspaper article about virus mutation, Bob Baker and Dave Martin came up with the notion of the Doctor facing an intelligent adaptive germ.
This is how the creature was described in the script: ‘The hideous shape of the full-size nucleus…man-sized, armoured, exoskeletal, multipodal, like some vile blood-red prawn.’
This description inspired costume designer Raymond Hughes to nip out and buy a pint of shrimps! Writing in The Times, Stanley Reynolds was damning in his review of The Invisible Enemy, noting that, ‘The BBC seems to have lost its touch with monsters.’
But what if the Nucleus had been created for twenty-first-century Doctor Who? DWM asked concept artist Peter McKinstry to imagine what the creature might look like today with the benefits of modern technology, and so we’re proud to present the Nucleus of the Swarm in its terrifying new form!
SMALLER THAN STAR WARS
In a recent interview with DWM, current showrunner Steven Moffat was asked if Doctor Who should ever try to compete with spectacular effects-driven movies like Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “Well, not in those terms, no,” said Steven, “there’s no real point. The differential between us and the big Hollywood movies – not just Star Wars, but also the new Star Trek movies, or the Harry Potter movies – is probably greater than in ’77,’78. But people watch Doctor Who for Doctor Who, not Star Wars.”
But there is no doubt that the saga from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away had a massive impact. After Star Wars conquered the box office in 1977, science-fiction would never be the same again. The stunning computer-controlled motion photography of John Dykstra’s effects team allowed for more precise use of miniatures and models than ever before. The film raised audience expectations to alarming heights and raised the bar for special effects higher than ever imagined.
Competing with Star Wars on a TV-sized budget was never going to be easy, but with epic space battles, monsters and lasers, one show was determined to try. The producers even included a cute robot sidekick to emulate R2-D2 and C-3PO. And what could be cuter than a robot dog? But enough about Battlestar Galactica. What about Doctor Who?
Filming the model of the asteroid field…
The producer of Doctor Who at that time was the recently appointed Graham Williams. In an interview with the fanzine In-Vision shortly before his death in 1990, Graham made his feelings perfectly clear. “There’d certainly be no point in Doctor Who going into direct competition with Star Wars or whatever, because you’d fall flat on your face.”
Despite this, The Invisible Enemy, which was the first story into production during Williams’ era, is often cited as the first instance of Star Wars influencing the production style of Doctor Who. With its impressive spaceship model work, laser gun battles and the introduction of a cute robot character, it’s not hard to see why. However, unlike Battlestar Galactica, The Invisible Enemy completed production before Star Wars was even released in the US, and it was broadcast two months before the movie reached UK cinemas. Back in 1977, there was none of the wall-to-wall marketing months in advance that characterises contemporary blockbusters. It’s fair to say that the Doctor Who production team would have had little, if any, knowledge of the film.
It has been said that the robots of Star Wars inspired Bob Baker and Dave Martin to create K9. However, the length of time between the scripts for The Invisible Enemy being written and the release of Star Wars in Britain clearly shows that K9 was created well before R2-D2 and C-3PO appeared on the scene. Certainly, Baker and Martin always denied that Star Wars was an influence. But whatever their intentions, K9 is still to this day seen as an attempt by Doctor Who to cash-in on the craze for ‘cute’ robot companions. In actual fact, The Invisible Enemy was ahead of the zeitgeist and Doctor Who was not cashing in on anything!
…and how it appeared on screen.
Although Star Wars might not have influenced the production team, by the time The Invisible Enemy was broadcast in October, the UK had already been hit by Star Wars fever. The film was being heavily promoted ahead of its December release in the UK. Billboards were everywhere, magazines such as Look-In and Starburst were featuring the film and TV series such as Pebble Mill at One and Clapperboard featured clips from the film. Naturally, these images and clips featured C-3PO and R2-D2, which might explain why people assumed K9 was a bit of a rip-off.
As production on Doctor Who’s 15th season continued, there’s no doubt that the shadow of Star Wars descended on Doctor Who. This can be seen in the special effects work in some of the later stories, which producer Graham Williams was keen to invest in, albeit cautiously. “Model work, for various reasons, was becoming very, very attractive – Star Wars hadn’t yet been released, though everybody knew about it – but I didn’t want to go too far down that line, because I thought it cost far more than we could afford to do it properly.