Right, then. Since we’ve all had some time to watch them… what did you all think of Enemy of the World and Web of Fear?
Enemy, for me, was as much of a treat as I’d hoped. The ending is a bit more rushed than I’d realized from the reconstruction, but it is on the whole a piece of wonderful subtlety and nuance, and it keeps the plot moving well. Troughton is better than I’d imagined – the little tip-offs when he’s playing the Doctor impersonating Salamander are fantastic. In particular, the start of Episode Two is just so wonderful – all the little flicks of the eyes and small Doctor-like gestures that bubble up under the improvised and hurried impersonation.
And the plot is, in fact, really good. The underground bunker twist is very smooth – smoother than I’d thought, really. There are enough tip-offs that Salamander has some secret way of controlling volcanos. When you actually see the extended volcano sequence in Episode Two, the bunker ends up feeling much fairer. And the elaborate visual sequence of getting down there, in which the rules of the records room are set up, calls much more attention to it.
I hadn’t really appreciated how consistently suspicious Giles Kent was through the whole story. Benik is even more unnervingly sadistic than I’d imagined. Barry Letts’s direction is fantastic, balancing action shots with intimate close-ups. Really, virtually everything about this story came out at the high end of what I’d imagined, with Troughton absolutely blowing me away. Absolutely wonderful – such an complete joy. It’s really an incredible experience to have hyped the story this much for myself and then to have it absolutely nail and surpass my expectations. I don’t really have much to say beyond what I already have said; this really is an absolutely amazing piece of work.
The Web of Fear, on the other hand… I was never one of the major boosters of The Web of Fear, although I did always assume that it was the most competently done of the Season Five bases under siege. I’m less confident of that now. Indeed, I think that’s actively wrong – The Ice Warriors beats the pants off this.
In The Enemy of the World, everything left ambiguous from the audio broke in the story’s favor. The action sequences in the first episode really were quite good. Most things that looked like plot holes were filled. With The Web of Fear some things break in the story’s favor… but others decidedly don’t.
Episode Three still being missing hurts it a lot. The first two episodes are very padded, and Episode Three is the point where the story actually picks up decently. With that as a reconstruction, it’s not until Episode Four that the story gathers any sort of momentum, and that’s squandered in a time-wasting Episode Five in which the Doctor plays with screwdrivers for the entire episode.
The Arnold revelation is worse than expected, which is unfortunate.…
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