‘Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy’ – Terrance Dicks (Target)

 

Page Count: 110 Pages


With ‘The Siege of Terra’ books done and dusted, and a couple of other large books lurking in the TBR Pile, I thought I’d read something slim and give myself a break before tackling another ‘500 Pager’. And as we all know (well, you do now), books don’t come a lot slimmer than the old ‘Doctor Who’ Target novelizations. ‘Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy’ lays a firm claim to being the slimmest of the lot, clocking in at a ‘waif-like’ 110 pages. I’ve never watched the serial (need to do something about that) so I was interested to read this book but was also left wondering how much story there would actually be.

I was after a short book though so, off I went…

Before we get into it, a random thought. I’m assuming that’s ‘The Nucleus’ on the front cover but… Is it the Nucleus or has a slightly disheveled Firey made it out of the Labyrinth and into this book? Could be either but all I’m saying is that I’ve never seen a Firey and the Nucleus together in the same room… ;o)


The Nucleus looking in the mirror and realizing it looks just like a Firey...

Anyway…

A mysterious cloud drifts menacingly through space… A sudden energy flash and the Doctor becomes infected with the Nucleus of a malignant Virus that threatens to destroy his mind. Meanwhile, on Titan, human slaves prepare the Hive from which the Virus will swarm out and infect the universe. In search of a cure, Leela takes the Doctor to the Bi-Al Foundation, where they make an incredible journey into the Doctor’s brain in an attempt to destroy the Nucleus.

Can the Doctor free himself from the Nucleus in time to reach Titan and destroy the Hive? Luckily he has help — in the strangely dog-like shape of a mobile computer called K9…

I’m not a hundred percent sure what I thought of this one. It was fun but...

On the one hand, I was after a short read and that’s exactly what I got so I can’t really complain about getting what I asked for ;o)

Having said that though, there isn’t really a lot to the plot… I liked the concept but the execution didn’t do it justice. Funnily enough, for a hospital setting, it really did feel like I was stuck in a waiting room while all the important stuff happened elsewhere. And if that wasn’t bad enough, by the time I got to do the equivalent of ‘seeing the Doctor’, there wasn’t really a lot of time for the actual appointment… I wonder if the ‘inside the Doctor’s Brain’ scenes came off better on the screen but it all felt a little rushed on the page. At least we get to see the introduction of K9 though, that was fun :o)

Not the worst way to spend a couple of hours then but ‘The Invisible Enemy’ is a ‘Doctor Who’ novelization that I’ll happily tick off the ‘unread’ list but can’t see myself being in huge hurry to re-visit. I mentioned, at the top of the post, that I need to watch the serial but thinking about it, I might just save myself the bother and re-watch ‘The Fantastic Voyage’ instead.

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