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Doctor Who

The enemy of the world (1967 - 1968)

About this serial

This is a six-part serial that was first broadcast between 23rd December 1967 - 27th January 1968. The serial was written by David Whitaker, produced by Innes Lloyd and directed by Barry Letts. The script editor was Peter Bryant.

Plot summary

The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria find themselves on early 21st-century earth in a '1984'-like future, and encounter a would-be dictator who looks oddly familiar.

Review

Good things about this serial:

The less good news:

About the underground shelter: we learn that Salamander has tricked a whole bunch of people into hiding underground and causing weather changes and natural disasters for him. In itself, using these manmade environmental changes to destabilise the status quo and to gain influence and popularity is a pretty clever idea, but several things about this plot-line are pretty inexplicable:

The bottom line

Quite good, actually.

Tough call. If you only watch episodes one, two and six, and skip the other three, this serial is pretty great. Then again, it doesn't seem fair to put a story in the 'Nice!' category when half of it actually isn't that good.

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