Day 243 — August 31st 2021
The Invasion of Time Parts Five and Six
The Invasion of Time — Part Five
Hoo boy. Well my excitement at the arrival of the Sontarans has been short lived. There’s something really exciting about seeing them all lined up on the stairs in the cliffhanger, and the initial confrontation here. It’s the third Sontaran story, but the first time we’ve ever seen more than one on screen at the same time. There’s a scale to that which feels pretty grand, and they suit being in that expansive set.
But then they spend the rest of the episode being bumbling and a bit useless. There’s a point where they bang repeatedly on the door to Doctor Who’s office before concluding that they’re not going to break it down, and slink off to get some weapons. The leader tells them to bring back more troops — and in another scene he specifically orders three squadrons to carry out specific actions, but you never get the sense that there’s any more than the four we actually see on screen at any one time.
They’re not helped by the quality of the costumes, either, which have clearly been created on a budget. There’s a few shots here and there where the regular troopers look quite good — usually when shot from behind and at a distance — but the lead Sontaran looks dreadful. There’s nothing behind the eye sockets on the helmet, which means you’re stuck looking through at the mask underneath… where the eyes don’t even slightly line up with the ones on the helmet. When we get a close up of his hand at one stage it looks so much like a rubber glove that I’m baffled they didn’t just paint the whole thing black and pretend that’s exactly what it was. The whole thing ends up looking slapdash, and that’s a shame. We don’t get a look at the prosthetics under the helmet in this episode, but I know from experience that I’m not going to be impressed.
Still, they provide good cannon fodder, and the scene in which Leela throws a knife down a long corridor and strikes a Sontaran directly in the Probic Vent is brilliant. I’m gutted that we’re going to be losing her in the nexr episode, just as she’s gotten her mojo back.
I’ve little else to add for this one, so I’ll drop it to a 3/10 and head inside the TARDIS for the rest of the day.
The Invasion of Time — Part Six
I’ve been trying to psyche myself up for this episode by telling myself that it’s not as bad as I remember it being. In my head I had this down as almost entirely a run around in some totally unsuitable locations posing as Doctor Who’s TARDIS, with a tacked-on departure scene at the end for Leela. In actual fact, though, this episode is… oh. Oh dear. I mean let’s be honest, it has to be a 1/10 doesn’t it?
I always think that spending too long inside the TARDIS is a bad idea, and I’ve never been a big fan of the idea that it’s absolutely infinite and filled with every kind of room you could possibly imagine. All the same, though, if you are going to set an entire episode inside the ship, and make a gag about being trapped in the labyrinthine corridors, at least make it look vaguely like it might be the inside of the ship we’re used to seeing.
Now I suspect I’m not being entirely fair here. I can’t recall the specific situation, but I’m sure they were forced to make this episode out on location as a result of strikes or the like. I’m fairly certain that no one set out to make it look like this. But all the same, couldn’t they have found a location a little bit more suitable? Heck, I’d even buy it if they filmed in some country house and implied that Doctor Who had stuffed the ship full of mementoes from his adventures. As it is it looks like exactly what it was; an abandoned hospital. There’s something so wrong about seeing the TARDIS filled with bricks, and it stands out especially because you reach them the second you go from the Control Room to the first corridor.
I’d love to overlook it all and use my imagination to paint in a better version of the ship, but I simply can’t. It looks too wrong. I also think it’d be easier to overlook if there were absolutely anything interesting happening in this episode — but that’s not the case either. Almost the entire 25 minutes consists of Doctor Who and his chums being followed through the hospital by some of the most incompetent monsters we’ve ever seen.
There’s the one point in the swimming pool — another area which looks incredibly out of place — where a Sontaran tries to jump over a chair and fails. He comes crashing down the other side and then has to try and fake a fall moments later, which would look far more convincing if he weren’t trying so desperately not to ruin the costume by falling in the pool. I want to see the splash, damnit! The beauty of working on location is that there’s usually more opportunity to do a reshoot if something goes wrong, but for whatever reason they’ve decided to just go with this take. It’s laughable, but not in the way I’d like it to be.
As expected I’m also disappointed by the reveal of the lead Sontaran’s face here. It’s lacking even the subtleties of the Sontaran Experiment mask, and is such a downgrade from the Time Warrior original that I’ve almost got no words. It’s not helped by a fairly rubbish performance, which makes you really appreciate what an incredible job Kevin Lindsay was doing in those earlier stories. The Sontarans take a long break from the programme after this, and I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see them go on the basis of this.
And then there’s Leela’s departure. I think what I find most frustrating about it is that they almost looked like they were setting it up earlier in the story, but then it fell by the wayside. In Part One she gets some flirty banter with Andred while choosing an outfit for Doctor Who’s inauguration, but then she spends a grand total of about six more minutes with him across the rest of the story — and five of those are at the end of this episode. By Episode Three, when she was enjoying herself taking charge of the outcasts in the wilds of Gallifrey, I could honestly believe that she might choose to stay here and be part of that life. But the outsiders have had nothing to do for this entire episode, and only show up to wave the TARDIS goodbye.
It’s such a wasted opportunity, and I think Leela deserved better. She’s been an incredible character during her brief run on the programme, and more defined than most companions. It’s been helped by a stellar performance from Louise Jameson, and I think you can feel her embarrassment at having to act out this final scene.
On the whole, Season Fifteen has been a bit of a write off. In spite of the two gems — Horror of Fang Rock and The Sun Makers — it’s fared so poorly in my estimations to have become my lowest-rated season so far, dropping below Season Two, which has held that dubious honour since February. It ended up being, if anything, even worse than I was fearing. Still, tomorrow’s a chance to wipe the slate clean and start again, and I’m hoping Season Sixteen will be more to my tastes…
