The Invasion of Time Part Two

The one where the Doctor allows aliens to invade Gallifrey...

The Doctor is seemingly rejected by the Matrix after donning the Coronet of Rassilon, and Chancellor Borusa takes this opportunity to try and get rid of President Doctor by claiming he's not fit for office. But he hasn't reckoned on the prissy Surgeon-General Lord Gomer, a shady old queen if ever there was one ("Borusa, I suggest you... keep all your tedious bureaucratic problems to yourself")! Gomer takes the Doctor under his medical wing, and retires him to the Chancellery for treatment.

The Doctor wastes no time in ordering that his friend and companion Leela is banished from the Citadel, out into the wastelands of Gallifrey where she can do no harm. Both Leela and the viewers are astonished by this. Why is our hero being so nasty towards Leela, who only ever shows loyalty and support for her mentor? The savage makes her escape, which is made particularly easy by the fact the Chancellery Guards are utterly useless. All Leela has to do is show them a leg, give them a gentle push, and they fall over like skittles. Their ray guns don't even have rays! There's a knack to making guards seem capable while also being overcome, but director Gerald Blake hasn't got that knack.

The Doctor escapes from the Chancellery without the guards on the door knowing by using Borusa's secret exit (taking a tedious amount of time talking to himself in doing so, as well as breaking the fourth wall again). The secret exit works by voiceprint, opening when the Doctor recites something Borusa used to say about locks, but wouldn't it be more realistic for the voiceprint to be keyed to Borusa's voice pattern, rather than just the words spoken?

Anyway, the Doctor gets out and hopscotches his way along the corridors of Gallifrey like a childish buffoon. I really don't like this interpretation of the Doctor by Tom Baker, one that proliferates in the three years Graham Williams was in charge, culminating in a particularly silly season with Douglas Adams as script editor. It's nice to have a light-hearted, bright and breezy, comedic side to our hero, but Tom takes it too far much of the time, and I miss the darker edge that was at the fore during the Hinchcliffe years. It's the seriousness I miss really, because if the Doctor is taking the situation/ story seriously, then the viewer knows they must too. But if the Doctor is just playing hopscotch, or chatting about Latin to an empty chair, then nothing ever seems very desperate or dangerous. It gets to be more like Rentaghost than Doctor Who. It's a similar problem with Season 24.

The Doctor retires to the TARDIS, and it's quite sad to see him cover his ears and close his eyes when Leela starts desperately hammering on the door to be let in. K-9 bows his head too, in rueful compliance. This small scene at least tells us that the Doctor regrets having to lock Leela out, and so there must be more to what he's doing than meets the eye. I'm glad of this one small scene if nothing else, because it makes what we're seeing slightly more palatable. Nobody likes to see their Doctor on the bad guys' side!

The Doctor's time spent in the TARDIS chatting with K-9 about odds and variables is tediously written and just comes across as padding. Also, the K-9 prop is so unbelievably noisy that much of the dialogue between the two is difficult to make out. It's those constantly rotating metal ears. If K-9's ears didn't move at all times, the motors wouldn't be as noisy. Future K-9 props would reduce the "ear noise", but at the moment, going anywhere near the tin dog is fatal for the sound technicians!

As the Chancellery Guards are so useless, Leela gets to pretty much go wherever she wants, running along cramped corridors dressed with awful plastic moulded seats, and finally making her way into Space Traffic Control, where she meets the wonderful Rodan, played by Hilary Ryan. If only it were possible to rewrite this character as Romana, because that's who it is, isn't it? Rodan is a proto-Romana, played to perfection by Ryan as a slightly starchy Time Lady, bored with her routine role as a "glorified traffic guard" and desperate for something to do which reflects her Seventh Grade qualification. The more I think about it, the more I want Rodan to be Romana (their names are even similar). A quick dip into Doctor Who's expanded fiction universe tells me that Rodan also pops up in the novels Legacy of the Daleks (she detects the Master's TARDIS arrive on Tersurus) and Lungbarrow (in which she and Leela remain firm friends). Most amusing of all is the Battle of Rodan's Wedding, an event in the Last Great Time War in which years are used as ammunition, and shrapnel from which caused the Eighth Doctor to age five million years, then regress to a baby! You can read about this craziness in Russell T Davies' 2020 short story Doctor Who and the Time War.

Anyway, I (majorly) digress. I love Rodan. I wish she was Romana, but she's not. But I can pretend that she is a pre-Mary Tamm incarnation, using a slightly different name, and there's nothing you can do to stop me, not even cite examples of how that's plainly not the case. Rodan and Leela manage to have a brief conversation which passes the Bechdel-Wallace Test, and I love the way Leela mimics Rodan's plummy delivery ("Oh, one must, one must, yes").

The Doctor leaves K-9 with orders to destroy the transduction barrier, which prevents alien aggressors from landing on Gallifrey. "Nothing can get past the transduction barrier," states Rodan, which in TV scriptwriting parlance means that something will. And lo and behold, K-9 rather magnificently destroys the transduction barrier (despite the director forgetting to add his laser effect), allowing the alien spaceship we saw in part 1 to approach Gallifrey. As the Doctor gathers his committee together in the Panopticon, he announces: "Gentlemen, this is no ordinary meeting. I'm privileged to introduce you to your new masters."

Something materialises. They all turn. It's three sheets of aluminium foil. The Doctor cackles evilly. Doctor, whatever have you done?

The tin foil beggars belief. I'm kind of stunned.

First broadcast: February 11th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Leela and Romana - sorry, Rodan - work well together. I hope Rodan stays.
The Bad: Gallifrey is invaded by tin foil. Really?! That's what this has all been leading up to?
Overall score for episode: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 16 - The Doctor offers Andred his second jelly baby in as many episodes. He must like Andred (I don't blame him). In fact, he likes Andred so much that he gives him the entire bag of sweets!

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

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