Bravissimo

I finally got to watch “Enemy of the World” last night with some friends.

And it is as good as I thought.

It’s a neat little thriller.

A brave choice during the “Monster” season to have no monster. Just a really bad human.

Directed by future Producer of WHO , Barry Letts.

It also had a helicopter and and a Hovercraft in it. I was joking that that was how you could tell it was Barry Letts.

Even though, Jon Pertwee was a man of action and liked his toys, apparently so did his Producer. 🙂

They was in The Sea Devils and in the grand Pertwee chase in Episode 2 of both Lett’s and Pertwee’s final story, The Planet of the Spiders.

But The Hovercraft was also mentioned in Tom Baker’s Power of Kroll and by Jo Grant in Death of the Doctor (Sarah Jane Adventures).

But the episodes themselves are an excellent thriller.

The Doctor lands in Australia (aka Sussex) and is immediately mistaken for the would-be dictator of the world, Salamander.

A plan is hatched, rather at the point of extreme stress, for The Doctor to impersonate him but he really doesn’t  do much of it until the end of the serial.

It also features a fair amount of Jamie. As he goes undercover in Salamander’s midst.

But uncovering what Salamander has been up to, which takes several twists during the later episodes is good stuff and the extra deviousness of Salamander helps fill this story out to 6 episodes (2 1/2 hours).

Without, I hope, getting to political, it did kind of remind me of a current political saying, “Never let a Crisis go to Waste” as Salamander uses natural disasters to take over the world. Or at least that was his plan, and it was working beautifully until the very end when he slipped up.

Over all, a bravura performance by Patrick Troughton. It really does show what a quality actor the man was and just makes my opinion of him even stronger.

But Frazer and Deborah just had to get their own back:

Also From The One Show on the recovery of the episodes:

For more Patrick Troughton see Danger Man starring the Pre-Prisoner Patrick McGoohan.

Bonus Hovercraft moment…

My Hovercraft is full of eels: 🙂