The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Invasion (Episodes Five - Eight)
The Invasion - Episode 5 (20/11/08)
Very cool this week. The Cybermen have been arriving over several months so there's hundreds of them in London and Vaughn's been reactivating them and sending them off into the sewers ready for the invasion which has now been brought forward to dawn! He seems to be getting his own way with the Cybercontroller in his offices, though I expect all its promises will be void once the invasion has taken place.
The Brigadier has gone to Geneva to gain authority to attack Vaughn's factories as Vaughn has his boss brainwashed, and Isobel came up with the idea of photographing a Cyberman in order to provide Geneva with evidence. However, the Brigadier refused to let her do it herself so she went behind his back and took Jamie and Zoe with her.
Meanwhile, Vaughn tested his emotion machine on a Cyberman which went off screaming into the sewers. Very cool! And Isobel et al. were followed into the sewers by a local bobby who encountered two Cybermen who killed him (very cool!) and now Isobel et al. are trapped between them and a screaming Cyberman. This has got to be one of the coolest stories since The War Machines. Even The Enemy Of The World wasn't this good! Roll on Episode Six!
The Invasion - Episode 6 (07/12/08)
Wow! What amounted to a pretty dull and uneventful episode picked up in the last ten minutes and gave us one of the best cliffhangers EVER! However, before that, the screaming Cyberman went right past Jamie, Zoe and Isobel and was blown up with the two others by Captain Jimmy. Then they returned to UNIT HQ where, eventually, and following an off-screen rescue of Professor Watkins by 'at least 30 UNIT solders' (!) which also resulted in Vaughn's chief scientist meeting an unceremoniously anonymous demise (I wasn't entirely sure who he was or why I should care), the Doctor figured out that the Cybermen have their spaceships behind the moon ready to pop out and use Vaughn's micromonolithic circuits (in every piece of modern technology) to gain mental control of the Human race by transmitting a mind controlling signal to them via Earth's satellites. Which they did at the very end of the episode.
Nevertheless, the Doctor has made UNIT some Anti-Mind-Control devices, so they should be okay. And Vaughn only has the one Anti-Cyberman device now. And the Cybermen burst out of the sewers and marched around in front of St. Paul's which was really, really cool! Great story!
The Invasion - Episode 7 (14/12/08)
God, this one's going on forever! But it's still really good. Everyone on Earth except for Vaughn's men, some of the UNIT forces and the Cybermen are paralysed and Cybermen are everywhere. Vaughn has sent his men to retrieve Professor Watkins but he and the Doctor's group escaped. Not before both the Professor and Jamie were shot, though. They survived.
Meanwhile, the Brigadier realised the Russians were preparing a moon mission, meaning a rocket was ready for departure, meaning they could attach a warhead and destroy the Cybermen or something. While Jimmy went off to do that, the Doctor buggered off to confront Vaughn, and Zoe went with the Brigadier et al. to try and fire some 'anti-missile missiles' at the invading Cyberfleet. The UNIT Major thought they stood little chance of defeating the fleet with the missiles they'd got, but Zoe proved what a genius she is by calculating the right trajectory for wiping out the majority of the fleet.
However, finding themselves under attack, the Cybercontroller thing in Vaughn's office has relieved control of the invasion from Vaughn after previously allowing him to run the whole thing and has ordered the destruction of all life on Earth.
Really good episode, especially for the Doctor and Zoe with good performances from both plus the Brigadier and Vaughn. Even though this has been going on for nearly two months and is looking to be almost as long as Bill's epic Dalek/Mavic Chen story (also starring Kevin Stoney as the chief villain, yet without the regular chewing of scenery) this story hasn't been boring. This has, therefore, to be the best Troughton story so far as even some of the four parters have dragged in the past! How many more weeks, I wonder!
The Invasion - Episode 8 (21/12/08)
What a great story! The Doctor persuaded Vaughn to help them defeat the Cybermen who were going to destroy the Earth by sending a bomb to the planet following Vaughn's radio transmissions. He and the Doctor headed off to stop the transmissions but the Cybermen were everywhere and, at the last minute, Vaughn was killed.
Packer also turned up briefly to die early in the episode. Fortunately, UNIT turned up to help the Doctor and the transmission was stopped. So the Cybermen tried another way and were eventually defeated by missiles and the Russian warhead. I don't have to go into details, save to say that there were about three apparent endings but all were needed because each time you were left thinking 'but won't the Cybermen just do such-and-such?', which is pretty much what you've had in every other Cyber-story but not gone on to any further attacks.
Corporal Benton played quite a big part, taking over from Jimmy (who turned up after all the action to flirt with Isobel) and Jamie was absent again except for a cameo as they left (yay!). All in all, this has been the best story since The Macra Terror, maybe even The Power Of The Daleks, and definitely without question the best Earth-based story since The War Machines. What's amazing is it's the second longest story we've had and was totally fantastic! I'm sure the next story will be a big disappointment, but so what after eight weeks of really good Sci Fi!
Very cool this week. The Cybermen have been arriving over several months so there's hundreds of them in London and Vaughn's been reactivating them and sending them off into the sewers ready for the invasion which has now been brought forward to dawn! He seems to be getting his own way with the Cybercontroller in his offices, though I expect all its promises will be void once the invasion has taken place.
The Brigadier has gone to Geneva to gain authority to attack Vaughn's factories as Vaughn has his boss brainwashed, and Isobel came up with the idea of photographing a Cyberman in order to provide Geneva with evidence. However, the Brigadier refused to let her do it herself so she went behind his back and took Jamie and Zoe with her.
Meanwhile, Vaughn tested his emotion machine on a Cyberman which went off screaming into the sewers. Very cool! And Isobel et al. were followed into the sewers by a local bobby who encountered two Cybermen who killed him (very cool!) and now Isobel et al. are trapped between them and a screaming Cyberman. This has got to be one of the coolest stories since The War Machines. Even The Enemy Of The World wasn't this good! Roll on Episode Six!
The Invasion - Episode 6 (07/12/08)
Wow! What amounted to a pretty dull and uneventful episode picked up in the last ten minutes and gave us one of the best cliffhangers EVER! However, before that, the screaming Cyberman went right past Jamie, Zoe and Isobel and was blown up with the two others by Captain Jimmy. Then they returned to UNIT HQ where, eventually, and following an off-screen rescue of Professor Watkins by 'at least 30 UNIT solders' (!) which also resulted in Vaughn's chief scientist meeting an unceremoniously anonymous demise (I wasn't entirely sure who he was or why I should care), the Doctor figured out that the Cybermen have their spaceships behind the moon ready to pop out and use Vaughn's micromonolithic circuits (in every piece of modern technology) to gain mental control of the Human race by transmitting a mind controlling signal to them via Earth's satellites. Which they did at the very end of the episode.
Nevertheless, the Doctor has made UNIT some Anti-Mind-Control devices, so they should be okay. And Vaughn only has the one Anti-Cyberman device now. And the Cybermen burst out of the sewers and marched around in front of St. Paul's which was really, really cool! Great story!
The Invasion - Episode 7 (14/12/08)
God, this one's going on forever! But it's still really good. Everyone on Earth except for Vaughn's men, some of the UNIT forces and the Cybermen are paralysed and Cybermen are everywhere. Vaughn has sent his men to retrieve Professor Watkins but he and the Doctor's group escaped. Not before both the Professor and Jamie were shot, though. They survived.
Meanwhile, the Brigadier realised the Russians were preparing a moon mission, meaning a rocket was ready for departure, meaning they could attach a warhead and destroy the Cybermen or something. While Jimmy went off to do that, the Doctor buggered off to confront Vaughn, and Zoe went with the Brigadier et al. to try and fire some 'anti-missile missiles' at the invading Cyberfleet. The UNIT Major thought they stood little chance of defeating the fleet with the missiles they'd got, but Zoe proved what a genius she is by calculating the right trajectory for wiping out the majority of the fleet.
However, finding themselves under attack, the Cybercontroller thing in Vaughn's office has relieved control of the invasion from Vaughn after previously allowing him to run the whole thing and has ordered the destruction of all life on Earth.
Really good episode, especially for the Doctor and Zoe with good performances from both plus the Brigadier and Vaughn. Even though this has been going on for nearly two months and is looking to be almost as long as Bill's epic Dalek/Mavic Chen story (also starring Kevin Stoney as the chief villain, yet without the regular chewing of scenery) this story hasn't been boring. This has, therefore, to be the best Troughton story so far as even some of the four parters have dragged in the past! How many more weeks, I wonder!
The Invasion - Episode 8 (21/12/08)
What a great story! The Doctor persuaded Vaughn to help them defeat the Cybermen who were going to destroy the Earth by sending a bomb to the planet following Vaughn's radio transmissions. He and the Doctor headed off to stop the transmissions but the Cybermen were everywhere and, at the last minute, Vaughn was killed.
Packer also turned up briefly to die early in the episode. Fortunately, UNIT turned up to help the Doctor and the transmission was stopped. So the Cybermen tried another way and were eventually defeated by missiles and the Russian warhead. I don't have to go into details, save to say that there were about three apparent endings but all were needed because each time you were left thinking 'but won't the Cybermen just do such-and-such?', which is pretty much what you've had in every other Cyber-story but not gone on to any further attacks.
Corporal Benton played quite a big part, taking over from Jimmy (who turned up after all the action to flirt with Isobel) and Jamie was absent again except for a cameo as they left (yay!). All in all, this has been the best story since The Macra Terror, maybe even The Power Of The Daleks, and definitely without question the best Earth-based story since The War Machines. What's amazing is it's the second longest story we've had and was totally fantastic! I'm sure the next story will be a big disappointment, but so what after eight weeks of really good Sci Fi!
This is arguably the best 'long' story (more than six episodes) in the series' history - well plotted, well paced, well directed and well acted. Sure, it reduces the Cybermen to non-speaking alien guns for hire, but the rest is great. The introduction proper of UNIT works really well, and as much as it would have been nice to have Anne and Professor Travers back for continuity, Isobel as a character is a great addition to the series. As I've mentioned in the past, Anne and Isobel seem like templates for Liz and Jo, so while they didn't get any more time in the show themselves, their legacy is pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteI often cite The Power Of The Daleks and The Macra Terror as my favourite Troughton stories (I find it so hard to choose between) with The Enemy Of The World coming up in second place, but I often forget exactly how much I really loved The Invasion when I reached it in my marathon, and reading my notes back reminded me exactly how impressive this story really is. The worst I say about it is that Episode 6 was mostly 'dull and uneventful' (not something I had to say about the previous five weeks - compare that to the previous two stories which didn't even last that long!) and yet it picks up in the last few minutes with one of the most iconic cliffhangers in the show's history; a cliffhanger which you'd expect to come right before the final episode, but not in this case! It's also a brilliant introduction for UNIT, Lethbridge-Stewart being the perfect character to bring back to head the group, and his supporting team of Captain Jimmy and Benton are perfect - it's just a shame Jimmy didn't return.
DeleteThe Invasion is a brilliant template for the Pertwee era featuring the atmosphere and drama of Season 7. It's not surprising that when Derrick Sherwin oversaw the set up of the new era he based it on this story. I'm possibly going to have to re-evaluate exactly what my favourite Troughton story is; it's definitely one of the four I've mentioned!
The only pity really is that it's got the Cybermen in it - otherwise they could have done exactly this story in Season 7 and given the Third Doctor his encounter with the silver giants that he missed out on!
DeleteMaybe so, but I think they did the right thing by having an entirely new start with a season which featured no previous monsters and aliens. Plus Pertwee has tonnes of great stories, but Troughton's greats are quite sparse (in my opinion, obviously), and I wouldn't want to take this one away from him. Also, I wouldn't want to lose any of the stories from Season 7, not even for the Cybermen. I'm quite content with Big Finish's 'The Blue Tooth' representing Pertwee's encounter with the Cybermen (The Five Doctors aside).
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