Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy is a novella written by Terrance Dicks. Released in 1979, it is a novelization of the serial written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.
Characters[]
- Fourth Doctor
- Leela
- The Nucleus - the leader of the Swarm
- K9 - a supercomputer created by Frederick Marius
- Professor Frederick Marius - a scientist working at the Bi-Al Foundation
- Supervisor Lowe - the leader of the Titan Base
- Meeker, Safran, and Silvery - members of a relief crew to the Titan Base infected by the Swarm
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
A mysterious cloud drifts menacingly through space...
A sudden energy flash and the Doctor is 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 Foundation where they make an incredible journey into the Doctor's brain in an attempt to destroy the Nucleus.
But 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...
Summary[]
Chapter One: Contact[]
A spaceship travels from Earth to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, when an asteroid approaches. One of the pilots turns off the auto-pilot in hopes of avoiding impractical course corrections, but the captain reactivates it soon due to the plan not working. The ship nears a cloud, which seems to feel its presence and purposely moves in its direction. The ship’s computer attempts to avoid the cloud which has been “waiting for a host”, but it still shoots out and causes the computer to go blank, stating that contact has been made. Another craft with the same goal is the TARDIS, containing the Doctor and a warrior woman called Leela whom he picked up on one of his travels. After they materialise, the Time Lord explains that this was the time of humans spreading across the galaxy. The previously mentioned spaceship lands on a refuelling base for other craft on Titan, where the crew shall work for the next six months. The men pull their blasters – weapons – out of their pockets and enter the mess-room with other men inside it.
Chapter Two: The Host[]
The men from the ship kill the unsuspecting people inside the mess-hall and consider it to be a good place to “breed and multiply.” A metallic rash changes their facial features and they are no longer entirely human. The station supervisor, Lowe, noticing the group approaching him with the plan of murder, sends off a distress signal and escapes. However, the men transmit that the mayday call should be disregarded. The TARDIS is close to the same cloud in space that infected the other ship. On board, Leela and the Doctor hear the distress signal sent by Lowe. Upon his vessel being touched by the cloud, the Doctor goes stiff and is momentarily surrounded by a halo. When Leela notes this, he dismisses this, along with the girl’s warnings that something is wrong, as a form of St. Elmo’s fire. Nevertheless, a tentacle of the cloud touches him and states that contact has been made. On Titan, one of the infected crew members decides a location for the incubation process, calling it the “Hive.” As the TARDIS lands on the moon, the crew wish to kill Leela, as she is not affected by the virus. The Doctor seems unwell.
Chapter Three: Death Sentence[]
Lowe sneaks back into the station while the infected men are distracted by the TARDIS and fetches his weapon. Inside the ship, Leela and the Doctor have a debate about whether or not they should exit – the girl believes it to be dangerous; the Time Lord wishes to investigate the mayday call. Lowe shoots one of the infected. He attempts to flee, and is locked in a room to die. Disembarking the TARDIS, Leela and the Doctor find the infected dead man. The Doctor encounters the crew members planning the Hive to breed from his Nucleus. They state that Leela, the “reject,” must be destroyed and lay focus on the breeding. Leela stumbles upon the room Lowe was locked in. She finds him barely alive and takes him with her. The Doctor decides to take the matter of Leela’s destruction into his own hands and sets off for her with a blaster, followed by one of the crew members who wishes to protect his Nucleus. The girl drags Lowe into the mess-hall, where he recovers and recounts the recent events. Hearing the Doctor approach and realising that he might be controlled by something with bad intentions, they hide. He enters the room, calling for her with a blaster in his hand. He has doubts about shooting her, but is dissuaded. Leela attacks the man protecting the Doctor, and a burst of energy from his body strikes Lowe. The Time Lord aims his blaster at the girl.
Chapter Four: Foundation[]
The Doctor internally rebels against the force controlling him. He explains that his mind is affected by an organism and falls unconscious for his body to spare strength to fight. Leela fetches Lowe to help bring the Doctor back to health. Due to there only being limited resources available on Titan, they must travel to another station – the Bi-Al Foundation. Leela takes off in the TARDIS with the Time Lord and Lowe. They land on the station, which is a highly advanced hospital. The Doctor is taken care of medically by a Professor Marius. Lowe leaves to get treatment for the energy that previously hit him. Marius, inspecting the Doctor with help of a dog-like robot, finds that he is merely in a self-induced coma. Upon a medical test, the robot, K9, reports that the Time Lord has an unknown viral infection in his brain. Suddenly, the Doctor awakens and shares that he put himself into a coma to put off the virus that thrives on mental activity. He also explains how he and the Titan base were infected. The Doctor falls back into unconsciousness and Marius states that Lowe, in his potential position of a carrier, should be inspected. While getting inspected by a doctor, Lowe spreads the virus.
Chapter Five: Counter-Attack[]
Leela visits the Doctor off her own accord. However, K9 views her as a threat until Marius tells him otherwise. The Professor explains why he has a robotic dog as opposed to a real one and says he still lacks information about the Doctor. He wishes to analyse Leela to see why she is immune in order to create a vaccine, but an assistant enters the room with the news that Lowe and the doctor inspecting him have disappeared. They are travelling the hospital, infecting unsuspecting doctors, who share their belief that they should further infect people for the “purpose.” Marius finds Leela to not be immune and decides that he should operate on the Doctor for a cure. However, the infected men sense that he is being threatened. A space ship close to the hospital is infected by a cloud and enters a collision course with the station as Marius is about to operate on his patient. Upon instructions, he leaves for the crash site. The shuttle crashes specifically in such a way that it cuts off the section of the hospital that the Doctor is in. The Time Lord comes up with a plan and asks K9 for information on cloning to help.
Chapter Six: The Clones[]
Marius, on the crash site, realises that the people in the ship were infected and calls for the area to be cleared. He hurriedly leaves with a nurse and an assistant to the Doctor’s room to find a cure. The three run into Lowe and his fellow infected having a shoot-out with Leela, who covers them. The Doctor asks Marius if he would clone him so that, if the virus gets to him, there would be less further infections, to which the professor agrees. Leela runs out of ammunition, but K9 attacks Lowe and his aides, who run off to a visiphone. A plastic booth is placed around the Doctor in order to create the clone. However, this will merely be a short-lived one, lasting around ten minutes. Before the Doctor passes out, he indicates that Leela should also be cloned. The Doctor’s clone, successfully created, leaves the room with no explanation of his plans. However, the real Doctor becomes more heavily affected by the virus and seems possessed when he states that his body should be freed as they are delaying his Purpose. Lowe comes on the visiphone and contacts Marius, stating that, unless he releases the Doctor, he shall destroy the entire Foundation. The Doctor’s clone enters the room with a device, called RDS, fetched from the TARDIS which makes him change size. His plan is to shrink himself and Leela to a microscopic level and inject themselves into the real Doctor’s brain to fight the virus.
Chapter Seven: Mind Hunt[]
The Doctor’s clone and Leela arrive somewhere close to the top of the spinal column in the real Doctor’s body, which is a sort of tunnel. The real Doctor is violently attempting to free himself from his bounds, and Lowe further threatens to destroy the Foundation if his wishes aren’t met. Marius agrees to have the infected take his patient, and they start approaching the room. The Professor instructs Leela to hold off the infected for a while, for which she takes K9 to help her. The robot comes up with a strategy, and the two leave. The Doctor’s and Leela’s clones search for a crossroads between his two brain hemispheres. White shapes follow them, ready to attack what they perceive to be intruders. Leela and K9 set up a barrier around the hospital room which the Doctor is in by collapsing part of the ceiling nearby and destroying an entry shaft. When the infected men under Lowe arrive, they have a fight with their blaster guns. Marius, analysing Leela’s tissue, finds her to be more resilient. However, her immunity towards the virus could also be based on her determined and aggressive nature – the “predator’s instinct,” as he calls it. Leela warns the Doctor of some sort of danger approaching them in his body, and he gets somewhat offended, going off on an explanation of his brain structure. They discover a ganglia – a cluster of nerve cells – and find that some connections have been severed by the virus. A group of phagocytes attacks them, and Leela has trouble fighting them off. The Doctor cleverly sends off false signals through some nerves that convey liver failure. While the real Leela is battling her attackers in the hospital, K9 gets infected and aims his blaster at her.
Chapter Eight: Interface[]
The Doctor and Leela follow the trail of the virus. Leela in the hospital manages to avoid getting shot by K9 due to good instincts, but falls unconscious after hitting her head on the wall. K9 turns itself off, effectively stopping the resistance against Lowe and his small party of infected men. The Doctor arrives at his mind-brain interface with the girl, and they enter the darkness of the other side of his brain. Lowe advances to Marius and infects him. The Professor states that the Doctor is trying to destroy the Nucleus in his brain with his shrunken clone. Leela and K9 awaken, and are told by a nurse who escaped the scene that Marius is infected and his clone is also entering the Doctor’s body. However, they must wait, as there still is a chance that the Doctor will succeed in the destruction of the Nucleus. Lowe races through the Doctor’s brain in search of the Time Lord and his companion, who are on the way to his “land of dreams.” They discover the virus – a tentacled growth inside of a rock – and realise they are trapped by another one behind them.
Chapter Nine: Nucleus[]
The Doctor inspects the creature in the rock and learns that it is the Nucleus of the Swarm and believes to have the right to spread itself. Responding to this idea of the survival of the fittest, the Doctor replies that he can destroy it. He also learns that the Nucleus not only wants to control the universe, especially through the use of time — the Doctor being a Time Lord makes him a great host. Leela sees Lowe get attacked by phagocytes. While the Nucleus boasts with its power, the Doctor notices that, as he is merely a clone, the time of his life-expectancy — around ten minutes — is already coming to an end. Upon his instructions, Leela tosses her blaster over to Doctor Who and he shoots at the Nucleus, willing it to leave him. It vanishes and he appears physically exhausted from the toll of his clone-self degenerating. Leela and the Doctor fade into nothingness while the Nucleus hurries towards the tear duct, through which it escapes via a tear that Marius contains in a glass dish. Believing that the clones of Leela and the Doctor are in there, he uses the RDS to grow the contents of the tear. However, he finds the Nucleus. Without it inside his body, the Doctor recovers speedily. The Nucleus tells him that, due to its new size, it can spread itself as a powerful and large creature as opposed to a microbe. The Doctor finds that he is immune towards the virus, but the Nucleus wishes to take him to the Hive on Titan to be devoured.
Chapter Ten: The Antidote[]
Leela disguises herself as an infected person and joins Lowe, Marius, the Nucleus and Doctor as they pass her as she is mistaken as a nurse. She frees the Time Lord and they run towards the TARDIS, planning to escape. However, due to the missing RDS the craft cannot travel. Marius is left to recapture Leela and the Doctor while the rest of the group speed to the Titan base to start multiplying the virus. The Doctor is aware that the TARDIS needs the RDS and sends K9 to knock Marius out while he is guarding them and fetch the device. However, the Professor called staff to his location via an intercom before getting attacked. The Doctor hurriedly studies his and Leela’s blood samples to find a cause for their immunity. He finds both of them to have an antibody (he got his from Leela’s clone in his body) against the virus and plans to inject it into Marius to cure him too. Then, the Professor could help with healing all other infected. Soon after Marius is injected with the antidote, he is cured and seems to have memory loss of his time infected. The Professor, Leela and the Doctor leave for Titan in the TARDIS, hoping to use the antibodies to destroy the Nucleus. The breeding tanks on the Titan base are prepared, and the Nucleus is very anxious to get there as fast as possible.
Chapter Eleven: The Hive[]
The Doctor and Leela start curing infected hospital staff, who, in turn, cure more of their colleagues. While Marius and the Time Lord work on creating an anti-virus of sorts against the Nucleus, the girl suggests simply blowing the Titan base up to solve their problems. The Doctor reacts irritably at Leela’s violent solution and K9 delivers the news that the two men have succeeded in their goal. Leela is still critical, doubting the functionality of the Doctor’s idea, but the group still leaves for Titan in the TARDIS. The Nucleus enters the breeding tank — the Hive — and states that it has to be protected. It lays several thousand eggs. The Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive in Lowe’s office on Titan and see the breeding of the swarm over a visiphone. A guard almost attacks them, but K9 kills him. However, the Doctor finds out that blasters are less effective upon the heavily infected. K9’s attack system is also worse. Leela distracts another guard in front of the breeding tanks and he leaves, pursuing her. The Doctor attempts to pour the serum he and Marius created onto the Nucleus, but it is shot out of his hand by Lowe. However, K9 still manages to use his last strength reserves and kills the man. The robot is carried away by the Doctor. Leela kills the guard who had been following her and meets the Doctor again. He is inspired by her violence, hurries her off to the TARDIS with K9 and runs towards the breeding room.
Chapter Twelve: Inferno[]
The Doctor places a blaster inside the Nucleus’ breeding tank in such a way that it effectively locks it for the Nucleus inside. He then leaves Titan with Leela and K9 in the TARDIS. The Nucleus, enraged at being locked inside the tank, breaks out by brute force. Due to the arrangement of the blaster the Doctor placed, it shoots a methane container and engulfs the Nucleus in fire. The entire Titan base is alight. Observing this from the TARDIS from a safe distance, Leela suggests they return K9 to Marius. The hospital has largely recovered and Marius says goodbye to the Doctor and Leela. As he has to return to Earth, he asks if the two would take K9 with them. The robot runs into the TARDIS, and the Doctor leaves with Leela. The book concludes with Marius being glad that K9 will be taken care of.