The one where UNIT and the Cybermen finally clash - on screen!
"We must destroy all life on Earth completely," mumbles the Cyber-planner at the start of the episode, a clip I remember vividly being in BBC2's 1992 documentary Resistance is Useless. Back then I wondered what the bloody hell it was, and 26 years later I'm still wondering...
After Zoe gets the overwhelming approval of every male in the British military thanks to her sharp intellect and figure-hugging catsuit ("Can't we keep her, Sir, she's much prettier than a computer!"), we're subjected to a few more interminable walkie-talkie exchanges between platoons and bases before the real action for the serial finale kicks in.
Douglas Camfield handles the battle between the Cybermen and UNIT just as expertly and knowledgeably as he did for that with the Yeti in The Web of Fear, although somehow this set-up seems ever so slightly less special and epic. Yes, there's a helicopter and several military vehicles, and plenty of soldiers armed to the teeth with bazookas and rifles. But what The Web of Fear has which is missing here is that the Yeti came over as a formidable, deadly force. The Yeti killed people (a lot of people!). They chased, and attacked, and maimed. Here, the Cybermen seem pretty ineffectual, succumbing to each and every shot UNIT makes. At no point do the Cybermen seem as dangerous as they should. They seem numerous, but not dangerous.
Of course, they prove to be very dangerous for Tobias Vaughan, who gets his final comeuppance at the flame-throwing hands of a lone Cyberman. He seems to get dispatched too easily for my liking. After all, he supposedly has a cybernetic body which has previously shown itself to be impervious to bullets. Why would a couple of explosions at his feet suddenly do for him? There is a splendid bit of attention to detail when the Doctor makes his hop-skip-jump escape from the Cybermen's explosions though - all eyes are usually on Troughton's slightly clownish escape, but in the background you can still see Vaughan's body swinging lifelessly on the gantry.
Vaughan's demise has been a long time coming. He was selling humanity out to the Cybermen, after all. There's no way you can feel sorry for the tyrant, although Kevin Stoney gives it his best shot. Vaughan tells the Doctor that he cannot appeal to his better nature (maybe because he doesn't have one?), but that he will side with him in order to get his revenge on the Cybermen, the allies who betrayed his trust. Selfish to the end. "They destroyed my dream..."
One of my favourite moments in all of Doctor Who ever occurs in this episode too. After seven episodes of Vaughan addressing Packer on his little intercom TV screen, we expect to see Peter Halliday's face slide into view whenever Stoney calls him up. But for one last time, the rug is pulled out from under the viewer when Vaughan calls "Packerrrr", there's the briefest of delays, and then a Cyberman mask slides into shot, accompanied by that chilling Don Harper sting. A blank face staring back, silent but threatening. When I saw The Invasion for the very first time I was genuinely chilled by that moment, a piece of expert direction from Camfield.
The final defeat of the Cybermen depends on the Russians, ironically, but first they have to alter the course of their rocket. How long will it take? About 12 minutes. "This is going to be a long 12 minutes," says the Brigadier. Cue a montage of shots depicting the achingly long passage of 720 seconds, which includes all the hackneyed motifs such as ticking clocks, stony-faced extras, finger-tapping, lip-biting and... a dropped cup. "Sorry, sir!" says silly Corporal Benton. Well, quite.
The Cybermen are finally destroyed by stock footage and the day is saved (and we won't see a rematch for another six years!). There's a lot of cleaning up to be done on the streets and in the sewers of London, but while the Brigadier gets on with that (sadly, we don't get a goodbye scene with him), Isobel and her "dolly soldier" Jimmy Turner transport the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe back to the country and the field where they left their invisible TARDIS. We're left wondering if Isobel and Jimmy have a future together, and I'd like to think so, but the relationship is going to have a tough start if it's to survive the fact Isobel will be travelling the world as a top photographer for a publishing company, and Captain Turner will be on international manoeuvres with UNIT. We see neither of them ever again, sadly... But I suppose Big Finish are bound to get around to The Isobel and Jimmy Turner Adventures one day.
The Invasion is a sturdy contemporary action thriller, with good characterisation and solid use of the hardware and personnel at its disposal. At eight episodes though, it's a very slow invasion (not quite as slow as The Power of Three's!) and takes far too long to happen, and when it does happen, oodles of it happens off-screen. But I suppose that can be forgiven because the rest of it is perfectly enjoyable and well-made entertainment, particularly for its time and budget. Don Harper's music is wonderful, if repetitive. I still wish Isobel Watkins was Polly though... even Polly would have passed the time of day with Professor Watkins, unlike his niece.
By the way, have you ever heard Don Harper's version of the Doctor Who theme tune? You should, it's crazy! In 1973, Don Harper's Homo Electronicus composed a version of Ron Grainer's legendary composition which is both genius and appalling in equal measures. If you're familiar at all with the infamously unused Delaware version of the theme from around the same time, you'll have some idea how this starts off, but it soon mutates into a bizarre electro-dub synthesised jazz-orchestral mind-fuck. Try it:
First broadcast: December 21st, 1968
Steve's Scoreboard The Good: The battle between UNIT and the Cybermen is impressive, but it's still the Cyberman on the intercom screen that gets me every time! The Bad: "This is going to be a long 12 minutes..." Quite. Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 7.0 out of 10) NEXT TIME:The Krotons...
I noticed that there's a lot of action that takes place on screen, but there are some action sequences that take place off-screen, such as the rescue of Professor Watkins and UNIT destroying the transmmiter. Given that this is eight episodes, what it chooses to focus on and what it choose to say happened off screen is interesting.
I noticed that there's a lot of action that takes place on screen, but there are some action sequences that take place off-screen, such as the rescue of Professor Watkins and UNIT destroying the transmmiter. Given that this is eight episodes, what it chooses to focus on and what it choose to say happened off screen is interesting.
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