Day 115 — April 25th 2021
The Invasion Episodes Seven and Eight
The Invasion — Episode Seven
This is Zoe’s 22nd episode of Doctor Who, and I still don’t really know what to make of her. She was annoying in The Wheel in Space, and seemingly out of character in The Mind Robber. In The Dominators and most of this story, though, she’s just sort of been a generic companion, there to do the things a companion is supposed to do. At least in this episode she finally gets another chance to show off how intelligent she is, using her mathematical skills to work out where to aim the missiles.
It’s an impressive sequence, having asked for just 30 seconds to do the calculations she doesn’t even need the full time. And then we get a glimpse of her cockiness again, but this time it’s oddly charming;
Soldier: ‘You’d better be right.’
Zoe: ‘I am.’
I just feel like I’ve not taken to her as well as I have many of the previous companions, despite a brilliant performance by Wendy Padbury.
She also doesn’t feel quite as much part of the ‘team’, though that might be down to her having been separated from Doctor Who and Jamie for large parts of this story. We’re almost half way through her time on the programme, so I’m hoping there’s still a chance that I’ll grow to like her properly.
Something I do like — love, in fact — is the design of the Cyberman spaceships in this story. We get some nice shots of them flying in formation here, and I’m always pleased to see them. It’s a great design, and I’m glad they went back to something approximating this design for A Good Man Goes to War. We’ll get a better look at one of these models in the next story, when it’s repurposed as another prop and you get to see just how large they are!
Indeed, Season Six is a bit of a spotter’s guide for Cyberman ships, as their Moonbase model rocked up in the museum on Dulkis, too. Recycling is high on the Cybermen’s list of priorities, clearly…!
I’m really impressed with the sequence of the ships being destroyed, too. I’d totally forgotten all about it. In my head I thought they got the missiles all lined up and then the Cybermen jammed them and put a stop to the plan. You can imagine how excited I was when the ships actually did start blowing up.
It means we get that great final scene, where Vaughn finally loses control of the situation. He’s had a fairly tenuous grip on evens since the moment Doctor Who rocked up to interfere in his plans, but watching him get so casually cast aside in the final moments is brilliant fun, as is Doctor Who’s angry admonishment of the man;
Cyber Director: ‘The failure of this mission is due to you. We will now take over the invasion.’
Vaughn: ‘No! Wait! Give me time! I can stop this opposition!’
Cyber Director: ‘There is no more time.’
Vaughn: ‘I won’t allow this invasion to…’
Cyber Director: ‘We no longer need you. A Cyber-megatron bomb will be delivered. We must destroy life on Earth completely. Every living being.’
Doctor Who: ‘Is this what you wanted? To be the ruler of a dead world?’
Another 7/10 for this one, with everything still to play for in the final episode.
Oh, and I have nothing much to add to this final thought, but innit weird seeing Troughton’s Doctor Who driving a jeep? Vehicles will become something of a staple for the series soon enough, but here and now it feels so odd!
One (more) last thing; Doctor Who describes the Cybermen here as ‘ruthless and inhuman killers’, which is almost exactly the same description he gave them in The Wheel in Space, so I’m guessing Derrick Sherwin must have liked that turn of phrase! He was script editor of the earlier story, so perhaps he was responsible for it there, too. And now I think about it, ‘inhuman killers’ pops up in Episode Five of this story as well!
I like to think it could have become a catchphrase for the Cyberman stories. Is it too late to record Tom Baker saying it to insert into Revenge?
The Invasion — Episode Eight
Oh, I can’t tell you how pleased I am. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had it that The Invasion all fell apart at the end and was a bit of a let down in the climax. That’s not the case at all, though, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve really enjoyed this!
It’s funny how you remember things. Having now watched today’s two episodes I can sort of see where my recollection of the story has come from — it’s a fusing of several totally unrelated memories. I recalled the ending being a desperate scramble to have the missiles ready in time, with them being primed and disarmed over and over until Zoe was able to fix things just in the nick of time. I’d clearly recalled Zoe’s impressive calculations in Episode Seven and put it together in my mind with the reused stock footage across both of these instalments.
I’d also worried that having spent six episodes raising the stakes, they wouldn’t be able to satisfactorily resolve it all in time. Well that turned out to not be the case at all. If anything, they do a really good job of keeping the tension going, following up the general defeat of the invasion fleet with the revelation that there’s still a bomb to stop.
All things considered, I’d say this is one of the more successful closing episodes of a Doctor Who story!
There have been loads of moments throughout this story that wouldn’t have felt out of place in a modern Who story, and one of my favourites is in this episode. Vaughn — having destroyed the Cyber Director — frantically calls for Packer on the video screen. There’s a moment of silence where it looks like they might be totally alone… and then a Cyberman looms into view! That’s brilliant!
I’m not being over-dramatic when I say I gasped at that, because it was proper powerful drama.
And then they go and undercut it by having Packer burst into the room and get shot down by said Cyberman. I can see what they were going for, but I think they’d have been better off cutting that scene a minute earlier. If ever they edit this story down into a feature-length version, that should be the first cut they make.
Of course I can’t talk about this episode without praising the final ground battle against the Cybermen. I said the other day that I wanted a Cyberman equivalent of the Yeti battle from The Web of Fear, and by God we got it here. There’s only ever four Cybermen on the screen at once, but you really get the sense that there’s more. It’s so effective that you don’t question it for a moment. And in typical Doctor Who style, they undercut the tension brilliantly with flourishes of humour — I love Doctor Who jumping in pain as a Cyberman fires at him, and then posing for the camera as Isobel snaps away. I don’t think Sally Faulkner is actually taking images there, but if she is then they certainly don’t survive any more, and that’s a pity!
Vaughn’s death is a wonderful moment, and I think it’s perfectly timed. He doesn’t really get redeemed, he never quite manages to get one over on the Cybermen despite his varied assurances throughout the story. That feels right. I think the character comes back in some of the later spin-off fiction, and it’s the perfect example of using continuity elements that should be better left alone. This ending is spot on.
I feel a little guilty that I didn’t spot Frazer Hines’ absence from this episode until it was pointed out by Zoe (‘But what about Jamie?’), just in time for him to pop up in the pre-filmed departure footage.
It’s worth nothing that the TARDIS prop has had a bit of modification between the Fifth and Sixth Production Blocks — handles have been added to both doors and the ‘Pull to Open’ sign. It’s the first time we’ve seen the prop with handles since An Unearthly Child — and even there they were only attached by accident. The handles were added to the prop when it appeared in an episode of Out of the Unknown between recording on Doctor Who. It was for the recording of that same episode that an actual cubby hole was added to the prop to house a phone, too, which you can see on screen while the door is open.
I was fully intending to give this final episode an eight, but having sat and typed up my thoughts I’m bumping that up to a 9/10. The Invasion really is something special, and it’s no wonder that it effectively became the template for the next few years of the programme. Now if only someone could turn up Episodes One and Four so we can enjoy it in full…
