The Powerful Enemy (The Rescue Episode 1)

The one where the Doctor returns to a planet we've never seen him visit before...

As The Powerful Enemy opens, we're introduced to two new characters who seem to be living in a crashed spaceship on an alien planet. There's Vicki, an enthusiastic, energetic young girl whose natural positivity and optimism is thwarted by the relentless pessimism and negativity of her injured colleague Bennett. They're not an ideally matched pair in that regard, but Maureen O'Brien makes Vicki instantly likeable, with her bright-eyed, fresh-faced buoyancy. But Bennett warns of someone called Koquillion, who sounds like he's going to be the villain of this story. If he finds out about the approaching rescue ship, he'll apparently kill both Vicki and Bennett.

Meanwhile in the TARDIS (which seems to arrive on Dido twice - once at the very start of the episode, and again four minutes in with the first TARDIS scene!), the Doctor has snoozed through the Ship's materialisation for the first time ever. There's a typically great rapport between the three regulars here. When Barbara mentions that "the trembling has stopped" (ie, the Ship's landed), the Doctor says: "Oh my dear, I'm so glad you're feeling better". It's little light-hearted exchanges like this which make watching early Doctor Who so enjoyable.

But there's pathos as well as comedy. The Doctor calls for Susan at one point, forgetting that she's gone, and Barbara tries to distract him from his maudlin thoughts by asking him to teach her how to open the TARDIS doors. It's merely the flick of a switch, but Jacqueline Hill makes it look like Barbara is really concentrating, which in turn impresses the Doctor. The girlish, gleeful look on Barbara's face when the Doctor praises her is lovely.

Outside, it's a cave, but this cave is lit beautifully by the TARDIS's flashing lamp-light, making for a moody setting. Praise to lighting chap Howard King here, whose atmospheric lighting in the later rockfall scene (punctuated by the clunkiest, heaviest hand-held torch ever!) enhances proceedings no end. Our heroes are not plunged into a murky gloom like they might be (I'm forced to recall The Ordeal here).

The Doctor decides to return to the TARDIS while Ian and Barbara explore. This is not like him, as the teachers point out. The loss of Susan has affected the Doctor greatly (Ian and Barbara don't seem to be missing her at all, however!), and he prefers to spend time around familiar things inside the Ship, experimenting and running tests. There's a delightful scene with Hartnell in the TARDIS where he talks to himself like the slightly dotty old buffer that he is. He's obviously trying to reassure and distract himself, and we learn that he has been to the planet Dido before. "Fancy landing back here again," he ponders. "I wonder if I was to tell Ian it was deliberate, whether he would believe me or not? Oh no, of course... I was asleep! Pity, pity, pity..." It's a gorgeous little solo for Hartnell, and yet another example of how fandom has defined his Doctor wrongly as a crotchety old grump who just snaps and grumbles all the while. Hartnell's Doctor is actually quite a cheerful soul. He may not suffer fools gladly, but he probably laughs more than several other Doctors put together. He's a happy Doctor by instinct, only losing it when given good reason.

We finally meet Koquillion, who is obviously a man in a monster costume. We're supposed to believe it is an actual creature, but he's fooling no one. He is a pretty unpleasant character, though. He's quite sadistic and enjoys frightening or threatening people, whether it's Ian and Barbara, or Vicki, who genuinely seems terrified of him. It's confirmed that Koquillion is a nasty piece of work when he pushes Barbara over a cliff, then uses his shiny power tool to cause a rockfall and cut the TARDIS off. The Doctor insists the Didonians, in his experience, are peaceful people, but in Ian's experience they're pretty nasty. However, his assertion that he'd rather take on the Daleks than the Didonians is a little naive. He's only met one of them. Surely he doesn't think Koquillion represents his entire race?

Vicki rescues Barbara after her cliff fall and takes her back to the spaceship, where we learn that she and Bennett are terrorised by Koquillion, who claims to keep them safe from his murderous fellow Didonians, who apparently killed the rest of their crew when it crashed. All very suspicious, it must be said. Maureen O'Brien gets a great speech, looking tearfully into camera, where she recalls the crash and the death of her father. You can easily detect a whiff of O'Brien's stage experience here (she'd been a founding member of Liverpool's Everyman Theatre the previous September) as she takes her time to bring truth to Vicki's mourning (it takes her a lengthy 20 seconds to "recover" from mentioning her father before she can continue, as a nonplussed Jacqueline Hill looks impassively on!).

Vicki is quite a complex character. On the surface she's an upbeat young girl of around 15 who is obviously very vulnerable and needy, but beneath the surface lies damage. She lost her mother at the age of 11, and her father and who knows how many friends were killed after the spaceship crashed on Dido (a crash landing would also have been pretty traumatic). She was also feverish for days following the crash, and now she's left virtually alone on an alien planet with grumpy old Bennett, and terrified by a scaly monster. She snaps at Barbara when she thinks she's feeling pity for her. Vicki is wary of letting her guard down as she's had to learn to become independent and self-sufficient in very traumatic circumstances.

Ian and the Doctor try to find their way out of the cave by edging along a precipice. William Russell and William Hartnell make a great comedy duo here, with some funny little exchanges which add character (when there's a terrible roar from below, Ian shines the torch at the Doctor and says "What's that?", to which the blinded Doctor replies: "Well it's not me is it? Shine the torch down there!").

Down there is a lizard-like monster that looks very like our friend Koquillion, and I love director Christopher Barry's camera effect depicting the drop between the Doctor and Ian and the creature below. When Ian pulls a lever, some rather flimsy-looking blades shoot out from the walls and cut him off, while a third set slowly begins edging him toward the precipice... and the slavering beast below!

First broadcast: January 2nd, 1965

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: There's some great characterisation in David Whitaker's writing. As the outgoing script editor, he was the best man for the job of moving the characters on past the departure of Carole Ann Ford, as he probably knew them the best.
The Bad: Koquillion. It's so a man in a suit.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Desperate Measures...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Desperate Measures (episode 2)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-rescue.html

The Rescue is available in a DVD box set with The Romans. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/99t/Doctor-Who-Rescue-Romans-DVD-William-Hartnell/B001MYKYOU