The Android Invasion Part One

The one where a quaint English village isn't all it seems...

The Android Invasion has an odd opening. It starts with a UNIT soldier looking quite zombified, his right arm twitching like he's lashed up to jump leads, walking inexorably through bushes and brambles. He is glassy-eyed and empty, and obviously on his way somewhere, but we then cut away to the TARDIS materialising in a forest clearing and the twitchy soldier's forgotten about for a few minutes.

Mind you, that TARDIS arrival is beautiful, isn't it? What Doctor Who fan doesn't adore seeing that gorgeous blue police box fade into view, then wait expectantly to see who comes out first? It's a rite of passage for all fans, I reckon: you're not a true fan until you feel your heart skip a beat at a TARDIS materialisation! This time, it's in a sunny woodland glade, one of the most perfect environments for it to happen. And then the Fourth Doctor steps out swigging from a bottle of ginger pop. Does Doctor Who get any purer than this?

As ever, the interaction between Tom Baker and Lis Sladen is laced with gold, their familiarity and symbiotic working relationship just pouring out of the screen. It's full of little moments that make this Doctor and companion so real and relatable, such as the bit where the Doctor warns Sarah to "watch the bramble", she steps into the bramble, and he then says he told her to watch the bramble. Subtle, but so powerful. Tom's voice is conspicuously hoarse though, as he had a bad throat during the location filming. It's weird to hear Tom's usually booming voice deprived of some of its power, it kind of makes the Fourth Doctor less present. Ginger pop's the right thing to be drinking for a sore throat though!

A bunch of white jump-suited astronauts start firing at the Doctor and Sarah with their index fingers, which instantly makes me believe our old friends the Autons are back in town. Our heroes scarper, with Sarah Jane putting in a practice run for her infamous "roll down a slight incline" in The Five Doctors. Truthfully, this incline does look only very slightly more tricksy, but it's a pleasing coincidence that this happens when she's wearing a salmon pink outfit very similar to the one she wears in the anniversary story. Maybe pink's bad luck for Sarah?

The zombified soldier from the start then returns and falls unstoppably over the edge of a cliff, crashing to the rocks below and dying. The Doctor then spies a strange rock-like coffin which seems familiar to him, but which he cannot place, before more astronauts start firing at them with their fingers. It's all very strange but exciting stuff, and the shot of the Doctor and Sarah running along the edge of a field pursued by astronauts shooting at them is another pure Doctor Who moment.

As with so many episode ones written by Terry Nation, this is a rollercoaster ride of action and intrigue, as we join the Doctor and his friend on a journey of discovery before the traditional shock cliffhanger. The Doctor and Sarah's arrival in uber-quaint English village Devesham is wonderful, full of red phone boxes, thatched roofs and a market cross. Devesham appears to be deserted however, so the Doctor rather wonderfully suggests: "Let's try the pub!"

You don't get many pubs in Doctor Who, so it's always a bit odd seeing the Doctor in the same shot as a pint of ale (Terror of the Zygons and Battlefield spring instantly to mind, but there are others, including The Smugglers and The Daemons). The Fleur de Lys is as deserted as the village, and the till, as with the dead soldier's wallet, is full of newly minted coins, all made in the same year (pity Sarah doesn't say what that year is!). Suddenly, a van arrives in the village to offload a bunch of automaton-like villagers, who walk blankly into the pub, sit down and wait until the clock strikes twelve...

... At which point they spring into action and carry on as normal as if nothing had happened and they'd been there for hours. It's all so strange and intriguing, you can't help but be hooked in by Nation's mystery, and it's very effective that Dudley Simpson does not score these scenes of the villagers arriving. He leaves the pictures silent, unaccompanied, which only adds to the oddness. Also back in action is the dead UNIT soldier who twitched himself over the cliff earlier. He looks alive and well and completely unfazed by his earlier dispatch. Something very odd is happening in Devesham, and the Doctor's determined to get to the bottom of it. He heads to the Space Defence Centre, leaving Sarah to keep an eye on the mysterious villagers.

Sarah doesn't find these villagers very welcoming, at all. Director Barry Letts uses quick cut close-ups of their emotionless faces, which has a tendency to provoke giggles as some of the actors are quite comical to look at! Sarah gets short shrift from the revivified Corporal Adams and the suspicious landlord Mr Morgan, so opts instead to return to the TARDIS (but not before delivering a slam-dunk parting shot by saying to Adams: "I'm sure you shouldn't be drinking so soon after breaking your neck!").

Sarah discovers that these killer astronauts who stalk the village aren't human at all, but robots, with really rubbish circuitry for faces under their visors (although the scene where a robot turns to camera to reveal its non-face is rather effective). Back at the TARDIS, someone's plonked a rocky coffin outside, inside which is a middle-aged gentleman who tries to strangle Sarah. This is after the TARDIS has decided to dematerialise without her, so all in all Sarah isn't having a very good day.

All of these strange events are suitably intriguing, but do seem quite disparate at the moment, almost as if they're thrown in for the sake of being weird. An abandoned village, coffins with people in who try to kill you, robot astronauts with guns in their fingers, dead men who come back to life, and a countryside which smells of England after the rain despite the bone-dry ground. How all this is connected will hopefully become clearer, but at the moment it feels both intriguing and puzzling.

At the Space Defence Centre (which has sliding doors that sound like Zygon doors), the Doctor finds the Brigadier's office, but he's not around. Instead, his office is being used by Senior Defence Astronaut Guy Crayford, a man who seems to have reached the top of his profession despite only having one eye. I wouldn't like to be aboard a space rocket piloted by him!

The Doctor's encounter with Crayford is great, as the Doctor reels off his usual teasing comments, which just wind up his captor. This is probably inadvisable because Crayford already seems a little highly strung to start with, insisting: "I'm asking the questions and I have the gun!" like a petulant child.

The Doctor's attempted escape is nicely shot, as he runs along the centre's roof expertly dodging every single bullet the soldiers' machine guns and rifles fire at him, before leaping to the ground below. He's ultimately captured by robot astronauts, dropping the classic line: "Is that finger loaded?"

As the end of the episode nears, you might be forgiven for expecting a big Dalek reveal, which is what almost always happens in scripts by Terry Nation. But this story is not a Dalek story, and we're surprised by the reveal of an ugly-looking monster hiding in the cavity wall peeking out at Sarah from behind an intercom. It's yet another thoroughly weird and unexpected moment in an episode packed full of weird and unexpected moments, and although none of it makes any kind of sense just yet, it's great fun to watch, and very intriguing. I'm hooked!

First broadcast: November 22nd, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The eerily empty village pub being repopulated by blank-faced villagers.
The Bad: Although one of a number of twists and surprises, the design of the android face circuitry is a bit rubbish.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-android-invasion.html

The Android Invasion is available on BBC DVD as part of the UNIT Files box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-U-N-I-T-Invasion-Dinosaurs/dp/B006H4R8W6/