The Invasion
Episode 46
Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor
Frazer Hines as Jaime, Wendy Padbury as Zoe and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Cybernetically enhanced Doctor Who? Not quite, but it has been rebuilt using children’s home recordings and stylistic animation.
Synopsis
The Doctor, Jaime and Zoe have just escaped from the Mind Robber and the TARDIS reassembles itself on the far side of the moon, but the TARDIS is experiencing problems. A mysterious missile is launched from the moon’s dark side and they barely escape, materializing in a field.
The decide to visit their old friend professor Travers in the hopes he can help them fix their faulty circuits, but Travers is gone and has lent his home to professor Watkins and his niece. Watkins is missing after going to work for International Electromatics (IE).
The Doctor tries to locate Watkins but runs afoul of Tobias Vaughn, president of IE. He an Jaime get out, but are picked up by military types who turn out to be working for Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Lethbridge-Stewart helped the Doctor battle the Yeti invasion and puts the Doctor in the picture about strange happenings at IE.
Meanwhile, Zoe and Watkins’ neice are captured by Vaughn. Vaughn wants Watkins to continue work on an invention and uses threats against his niece to force him to comply. The device is a weapon to be used against Vaughn’s mysterious allies who have recognized the Doctor and want him destroyed.
The Doctor and Jaime are caught again and taken to IE’s country facility, where they meet Watkins. With help from UNIT, the two escape with the girls.
The Doctor and Jamie return once more and discover Vaughn’s allies are no less than an invasion force of Cybermen, intent on converting the entire human race into Cybermen.
Vaughn plans to use the Cybermen to take over the planet, then use his weapon to force them to allow him to stay human and control the world. The Doctor’s interference causes them to accelerate the invasion. The Cybermen are being staged in the sewers of London and they launch their attack by transmitting a signal to every piece of equipment made by IE around the world. The signal hypnotizes and paralyzes everyone on the planet. The Doctor developed a few devices that could block out the signal and they and many of the Brigadier’s UNIT soldiers are protected.
They use British and Soviet military rockets to defend the Earth against the space fleet while the Doctor confronts Vaughn. Vaughn realizes the Cybermen are not going to honor their bargain and he teams with the Doctor to stop them. In the end, Vaughn is killed by the Cybermen, but the Cyberfleet is destroyed by UNIT.
Analysis
This classic serial was the prototype for the initial Jon Pertwee series, reintroducing Lethbridge-Stewart, formerly a Colonel, now promoted to Brigadier and put in charge of UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.
The story is Earth-based and takes advantage of that to have a high percentage of location footage. The story is good, if a bit overlong, and is moody and uses black and white very effectively. It is, unfortunately, rather obvious that the invading thousands of Cybermen are really only six in number and my family were disappointed that they didn’t make that mechanical jack-boot stomping sound like they do in the Tennant episodes.
The incidental music in this episode deserves special mention. While I have virtually every Doctor Who music CD, I’ve always found a lot of the music to be lacking. It’s often discordant, or reminiscent of a child’s plunking on a toy keyboard. In this series, the music was interesting. Apparently it had not been scored to the action, but was a suite of music the director could pick and choose from. The ominous music used in the sewers and other places of danger is well-placed and moody. On the flop-side, the “military†music used whenever UNIT is on the move sounds too much like military pipes from the 18th century and is much too jaunty.
No review of this DVD would be complete without mention of the truly outstanding feature – this is the first time this serial has been seen “complete†in decades. In this case, there was no miraculous stash of missing BBC tapes found in Saddam Hussein’s bunkers, but a clever experiment which succeeds very well. The BBC is in possession of audio recordings of (apparently) every missing Doctor Who episode. These recordings were made by children audio taping Doctor Who when it originally aired. An audio engineer has rebuilt the audio soundtrack for the missing episodes 1 and 4 and then a team of animators re-created the episode in animation form.
The result is a very satisfying and finally complete eight-part series. While I’d be happier if they could find the missing episodes, this is the first time I feel they’ve done justice to Who. I certainly hope they do more of these for other missing stories.
I’m not crazy about the style of the animation, which looks rather like low-motion flash animations for the web and it’s a bit too “arty†compared to the matter-of-fact directorial style of the remaining live episodes. Still, it works and, combined with the restored soundtrack, the lost performances live again.
This is a great Who release.
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