The Invasion of Time Part Six

The one where Leela and K-9 decide to stay behind on Gallifrey...

Two minutes in to the sixth episode, Sontaran Commander Stor finally takes off his mask... and, as suspected, it wasn't worth the wait. The mask is an ill-fitting travesty of previous Sontaran masks, it isn't even attached to Derek Deadman's face around the eyes or nose. Coupled with Deadman's painfully poor performance (his delivery is slow, rasping and leaden), the whole Sontaran experience is disappointing. Deadman might be right for the part in that he is short and stout, but other than that, the guy just can't act. This is the sort of actor more accustomed to roles such as "Man at telephone box", "Knicker snatcher" and "Second porter". Playing a potato-headed Doctor Who monster might not be up there with Hamlet or King Lear, but Deadman does not have the talent required to play a convincing villain in a rubber mask. Kevin Lindsay did. Derek Deadman does not.

He can't even put his helmet on correctly, plonking it on his head skew-whiff in a moment that made me burst with laughter. Derek Deadman's Stor is a laughing stock.

The Doctor, Leela and Rodan escape into the depths of the dimensionally transcendental TARDIS, all of which is filmed on location at St Anne's Hospital. And you can tell, because there's absolutely no attempt to make this look like the TARDIS. It's cheap enough to put the familiar TARDIS hum over all of these scenes, but it's nowhere near enough to convince. There are endless tedious scenes in TARDIS store room 23A, and then 23B, with even more tedious dialogue indulging Tom Baker's sometimes puerile sense of humour (the bit where he taps the sundial made me want to throw my carriage clock at the telly). There's even one scene where the characters themselves are sitting doing nothing, looking bored.

It's great to try and explore the idea that the TARDIS is so vast inside, to investigate the possibilities of its dimensional transcendentalism. But the lack of TARDIS iconography to help ease the jarring transition from the control room to starkly unfamiliar locations is disappointing. At no point am I convinced that St Anne's Hospital's metal workshop, boiler room or lift shaft are actually the insides of the Doctor's TARDIS, and it completely takes me out of the fiction. Something similar happened 35 years later with Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, which held so much promise but disappointed on almost every level by failing to meet expectations, failing to fulfill potential and failing to make it look like the TARDIS.

By the time the Sontarans reach British Oxygen's swimming pool - sorry, the TARDIS bathroom - it's become a total joke. So much so that a ham-fisted attempt at some monster action results in a Sontaran leaping over the corner of the pool, stumbling into a sun lounger and crashing to the floor like an inept cat burglar. The whole thing is woeful.

The Doctor hypnotises Rodan into helping K-9 build a De-Mat Gun. Why he needs to hypnotise her, I'm not sure, as she'd probably have done it willfully anyway, but maybe it's just another of Baker's "witty ideas", which I'm getting quite tired of now. A De-Mat Gun seems to be something very terrible and fearsome, something with which you can "rule the universe", but do the writers bother to tell us what exactly it is, how it works, and why it's so monumentally powerful? No. All we really know is that it's a big gun which makes people disappear (and in the end, makes itself disappear somehow).

By the end I'm lost as to what's going on any more, or why. Suddenly, Stor decides that he just wants to blow everything up, for "the glory". If the Sontarans can't control the power of the Time Lords, then nobody will. But at what point was it made clear the Sontarans couldn't control the Time Lords? They've not done too bad a job so far, especially with Kelner at their elbow solving every problem that comes their way. For Stor to just crack open the grenades and threaten to blow up Gallifrey, the Sontaran battle fleet and the entire galaxy is just lazy desperation on the part of writers Graham Williams and Anthony Read. They just need to finish this story, get this script finished, and the best way they can think of to do it is to get a great big gun and make the monsters disappear.

After the Doctor's zapped Stor, it's all over, despite there being more Sontarans hanging around the Citadel, and probably millions more in orbit around Gallifrey. The Doctor conveniently forgets all about everything - his presidential induction, the Vardans, the Sontarans, everything - as this is the "wisdom of Rassilon". If only I could forget the whole of The Invasion of Time ever happened too, that would be wisest.

And then, just when you think things can't sink any lower, they go and marry Leela off to a virtual stranger. If somebody asked me what the most inappropriate way of writing out the character of Leela would be, I'd probably say this. Leela and Andred barely know each other. They had a few tense exchanges in part 1, then didn't really speak again until 13 minutes into part 6, but we're expected to believe that they've developed a deep and lasting bond, a fondness which overrides Leela's loyalty to the Doctor. We're expected to believe that Leela - a huntress trained in hand-to-hand combat who is accustomed to the art of survival in jungles and deserts - is happy to give it all up to live in a cold, clinical, plastic academia where women appear to have next to no presence or authority, among a bunch of decrepit old men who believe in nothing other than their own ego?

And why is she even allowed to stay behind? Last season, the Doctor had to dump his best friend as he wasn't allowed to take humans to Gallifrey.

I don't mind K-9 opting to stay, although surely his loyalties should lie with his master? I mean, who needs the most protection: Leela, who will be living on a planet protected by both a transduction barrier and a quantum force field, as well as the commander of the Chancellery Guard. Or the Doctor, wandering the universe alone in his TARDIS with no defences apart from his questionable wit?

It's also really disappointing that the Doctor doesn't even say goodbye to Leela, or good luck, or congratulations. Not even a thank you. Once inside the TARDIS, when alone and unseen, he does seem sorry ("I'll miss you, savage") but it would have been nice for him to have said that to her. As it is, the Doctor just comes across as supremely ungrateful, almost glad to see the back of her.

I hate the way it ends, but then I also hate the way it starts, and all the bits in the middle too. It's a poorly written, passably directed, nonsensical mess. I realise it was written and made in difficult circumstances, but I'm not here to review that, I'm here to review what's on screen. And what I see is one of the naffest, weakest Doctor Who stories in the entire canon. And then Tom Baker goes and grins smugly into camera as the story, and the season, draws to a close. I'm sorry, but I'm glad it's done.

Season 15 has seen a terrible drop in quality for Doctor Who. From the dizzy heights of the atmospheric, spooky, eerie Horror of Fang Rock - one of my favourite stories so far - down to the cheap, dull runarounds of the latter half of the season, it isn't the finest way for the series to mark its 15th anniversary. I get the feeling Tom Baker is getting a little bored with it all, a little complacent and far less invested than he was three years before. The departure of producer Philip Hinchcliffe definitely damaged Doctor Who, because his replacement, Graham Williams, does not have the same eye for class at all. Let's hope Season 16 can offer up something a little more reliable, solid and engrossing.

While Doctor Who was away, its Saturday teatime slot was taken by a number of old films including, ironically, Charlton Heston's The Savage, as well as Rolf Harris's latest series, a Jim'll Fix It special, World Cup '78, and Wonder Woman. When it returned in the autumn, it would be with a new companion, a new old companion, and a brand new quest.

First broadcast: March 11th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The (very welcome) end titles.
The Bad: Derek Deadman. Oh, and the script writers.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 3.3 out of 10 - it's unexpected that, statistically, my least favourite season contains my very favourite story so far)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 17

NEXT TIME: The Ribos Operation...

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

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: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-invasion-of-time.html

The Invasion of Time is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Invasion-Time-DVD/dp/B0015083PI