We now come to a story that at one point would never have been considered as one of Troughton’s best. After a long period of five out of six episodes being missing and the majority of the fanbase having a negative overview as it seemed from the audio that The Enemy of the World was very boring, miraculously all missing episodes were discovered with the footage intact in 2013. When this story finally got a DVD release you have never seen such a change in opinion quite like this story as the fans seemed to look upon this story in a more positive light now that the footage had been restored. What was once presumed to be a very dull and overlong six-parter turned out to be one of the most well directed and well performed stories of the Second Doctor era.

Troughton brings what is arguably his best performance in Doctor Who as not just the Doctor. The story sees the Doctor in the midst of a plot to bring down a man who’s determined to be dictator of the world, interestingly enough though the man in question, Salamander, looks exactly like the Doctor, which gives his enemies the perfect opportunity to have an impersonator to expose Salamander for the villain he is.

Troughton may not be my favourite Doctor, but he is quite possibly the most talented actor to ever play the Doctor; in this story he delivers a tour de force performance as the Doctor, the villain, the Doctor impersonating the villain and the villain impersonating the Doctor. Sometimes most of which in the same scene! What really sells this premise is the fact that Troughton slips so seamlessly into his other role as Salamander to the point where it doesn’t just feel like a cheap doppelganger story, you really buy into this other character he plays, especially in scenes where the Doctor impersonates Salamander with such confidence but with a slight hint of secrecy in his mannerisms. William Hartnell really was right about Troughton being “the one man in England who can take over”, he’s just incredible in this story.

The Enemy of the World has often been described as Doctor Who being a 007 film and that’s honestly an accurate statement as this features plenty of espionage, characters with their own duplicitous motives, more focus on action and less sci-fi and a literal supervillain with a frankly ridiculous method of trying to rule the world. The story does admittedly go a little out there in it’s second half with the reveal of how Salamander is planning to take over the world but it is in the same spirit as a James Bond film so I can’t fault it for that. There’s also the accidental hilarity of this story taking place in pre-2018, which makes for a fun game to play on all the things that we of course had pre-2018 but missed the headlines on, like rockets used as public transport! I guess they just didn’t think the show would make it that far.

The Enemy of the World is very different from any other Doctor Who story, it’s neither sci-fi focused or a pure historical, but rather a political action thriller which may throw fans off a bit but with some great directing and performances, not just from Troughton but from an excellent side cast as well, this makes for a fun viewing and I’m happy it got reappraised for the better on its fully restored release. I can’t speak for what this was like with only the audio and tele-snaps as I missed out on that and of course having the footage missing doesn’t ruin other stories from the 60s that suffered a similar fate, and just because the footage is found and restored doesn’t mean the overall opinion will change drastically, but The Enemy of the World proved to be the acceptation to that.