The Invasion of Time Part Three

The one where the Doctor reveals that he's not the bad guy after all...

The invading tin foil aliens are called Vardans apparently, which is as rubbish a name as any I suppose. The Vardans are proclaimed to be instantly in control of the entire planet, with barely a word of protest or a single shot being fired. The entire Time Lord civilisation bends its knee to a trio of shimmering Bacofoil ghosts, which is literally pathetic. The Vardans - one of which speaks with a broad Scottish accent - do nothing to demonstrate their supremacy, they are just accepted and that's it. It's really lazy writing. And to think this was written by both Doctor Who's script editor and producer. It doesn't bode well.

What is good is that we finally get confirmation that the Doctor has had a good reason to appear to collude with the Vardans so far. He asked Borusa for lead-lined quarters because the Vardans can travel along any wavelength, and are telepathic. So the Doctor was shielding his real thoughts from the Vardans by strength of will alone all this time, but can let go and relax when sealed in his lead-lined room. It enables him to take Borusa into his confidence, and so too the viewer. The design of the lead-lined room, with its wheels and cogs reflecting a temporal theme, is marvellous, one of the best things about the story so far (a tip of the hat to Barbara Gosnold).

It's lovely to see how fiercely loyal Leela is to the Doctor too. She insists that the Doctor must have a plan, despite Rodan thinking he has betrayed Gallifrey and his people. The depth of her belief in the Doctor is profound, and she vows to stand by her loyalty to him, or face the consequences. She says that the Doctor must have wanted her banished to the wastelands for a reason, and so agrees to go. That is what you call a companion, trusting the Doctor no matter what, and having complete faith in him even if it makes no sense at the time. "Discussion is for the wise and the helpless," says Leela, "and I am neither!" God, I love Leela!

She takes her newfound friend Rodan out to the wastelands, donning billowing red robes. It's a shame the Gallifreyan wasteland is actually just another quarry. Leela seems to feel perfectly at home in this environment, even though it's not really all that similar to her jungle home world. I suppose Leela prefers to be outdoors generally, rather than in the stuffy, restricted, technological world of the Citadel. It's also nice how she looks after the delicate Rodan, whose dreams of escaping her boring traffic guard job have been shattered by the reality of the outside world. Rodan does become a little annoying in her pathetic reaction to everything (collapsing and weeping), but it does reflect how someone would feel who'd previously led such a sheltered existence, to be faced with such primitivism.

Leela and Rodan encounter the wild people of the wastelands, led by Nesbin. These people are often referred to as Shobogans, but this term is never used on screen, and everything we learn about Gallifreyan history in The Timeless Children suggests these wild people are different to the Shobogans. Nesbin and his bandanna-wearing pals seem to have voluntarily rejected Time Lord society and chosen to live outside the Citadel, to embrace nature. We've now learnt that the Shobogans were the original, indigenous people of Gallifrey, before Time Lords were ever a thing, so not these hippy guys.

The Doctor gets Kelner to expel all Time Lords likely to rebel against the Vardans into the wastelands, and there's a great scene between Andred and Gomer where the guard commander tells the ageing Time Lord to find Leela and Rodan, who he knows will help the helpless. The Doctor has already said that the wasteland is Leela's natural environment, so he obviously hopes that she can rally everybody together who is against the Vardans, perhaps galvanising a rebellion. Very clever, Doctor...

I feel sorry for poor old Gomer, arch-enemy of Kelner ("We never got on... I can't stand the fellow"). He states he is in his tenth regeneration, suggesting that Time Lords become frailer even though each regeneration supposedly renews the body. This doesn't quite match what happens with the Doctor, who started out as "an old geezer with white hair", then regenerated into a range of ostensibly younger men (until Six came along anyway), and it certainly doesn't work when you get to the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. Maybe Gomer's indolence has made him this way?

The Vardans next want the Doctor to dismantle Gallifrey's quantum force field, and refuse to manifest in their true form, preferring to remain as shimmering tin foil. The way the Vardans are realised is shamefully cheap, deserving of every ounce of ridicule thrown their way. It's indefensible, even in desperate circumstances such as The Invasion of Time was made. And just to make things even more inept, director Gerald Blake makes it so the tin foil appears in front of a silvery wall, meaning they don't stand out very well at all. Anything and everything to do with the word Vardan is just awful, surely the most ill-conceived monsters in Doctor Who's entire history.

I just want the whole thing to be over and done with.

First broadcast: February 18th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Love Barbara Gosnold's lead-lined walls. It makes up for the crappy control panel in part one.
The Bad: Not only do the shimmery tin foil Vardans look rubbish, but they do almost nothing to warrant their subjugation of Gallifrey. They're the shittest Doctor Who monsters ever.
Overall score for episode: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 17 - The Doctor offers the Vardans a jelly baby in a show of trust. Notably, he makes Kelner fish his jelly babies from his pocket, but doesn't offer one to him! One grows tired of jelly babies...

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

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

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