The Invasion

Episode 1

Hannah: Isn't there already one called The Invasion?
Me: No.
Hannah: Yes, there is. The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Me: Are you insane?
Hannah: It sounds like the same story.
Me: Anyway, this is Dr Kit Pedler's last story, if you're interested.
Hannah: So are there Cybermen in it?
Me: Er... you'll have to wait and see.

Episodes one and four are missing from this eight-part adventure, but once again (and for the very last time) the DVD release has plugged the holes for us.

Me: These two episodes are going to be our last animated reconstructions.
Hannah: Ever?
Me: Yes. Ironically they were also the first ones to be animated, so we're actually finishing them at the beginning. It's all a bit River Song.
Hannah: This is yet another different style of animation, isn't it?
Me: These ones are animated by Cosgrove Hall, the animation studio that made Danger Mouse. You know that Doctor Who animated web series from 2003, starring Richard E. Grant?
Hannah: No.
Me: We'll get there one day. Anyway, that one was animated by Cosgrove Hall three years earlier; there was a sequel planned, but the TV series was revived shortly afterwards so it was abandoned and the unused money from that project was assigned to this instead.

The TARDIS is on the blink again; this time it's a fault with the visual stabiliser, so when it lands in the middle of a field on Earth it's completely transparent.

Hannah: Oh, has he actually made it invisible? How are you supposed to find it again? Why don't they always use the camouflage bit?
Me: It's just a broken circuit. It already has a built-in camouflage device, remember?
Hannah: Does that mean he's never going to bother fixing this one, either?

The Doctor and his companions flag down a car and hitch a lift.

Hannah: They haven't animated the face of the driver. It's either completely irrelevant, or very important.
Me: Or the animators just wanted to save a bit of money.

The Doctor decides to track down his old friend Professor Travers to help repair the circuit, but Travers is in America and the house has been leased to Professor Watkins and his niece Isobel.

Hannah: Why couldn't they have used Professor Travers instead?
Me: It was originally going to be Travers and his daughter Anne from The Web of Fear, but the creators of those characters refused to grant the rights after they fell out with the BBC over the whole Quark debacle in The Dominators.
Hannah: Just because you have a falling-out, surely you should still acknowledge the writer's vision and accept that someone has written a story and wants to honour you by using your characters. It's just spite. I don't understand people like that.

Isobel writes everything down on the wall instead of a piece of paper, reasoning that "you can't lose a wall."

Hannah: Yes, you can. They just lost all the walls of the TARDIS in the last story.
Me: It's not an everyday occurrence.
Hannah: No, but it happened.
Me: I don't think it's going to happen in Shepherd's Bush.

The Doctor and Jamie take a trip to International Electromatics in search of the missing Professor Watkins, but managing director Tobias Vaughn only gives them a freebie disposable transistor radio for their trouble.

Hannah: "Disposable"? You're supposed to dispose of a transistor radio? You just throw it away after using it?
Me: Well, "Little Arrows" by Leapy Lee was in the charts at the time, so it's hardly surprising people wanted to throw their radios away.
Hannah: It's clearly a tracking device, or a listening device, or a bomb or something.

After recognising his wife Sheila Dunn's name in the closing credits (she was the voice of the Quarks in The Dominators), Hannah also spots her favourite director.

Hannah: Oh, it's a Camfield! I can't wait to see a proper one.

Episode 2

Hannah: Oh, this is a bit jerky. They didn't do much restoration here.
Me: This is what it looked like.
Hannah: Yeah, but we watched that documentary about how they made another story smoother by filling in extra frames and things.
Me: But this is what the original was like; you can't "restore" it to something it wasn't in the first place. That's not restoration, that's George Lucasing it.

Tobias Vaughn is easily one of the most impressive and charismatic villains the series has ever had.

Hannah: I like him.
Me: Do you recognise the actor? He's been in the show before.
Hannah: No, of course I don't. I don't usually recognise anyone.
Me: His name is Kevin Stoney, and it was a very big role.
Hannah: No. Give me a clue.
Me: He was a major villain.
Hannah: No...?
Me: The Daleks' Master Plan?
Hannah: No...?
Me: It's Mavic Chen.
Hannah: It looks nothing like him.
Me: It's the same actor!
Hannah: It still looks nothing like him. He didn't have that squint last time.

While Zoe and Isobel drink coffee and listen to "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" on the gramophone, the Doctor and Jamie are abducted by two men ("Jamie likes touching the Doctor") and escorted to a military base on a plane where they meet their old friend Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, now promoted to Brigadier.

Hannah: That's a nice surprise; I didn't even consider that the Brigadier would be in this, even though the Doctor was looking for Travers. I have been wondering how soon he would be back, though. I'm glad he's been re-introduced so quickly. I like his rapport with the Doctor.

The Brigadier is now in charge of UNIT, the newly-formed "United Nations Intelligence Taskforce". (At least until 2008, when it becomes "Unified Intelligence Taskforce" because the actual United Nations suddenly decided it was a problem after 40 years.)

Hannah: Odd that the UN saw the Yeti threat as such a major event that they've created a task force for these occasions, when other stories like The War Machines and The Faceless Ones didn't provoke the same kind of reaction. A couple of Yeti and some kind of fungus in the London Underground triggered the creation of a military task force, but not the disappearance of hundreds of young people or an army of sentient tanks in the streets?

Zoe and Isobel go looking for the Doctor at IE but only find a computer in the reception area. Zoe apparently shares the Doctor's hatred of computers ("Surely his TARDIS is a giant computer?") and cheerfully blows it up with an unsolvable equation, laughing in delight at her act of vandalism.

Hannah: She's a little bit evil. She's taking too much pleasure in destroying things.

Vaughn has a complex piece of machinery in his cupboard for chatting with his alien allies. When his allies recognise the Doctor from a previous encounter on another planet, they order his destruction and Vaughn captures Zoe and Isobel as bait.

Hannah: Why is it always the girls getting captured?

The episode ends with the Doctor and Jamie cornered by Vaughn's sadistic security chief, Packer.

Hannah: I love the pacing of this; that's probably why I haven't been talking much, because I'm actually engrossed in it. There's enough happening for it to be interesting, but nothing feels clumsy or wasted. And obviously the direction's good, because it's Camfield. So, yes, very nicely paced.
Me: It needs to be, there's another six episodes to go yet.
Hannah: It might change; it might get tedious. But for now, it's thrilling.

Episode 3

The Doctor and Jamie are ushered into Vaughn's private car; the Brigadier tells Sergeant Walters to keep an eye on them.

Hannah: Does that sergeant stick around? There's always one with puppy-dog eyes who does everything.
Me: Actually, one member of UNIT does stick around for future stories.
Hannah: It's the Brig!
Me: Apart from him.
Hannah: Is it Captain Jimmy?
Me: You've got until the end of the story to give me your final answer.

They're taken to the IE factory (which looks suspiciously like the UK Guinness brewery) and into Vaughn's office, which turns out to be identical to his London office. It's a blatant budget-saving device, but Vaughn passes it off as business efficiency.

Hannah: Yeah, "business efficiency", but he's got loads of wasted space in his office. His little video communications device has three separate screens that always show the same image. That's not very efficient, is it?

Much like Mavic Chen, Vaughn is calm and suave but also dangerously sinister at the same time.

Hannah: He does play a good villain.

When the Doctor and Jamie make their escape by sabotaging the lift, Packer uses his wrist-communicator to send guards after them.

Hannah: That communication watch is really awkward, because he's got to speak into it and then hold it up to his ear, and then when he's moving between those two positions he's got to make sure he's not missing what they're saying. You'd think an electronics corporation could come up with something more effective than that.

But it only takes a couple of minutes for the engineers to get the lift operational again.

Hannah: What?! It takes hours for them to fix the lifts at work!

Vaughn completely loses his temper, and it's far more terrifying than any Dalek.

Hannah: Not so calm anymore, is he? That's what stupid people do to your patience.

Jamie takes refuge by hiding in a storage container on the IE train, but finds something stirring in there with him.

Hannah: Dramatic, but it's probably just one of the girls. They opened up the containers to look for the girls, and saw there was something inside, but for some reason they didn't think to look under the blankets for them.

Episode 4

Ever since we watched the first episode I've been trying to hide the identity of Vaughn's alien allies from Hannah, but it looks like the game is up when Vaughn tells Packer that he's planning to use emotion to destroy them.

Hannah: It is them, isn't it? They don't have any emotions. So he's just like Mavic Chen, using another race of evil villains to get what he wants and hoping to one-up them later, even though they're obviously going to be the ones betraying him.

Vaughn tries to drive the Doctor out of hiding by threatening Zoe over the compound's tannoy system.

Hannah: So all these security guards and other people are working for this electronics company. Don't any of them hear him threatening to hurt a young girl, and think that maybe they're working for the bad guys?
Me: Maybe they're bad guys themselves. There's probably a recruitment agency for villains who need a workforce to build a Death Star, or a secret base in an active volcano.

Zoe thinks this is a bit of an overreaction to her destroying a computer.

Hannah: It's not all about you.

Vaughn calls his inside man at the Ministry of Defence and orders him to obstruct UNIT's investigation. For a major general, his composure under pressure leaves a lot to be desired.

Hannah: What a wet wipe.

Speaking of IE's professional ethics, Packer has no qualms with his job description.

Hannah: Sometimes the top baddie isn't the one you hate the most; it's often their henchmen who are the truly sadistic ones that deal out the pain, and they've got him spot-on as well. He's the one that you actually despise, the one that really relishes hurting people, and it makes him a much more horrible person than Vaughn. I mean, obviously an invasion of the Earth isn't a nice thing to be organising...
Me: That's one way of putting it.
Hannah: But when you've got someone threatening to torture you, and you know they're going to enjoy it, it's a much more horrible concept because it's a more immediate threat. The end of the world is such a distant problem compared to someone sticking a gun in your back.

The technicians revive one of Vaughn's allies by attaching electrodes to its cocoon...

Hannah: They look like nipple clamps. Don't put that in the blog.
Me: Don't worry, I won't.

...and, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, it turns out to be a Cyberman.

Hannah: Did they have irons on the side of their head before?
Me: What?
Hannah: I don't remember them having quite such a big headdress.
Me: You mean the handlebars?
Hannah: No, they had handlebars, but they look like they've got their head in a vice.
Me: They've been redesigned a bit, but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Hannah: I don't remember them having such big slabs on either side of their head.
Me: Are you happy to see them again?
Hannah: Yeah, why not. I was expecting it the whole time, though, because it was Pedler. You shouldn't teach me to recognise things if you want them to be a surprise.

But she seems to be enjoying it anyway.

Hannah: I don't think I've found anything particularly wrong with this story yet. Still, there's another four episodes to go, so there's always a chance it could still go badly wrong.
Me: Yeah, that's the spirit.

Episode 5

Hannah: Why do these evil plots always take place in England? What is it about this country that attracts so many aliens and villains?
Me: We can discuss it after the Jon Pertwee era.
Hannah: It's so weird; they're like robots, but they're bursting out of a womb or a cocoon. It's very natural-looking, but synthetic at the same time. But where are these powered-down Cybermen coming from? They've been sent down here from the spaceship, a few at a time, and only to London? It doesn't sound like a large army for an invasion force, and if they need to be revived before they're ready, it makes them heavily reliant on humans. Why can't they be awake while they're being shipped in? Are they running out of power or something?
Me: What do you think of the new design?
Hannah: They look like scuba suits.

We see some Cybermen delicately climbing down a manhole into the sewer.

Hannah: Oh look, the Cybermen are helping each other!
Me: That's quite sweet.
Hannah: Yeah. But obviously they're doing it because it's logical, not out of compassion.

Like a child with a new toy, Vaughn tests out his new emotion-inducing machine and transmits fear into one of the Cybermen, which promptly goes berserk and begins running amok.

Hannah: It's sad, because there are people inside there. A screaming Cyberman is horrifying. That's why they're such good aliens; they're a terrifying concept, and it's especially terrifying to become one.

When the Brigadier dares to suggest that dealing with an army of alien monsters is a job for trained soldiers instead of a dolly-bird photographer, Isobel lays out her feminist credentials: "You... man!"

Hannah: I like her. Is she the next companion? I know changeovers can happen in big stories, and she's already caught up in this adventure. She's a fun character, but it might be too soon to have another young girl like her again.

Isobel takes Jamie and Zoe down into the sewer for a Cyberman photo shoot (as one does) to gather evidence of the invasion. A policeman follows them down the manhole, with predictable results.

Hannah: Oh yeah, that's going to be an excellent shot of a policeman getting murdered by a cyborg. Good one, guys.

Nobody seems too worried about being responsible for the poor man's death; they're far more concerned about being trapped by Cybermen on all sides. Jamie helpfully explains to us that "they're coming at us from both directions."

Hannah: Well done, Jamie. It might be time to take you back to the Highlands.

Episode 6

One of the advancing Cybermen happens to be Vaughn's demented test subject.

Hannah: Aw, they're going to blow up the poorly one.

UNIT comes to the rescue, but when the Brigadier tells Isobel that her photos are too blurry to be any use, she retorts "I don't know why I bothered."

Hannah: No, nobody does. It was a terrible idea.

Vaughn gives Professor Watkins a gun and offers himself as a target, but the gunfire just ricochets off his cybernetically-augmented chest.

Hannah: That's so cruel. He's very good at playing mind games.
Me: And that's why Vaughn is the real villain of this story, not the Cybermen.
Hannah: He's still very lucky he didn't get shot in the head.

UNIT plans a full-scale assault to rescue Professor Watkins. It all sounds very impressive, but we don't get to see any of the action; instead, we cut straight to the aftermath of the battle, with one of Vaughn's scientific researchers telling him what we would have seen. I ask Hannah for her thoughts.

Hannah: It's a little bit unsatisfying, but plenty of TV shows do that. It's a problem if you do it too often, but for this one time it's okay; there's already been enough action and shooting things and running around that you don't need to see that full-scale attack to make sure you keep the audience. I would say they're pretty much hooked, anyway. I don't feel cheated by not having it.
Me: There was supposed to be a filmed battle, but they ran out of time on the location shoot.
Hannah: It's a bit of a cheap move, cutting from the Brig's comment to a dishevelled survivor, but there's also a nice sense of comic timing in it.

Despite all the excitement, Jamie somehow manages to take a nap. Even the Doctor seems slightly peeved.

Hannah: Is the Doctor going to dump him now, for not being engaged enough?

IE's products contain an extra circuit that will produce cyber-hypnotic signals and send everyone in the world to sleep, but the Doctor reminds us of the anti-brainwashing devices he threw together during their last encounter in The Wheel in Space, something Hannah would rather forget.

Hannah: Ah, we're back to the silly science of depolarising and wearing a little thing on the back of the neck to jam signals. It was all going so well.

The episode ends with an iconic cliffhanger, as the Cybermen rise up out of the sewer and march past St Paul's Cathedral into the streets of London.

Hannah: They've still got Doc Martens and scuba suits, but they actually look impressive.
Me: That's partly because they're doing that same trick from The Dalek Invasion of Earth and marching around some well-known London landmarks.
Hannah: Yeah, it makes it feel closer to home. It feels different, seeing them in the real world instead of a moon base or a space station.

Episode 7

Hannah: I've just noticed, it looks like the Cybermen have got metal or latex nappies.
Me: This is definitely my favourite Cyberman design.
Hannah: When was The Tenth Planet set?
Me: 1986.
Hannah: So why do these Cybermen look a lot more advanced than the ones that arrive twenty years later? They've also become a lot less effective at organising an invasion by then, which is even more strange.

Vaughn's thugs attempt to recapture Professor Watkins, and Jamie is shot down in the process.

Hannah: Not surprised. It's been far too long since a main cast member had a proper injury; you need to show just how dangerous their adventures actually are. He's very lucky it was only a flesh wound, after being shot that close.

Hannah's observations on the similarities between the UNIT plane and the SHIELD Helicarrier are abruptly cut short when she's presented with a close-up of the Brigadier strapping on his gun-belt.

Hannah: Groin shot. I mean, Camfield's great, but... groin shot?
Me: Perhaps "artistic" is the word you're looking for?
Hannah: I love the way the camera shots work together, I like the zoom into people's faces when there's a particular expression that really needs showing, and I like the mix of detail and wide shots. I can see that's what they've tried to do with the Brig's belt, by showing a small, simple detail at the beginning of the scene and then pulling back to locate it in a greater context, but really, it's just a close-up of his crotch.

In his office, Vaughn tells the Doctor about his plan to betray the Cybermen. (Like we didn't know.)

Hannah: That alien computer-brain thing is only behind a door; it can still hear you.

But the UNIT boys have already managed to wipe out the incoming invasion fleet with the help of Zoe's calculations, so the remaining Cybermen take umbrage and deploy a megaton bomb instead.

Hannah: If they had let Vaughn carry on with his plan, then at least he'd have managed to kill off all the Cybermen with his special fear weapons, and then all they would need to do is defeat Vaughn. Whereas now, Vaughn is incapacitated and the Cybermen are still going to come, and now they're going to bring a bomb. Unless UNIT manages to shoot down the rest, but I think they're out of missiles.
Me: You think Vaughn would have beaten the Cybermen?
Hannah: Probably not, but you should always let your enemies fight each other.

Episode 8

Zoe and UNIT have destroyed the invasion fleet, but their victory celebrations are interrupted when UNIT hears about the bomb.

Hannah: I mean, it was nice to see them all celebrating, but when you're dealing with an alien invasion you shouldn't be so complacent about it. I was half-expecting everyone to be sitting there with a beer.

Packer is killed by a Cyberman ("He didn't suffer as much as he probably deserved"), so the Doctor takes Vaughn's machine and blasts it full of emotion.

Hannah: I wonder what setting they're using. Are they killing them all with fear? Or love?
Me: I like the idea of killing a Cyberman by making it feel love. Maybe they're killing it with kindness?
Hannah: Why doesn't the Doctor remember the emotion gun when he fights them later? I'm sure he could work out how to build one.
Me: He doesn't carry weapons; he might as well carry a revolver around with him otherwise. Besides, there's no point inventing a complicated machine when you can just spray their chest units with nail varnish remover.

Vaughn joins forces with the Doctor to take revenge against the Cybermen, but gets killed by his former allies in the process. Then, when UNIT arrives and the Brigadier sends the troops in, there's a wonderful bit of physical comedy from Patrick Troughton; Isobel starts photographing the Doctor, who protests at first but then starts to tidy himself up for the camera.

Hannah: (laughing) I love this story more and more.

There's just the small matter of having to wait for a Russian rocket to take out the mother-ship, and then it's all over.

Hannah: So there are loads of photographs of the Cybermen, and everyone was asleep for two days. Do people believe it actually happened? Or is it one of those things that never gets mentioned again?

I deftly side-step the question.

Me: Have you given any thought to which member of UNIT stays around for the later stories?
Hannah: I don't know. One of the Brigadier's lackeys.
Me: Which one?
Hannah: I don't know. Any of them.
Me: Your heart's not in this.
Hannah: The radio operator? I don't know, they all look the same to me. I couldn't tell you any of their names. There's one who seems to be on the radio all the time, and then there's a captain and a sergeant.
Me: Here are your options: it's either Captain Turner, Sergeant Walters, Corporal Benton or Corporal Tracy.
Hannah: Is it the captain? Does he get to stay?

The Ministry of Defence is acknowledged in the credits.

Hannah: Did they tell them the kind of things that they would say over the radio? Or was it just for the use of their footage?
Me: The British Army took part in the final battle scene, playing soldiers with flamethrowers and bazookas and things.
Hannah: That's impressive. But has everyone just glossed over the fact that lots of people would have died? The whole world got put into a trance for two days; diabetic people wouldn't have been able to take their insulin, planes would have crashed, submarines would probably have run out of air, people on the operating table would have died, and people who were in moving cars or trains at the time would have died. And at the end of all of this, we just get a glimpse of life going back to normal and we're told that Isobel has got a new job because she took some pictures of the Cybermen. Everything else carries on as normal.
Me: You'd rather they finished an eight-episode story by taking a poll of the dead while the camera pans over a mass grave?
Hannah: I just want it to be addressed somehow. I'm not asking them to show someone regaining consciousness and realising that their baby has starved to death next to them, or anything like that.
Me: Maybe their metabolism slows down when they're under the influence. Anyway, people die off-screen in the show all the time.
Hannah: I know, but the scale of the devastation must have been massive, and there's no acknowledgement of it at all.

The Score

Hannah: That was excellent. It kept my attention throughout and there was nothing I particularly disliked or disbelieved, except for a few little flaky bits of science.
Me: It's Doctor Who, you can't hold that against it. Within reason, anyway.
Hannah: I have. Repeatedly.
Me: Yeah, but you have to accept that the science in any long-running science fiction series is occasionally going to be a little shaky.
Hannah: The direction was superb.
Me: Well, that's Camfield for you.
Hannah: He just knows how to make it work; he knows exactly what kind of shots he needs to create a particular kind of emotion or interest in the story. It fully held my attention throughout the entire eight episodes; the pacing was perfect, the story was perfect, the acting was almost perfect, and the villain was amazing.

10/10

Me: So what do you think of this new format? The Doctor working together with UNIT, backed up by their military connections?
Hannah: It's an easy way for the Doctor to kill people without having to do it himself.
Me: But do you like the setup?
Hannah: It's more like modern Who in that respect, so it feels more familiar to me, although obviously this is where it comes from. I don't think it makes Doctor Who better, it just makes it different.
Me: So you'd be happy to see more of that?
Hannah: Yes, as long as there's also the usual "having a jolly around the universe" stuff; if it just became the "Doctor Who on Earth" show, that would be boring. I liked this one very much, but I wouldn't want every episode to be like this.