Well this is novel territory. Today I started in on The Enemy of the World, and it is truly unique. First of all, up until four years ago it was almost completely lost until episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 were found in Nigeria. More than that, though,  it is also a very case of being a straight-up political thriller instead of a science fiction or horror story. Patrick Troughton not only plays the Doctor, but also the part of Ramón Salamander -- a charismatic but ruthless politician who is on the verge of total world domination. Where every other story this season is a standard "base under siege" situation, The Enemy of the World is an entirely different animal.

Let's talk about that.

The Enemy of the World - Episodes 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Right off the bat, it was obvious to me that there had been an improvement in picture quality over all of the classic stories so far. At first I thought maybe it had to do with the very recent recovery of the story, but it turns out that it is actually because starting with this story they went to using the 625 line PAL standard instead of the older 405 line standard. In these days of Ultra-HD it doesn't sound like much, but that is a better-than-50% boost in horizontal resolution in the the picture and it really shows.

This story is an absolute tour de force for Patrick Troughton. The opening scene is a pure delight, with the TARDIS materializing on an Australian beach and the Doctor gleefully skipping out to go for a swim in the ocean. He grins ear-to-ear and even does a little jig before stripping down to his long johns and then leaping into the waves, while Jamie and Victoria watch in bemused silence.

Speaking of Jamie and Victoria, even though she had sworn early on in the last story that she would never be caught wearing the kind of scandalous skirts worn by the women in that story, by the start of this story clearly Jamie has convinced her to try out a Scottish tartan skirt and bonnet to match his kilt and tam o' shanter. I am here to tell you that Jamie was a very happy man that day.

Watch where you are staring, Jamie...

Quickly enough the plot gets rolling when three men further down the beach seem to recognize the Doctor and immediately try to kill him. There follows a rousing chase featuring a hovercraft and a helicopter, and a quick rescue by a femme fatale named Astrid. It turns out that the Doctor is the spitting image of Salamander, the most powerful politician in the world.  A chain of events causes the Doctor to agree to impersonate Salamander in order to uncover his sinister plot to rule the world, while Jamie and Victoria infiltrate Salamander's staff.

The scenes where Troughton plays Salamander are riveting. It is so easy to write Troughton off as a clown or a "cosmic hobo", and then here he comes to show you what a talented actor he really is. The physicality,  the speech pattern and accent... they are are just so completely different, and not in any cartoonish way. Salamander is a force to be reckoned with, and completely owns whatever space he is in at the moment. 

This story is just so different from anything else to date, where the plot turns on political maneuvering and underhanded politics instead of aliens and ray guns. By the end of the second episode, Salamander has just framed the leader of the Central European Zone with dereliction of duty and set up a new puppet replacement for him. He is well on his way to consolidating his global power, and it seems nothing can stop him.

Needless to say, I can hardly wait until tomorrow.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Second
Companion(s): Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Episode(s): The Enemy of the World - Episodes 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 6,095 today, 640,508 total
Distance Walked:  2.84 miles today, 305.84 miles total
Weight: 278.36 lbs (five day moving average), net change -28.94 lbs