The Android Invasion Part Two

The one where Harry and Benton come back... or do they?

What a fall from grace this serial takes with part two. After a highly intriguing and quite surreal first episode, this second installment degenerates very quickly into a dull runaround populated by some extremely unconvincing and generic monsters of the week. I've never been the greatest admirer of Barry Letts' work as a director, but his efforts in the first half of this episode to tease the appearance of the aliens (first their nobbly boots, then their hands) pales in comparison to the work of Douglas Camfield on Terror of the Zygons.

You can't help but compare this to Terror of the Zygons because it's all so painfully similar. As well as the rural location, and the presence of a quaint village and a local pub, you've got aliens trying to invade the Earth by stealth, using the duplication of humans as their "bridgehead", and secreting closed circuit cameras inside wall-mounted ornaments. The big difference though, is that the Kraals are rubbish and the Zygons aren't. The monster masks are poorly fitted to the actors, whose moving mouths can be seen quite clearly within, and although they look suitably thuggish and unusual, these space rhinos aren't a patch on their Judoon cousins!

So much of the episode is wasted with the Doctor on the run, hiding in cupboards, behind desks and even underwater. It's quite exciting to watch in the sense that our heroes are being hunted by apparently ravenous Rottweilers (in fact they look perfectly sweet), but it's when you're 10 minutes in and you realise not very much has happened except Sarah twisting her ankle that you start to get frustrated.

The return of RSM Benton is tarnished by the fact he's obviously a duplicate, not the real deal, and then Letts bungles the surprise appearance of former companion Harry Sullivan by having him on screen for something like two seconds, barely enough time to register and celebrate before he's gone again. And the fact Harry is also an android, not the real deal, is particularly disappointing, although it does mean we get to enjoy some of Ian Marter's Evil Harry acting that he did so well in... well, in the terribly superior Terror of the Zygons.

It's all so disappointing that I'll just list a few observations rather than write a cohesive review, because I'm still mourning the fact Harry and Benton aren't really back.

• Surely the first thing Sarah would think to tell the Doctor when reunited was that a) the TARDIS is gone, and b) the astronauts are actually robots. Actually, she tells him nothing, despite the fact that when her duplicate mentions "robot mechanics" later on, the Doctor doesn't question this.
• I love the fact the Space Defence Centre's reception desk has no fewer than four telephones, but no receptionist to answer them.
• With a more judicious rewrite, the episode 1 cliffhanger could have been so much better if it had the duplicate Benton or Harry holding the Doctor and Sarah at gunpoint, and not just an alien eye leering out of a cavity wall. How much more shocking would that ending have been?
• The idea of astronaut Guy Crayford returning to Earth with marauding aliens in tow smacks of The Ambassadors of Death. There's even a direct similarity between the Martian ambassadors and the "robot mechanics".
• Elisabeth Sladen pretends to trip up very unconvincingly, but I do like how Sarah vehemently refuses to be carried by the Doctor.
• When the Doctor emerges from his underwater hiding place, his bedraggled mop of hair makes him look like a Monoid from The Ark! But how does he dry off so quickly before returning to the pub?
• The Kraals speak with generic 'monster of the week' dialogue, saying "commence" instead of "start" and "seize" instead of "capture". Terry Nation may as well have written a Dalek story because the Kraals really are nothing special at all.
• The design and direction of the Kraal environment is reminiscent of the Zygons', but the main reason why it doesn't work nearly as well is the lighting: whereas John Dixon lit the Zygons' ship in gorgeous, contrasting greens and reds, evoking a truly alien environment, here Duncan Brown lights it quite flatly and it lacks any kind of otherworldly atmosphere.
• The calendar in the Fleur de Lys is always Friday, July 6th, which would make this either 1973 or 1979. Spookily, on Friday, July 6th, 1979, former Doctor Who writer Malcolm Hulke passed away, aged 54.
• Why are the Kraals so afraid of the Doctor's supposed scientific ability to reprogram their androids when they barely know him? All they know is that he is UNIT's unpaid scientific adviser, but what gives them the idea he's capable of scuppering their entire invasion plans?
• I love the fact that Sarah drinking the Doctor's ginger pop gives away the fact she's an android. What doesn't seem so canny however, is that the android Sarah tells the Doctor that there's a plan to replace humans with android duplicates, which he didn't really know before. Why would the Kraals want to arm their adversary with more information?
• Why was the TARDIS set to "pause" when it first arrived? The Doctor says that when Sarah put the key in the lock, the Ship continued its journey to "the real Earth" (how does he know this isn't the real Earth all of a sudden?). But this doesn't explain why the Doctor set it to pause when he first arrived, as he had no idea at that time that it wasn't the real Earth.
• Why did the Kraal duplicate of Sarah have a scarf? Sarah didn't have her scarf when she was duplicated (the Doctor had used it to throw the dogs off the scent), so why would she have a duplicate scarf? ARGH!

I don't have great hopes for part three, to be honest...

First broadcast: November 29th, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The cliffhanger with Sarah's face falling off to reveal a robot beneath is rightfully celebrated as a memorable moment (even if those robot circuit faces are a little silly).
The Bad: All of the mystery and intrigue of part one is unravelled by a tedious runaround episode which squanders its strongest elements, ie duplicate Harry and Benton.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

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

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; 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/