The Enemy of the World episode 3 discussion:
A: I liked the chef.
K: He was fun.
H: Yeah, he was great. Definitely one of the highlights of the story.
P: Yeah, it definitely saved a lot of the episode.
Sp: Eh? He didn’t work for me.
R: Eh?
H: What are you talking about? Eh?
Sp: He seemed a little forced. He probably could have gotten his view and humor across if they had taken out like about every third quip.
K: Kid’s show.
Sp: Even for kid’s show.
H: I didn’t find it to be too much, or too kiddy. I actually thought it was sardonic humor. But not to everybody’s taste.
Sp: He was amusing enough, just a little over seasoned. Like his soup.
K: I actually really liked him. It was predictable that his food wasn’t as bad as he bitched about. Otherwise Salamander would have gotten rid of him years ago.
R: What are you feeding me, eh?
P: It seemed strange to me that Salamander’s cook would accept anyone to be in the kitchen, and possibly poisoning Salamander, and thus implicating the cook.
R: Ah, Salamander’s got a taster.
P: Yes, and the Taster dies and then they kill the cook.
K: Salamander was the only one doing any poisoning in this episode.
Sp: Maybe the cook had so much room for all of his extra lines because whoever was playing Kent INSISTEDONSCREAMINGASFASTASHECOULD! No really, Kent bugged the hell out of me. With the screaming and the…
R: Cirabooga yaya eh?
Sp: It started sounding like that actually, by the end of it.
K: Lots of Time Lords in this one. Or future Time Lords. I don’t remember if they were in the Invasion of Time, or some other “Time Lord story” but I definitely recognized two, if not three of the actors from future Doctor Who stories, specifically playing Time Lords.
H: What’s a Time Lord?
K: Yeah, whatever. <eyerolls>
Sp: So mad props to airline stewardess looking chick for double hand Captain Kirk maneuver.
K: It wouldn’t be a fight scene without a Captain Kirk maneuver.
H: That would be Astrid.
R: “If you have a message, let me see it.” “But that would mean undoing my brassiere.”
H: That would be Emma Peel.
P: This episode featured a lot fewer sets than previous episodes in this story arc.
K: How could you tell, this is the only one with moving pictures?
R: “They spent a lot of money on that kitchen! There’s real parkee floors in there.”
H: Actually, Photobug is pretty much correct. You can tell how much money Barry Letts spent on the first two episodes, and how little money he had to spend on this one…
K: It all went into Jamie’s cool costume.
H: …By the fact that they had to hold the prisoner in the hallway.
R: “Spent a lot of money on that chaise lounge!”
H: They actually had to change the script to be centered in the hallway because they couldn’t afford to build another set. They stuck in a line “why are you holding him in this hallway.”
R: Somebody called Barry Letts into his office and was like “A helicopter? You used a bloody helicopter?”
P: I also was not sure which Doctor was which villain in this particular episode. I was like “Is that the Doctor playing the bad guy or the bad guy playing the bad guy?” Just for a few minutes.
H: This is our only moving episode of the story, and I was going to bring up once again how amazing Pat Troughton is. He’s clearly the same actor playing both parts, but he looks so different. It’s partly the hair, but it’s a lot of the way he sets his features.
R: It’s his mighty eyebrows.
H: It’s not just the eyebrows. His features look sharper somehow. I don’t know if it’s makeup, but it’s just good acting.
Sp: And now that we can see the moving pictures, he’s got even more of the Dark Shadows look going that we spotted from the portrait last week.
P: <joke> Do you think maybe they blew the budget on moving pictures this time? </joke>
Sp: No. Clearly they blew the budget on the thrilling “trailer park scene.”
H: So much crockery smashed! How will we ever pay for it?!?
R: I loved that the greasy henchman had prearranged a signal with his thug to come in here and break the crockery.
K: I think it was a prearrange signal to break stuff. All there was was crockery.
R: But they had a signal. “If he’s causing problems, I give a signal, see. And the tea pots get it!”
Sp: And you can tell that he was a thug, and not just a hooligan. A hooligan would have swept the teapots off the shelf with his hand. But a true thug uses the butt of his rifle to break crockery.
P: I like how they threaten a guy by breaking his china. “That was my mom’s!”
R: “I say, that was Anchor Hocking! I shall have to go to the Factory Outlet Store to replace it.”
Sp: “I mean, for pity’s sake, have you looked at my hovel? I live in a trailer. ALL MY MONEY goes into the china!”
R: But all in all a fine performance for Jim Carry in his first role.
Sp: You mean Creepy guard? Creepy guard, I love you!
R: We had some more attacks of random accents. “Uiii arrr frum Yuurowp!” “Liiiieees I tell you!”
Sp: Yeah. Some of the plot was a bit lost to me for this one because some of the interrogation or political maneuvering sorts of scenes, just got lost in this big accent soup. It basically sounded like all the translators in the U.N. were going off at once, and I lost the thread of it sometimes.
R: But hey, the soundtrack made up for it. Dun dun dun! Poison!
H: It’s library soundtrack. It’s clear that’s not where Letts wanted to spend his money. He got cues from the BBC library.
R: But you’re neglecting the best part – the dramatic salad! Dun dun duuuuuuun. “I couldn’t do it!”
Sp: I actually liked that little reversal.
R: Oh, I thought it was hilarious.
H: I liked how Ketina waved goodbye to Denes just before he ate the salad.
K: When the guard was like “oh wait” I thought the food taster was going to come in. But no, it was to the knife. And then he cut up the food. It was great. I totally expected him to die any second… I loved that part. I really didn’t care if he died, either. So sad.
R: Yeah, it was great scene up until the point the soundtrack said “the salad could be POISONED! Dun dun!!”
P: That’s why I never eat salad.
H: Ketina brings up a good point about this story though. Getting beyond the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria, it’s really easy not to care too much about these characters.
K: I care about the cook and the food taster.
R: And the spy chick.
H: Ronelyn likes Astrid.
A: I like Astrid too.
Sp: Again, I think my biggest hang up with this episode, for the parts of it that I could follow, was just the shouting replacing acting.
P: Attempting to replace acting.
Sp: No, replacing acting. I’m going to really reach, and project a little bit, and wonder if, on some subconscious level, the cheapness of the sets made the actors switch into stage acting mode, and they thought they needed to project into the back of the theater or something. It just felt like too much outside voice. Distractingly so. And I think that can double as my final thought.
R: Loud noises!
Sp: Yeah.
H: I’m willing to go to final thoughts as this point.
E: I’m gonna miss that china. I will not miss the attack of the soundtrack, however.
R: I don’t think you could.
A: I don’t have a final though.
K: 🙁
H: This wasn’t even “awesome?”
A: I enjoyed the moving pictures. I did like the episode. It’s not that I didn’t like it – I just don’t have anything to add.
P: Like I said before, I kind of got lost as to who was the Doctor and who was Salamander.
A: I don’t know how you could.
P: Because it’s me. So I kind of lost the story for part of it, and then I picked it up again. I really enjoyed the part that Jamie was playing. Second only by the chef. I think he really picked up his character in this episode.
K: Jamie in black leather. What more do you need? Really?
H: Okay, Ronelyn?
R: “It is dangerous to run here! You could slip. Maybe twist an ankle.”
H: That’s it?
R: You needed more?
H: Okay. Ketina?
K: Wow. Unusually, I kinda disagree with Spoo.
Sp: gasp! <dies>
K: Sorry, Spoo. For the most part I didn’t have any problem following the plot. And I really liked this one. I liked the Chef. I loved Jamie in leather.
P: <rowr>
Sp: Perhaps they were shouting the dialog at a frequency that only Ketina could hear?
K: I’m good with accents. Even bad ones. And it was fun going “oh. That’s a Time Lord. That’s a Time Lord.” <referring to actors who later played Time Lords> Which I admit was a bit distracting. I thought this one was fun. I can deal with a six-parter if they’re all like this. Historian?
H: Once again, I thought the acting was generally good, with a few exceptions.
P: Yeah, they kept moving.
H: I thought that the actual dialog written in the script. The cook was definitely a highlight. But “Doctor Who does James Bond” or “The Avengers”… this story has just never done it for me.
K: I have to like the one you hate, don’t I?
H: I don’t hate it. I just think it’s not as strong as some of the stories around it. It has a very strong start, and then it just keeps going. Other than the Cook, really this episode is take or leave for me. Except for the fact that it really exists and we can SEE people actually doing acting.
