Shall I tell you the truth? OK, I will. I did
watch this story when it was first broadcast, but other than a succession of
images – mostly to do with marching Cybermen, I hadn’t any real memories of the
specific story details. Then last summer I was browsing through a British Heart
Foundation charity shop (other charity shops are available) and saw that they
had a copy of Ian Marter’s Target novelization of the story. Yeah, of course I
bought it. So I read it that evening – and yes, I rather enjoyed it too. So I
pretty much know what’s going to happen in the rest of the story – the Cybermen
will appear, but the story really has been Vaughn’s story so far, and it is
going to continue to be so. I haven’t a problem with that.
What I will be interested to see is just how
the story can juggle all these foregrounded characters – on the goodies side
you have The Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, Isobel Watkins and the Brig and the UNIT boys.
Then on the villains’ side you have Vaughan, Packer, the Cyber Planner, and
half a dozen Cybermen. Somebody is going to lose out, even in an 8 episode
story. I’m pretty much hoping it will be Isobel Watkins. There’s something
about her, some indefinable quality which manages to get on my wick and set my
teeth on edge. To be fair to Sally Faulkner, the actress who played her, I
think she was actually written stupid and incredibly self-centered, but knowing
this doesn’t make it any less annoying when she persists in calling the Captain
her ‘dolly soldier’. Dolly Soldier?! What the hell is that supposed to mean?
I don’t want to be horrible, but this is one
area in which maybe this story can be criticized. As I understand it the
original idea was for Professor Travers to be in the story, but Jack Watling
was unavailable, which is why they created the character of Professor Watkins
and his niece Isobel. Presumably, had Travers been in the story, then part
Isobel plays would have been taken instead by Anne Travers, the Professor’s
daughter (as opposed to Deborah Watling, who was Jack Watling’s real life
daughter.) Anne was a scientist, and more than that a grounded, strong,
believable character, and would have been far better in my opinion than this
self centred airhead.
Well, as I said, I read the novelization last
summer, so I know that even though we’re four episodes in we’ve still got a lot
of story to go, and wasting time here won’t accomplish that. So let’s go.
After
Watching
Again, ladies and gentlemen, the plan was to
not force myself to watch more than two episodes in an evening. Well, that went
by the board again, as this set of 4 episodes (disc 2 on the official DVD) were
another single sitting job – not because I had to, but because I wanted to. So
that means I really enjoyed it, right? Of course – but that is, I enjoyed it on
its own terms, as a fine adventure yarn, rather than a piece of great Doctor
Who. I’ll try to explain that.
I can’t help thinking that the middle episodes,
up to maybe halfway through episode 7, really start to get away from The
Doctor, and for the first time since Hartnell’s first season it feels as if the
Doctor isn’t really the star of his own show. I think that I know what the
problem is too. It’s all in the Doctor’s relationship with UNIT. In this story
he becomes little more than a UNIT operative. Ah – you might say – but isn’t
that what he is in the Pertwee era a lot of the time, and that seemed to go
perfectly well. Yes and no. The Third Doctor’s relationship with UNIT was a
little more complicated than it seems to be in this story. In the Third
Doctor’s time his relationship with UNIT was pretty much a marriage of
convenience. Stuck in Space and Time after being tried by the Time Lords at the
end of “The War Games”, UNIT provide a useful base for him to work at trying to
get the TARDIS working, and breaking the Time Lord’s Edict. In return, UNIT get
to call him their Scientific Advisor, and can avail themselves of the use of
his services from time to time. It’s fair to say that the Doctor does not always
help UNIT willingly, and there’s often friction between him and the Brig over
the methods that UNIT uses – ie – if it’s green, bomb the hell out of it. Well,
coming back to “The Invasion” it really is all far too cosy. The Doctor slots
quite nicely into the organization, and there’s never the hint of the slightest
conflict between himself and the Brig, which maybe would have added a little
something extra to the story. After all, the second Doctor is, in my opinion,
the least ‘establishment’ of all of the Doctors, and it might have been fun to
see how UNIT might have reacted to a little of his inspired anarchy.
Doesn’t Kevin Stoney continue to be
outstanding, though? There’s a wonderful, wonderful scene in which Professor
Watkins is brought to him, and Watkins wearily concedes that he will have to do
as Vaughn says, since Vaughn will surely torture him, and he cannot stand
torture. He expresses his desire to kill Vaughan, and Vaughn hands him a gun,
and tells him to shoot. You can’t tear your eyes away from the screen while
he’s on here – it is played to absolute perfection. Of course, you know that
Watkins, a decent man, is not going to be able to shoot Vaughn, because murder
is wrong – but then he does! Three bullet holes appear in the chest of Vaughn’s
jumper! It transpires that Vaughn has been part cyber converted. What a
fabulous, fabulous scene – probably one of my favourite scenes of all of the
ones I’ve watched since we started with “An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC”.
Well, we did get to see some more of the Cybermen
too. I think I’ve already mentioned that this mark 5 cyberman ( I count the
Moonbase and Tomb of the Cybermen separately, since despite their many
similarities there is a clear difference in the hand arrangement.) is my
favourite design – although there’s also a lot to be said for the mark 7
(Earthshock) design too. Visually,
director Douglas Camfield really gets the best out of them as well. The scenes
marching down the steps of St. Paul’s and past The Horn pub are remarkable in
as much as they really are every bit as good as the iconic photographs lead you
to believe. It would have been nice to get some verbal confrontation between
one of them and the Doctor, or Vaughn, but no, in this story it all happens
through the Cyberplanner, which is a bit of a shame, and detracted a little
from the story for me.
When we got to the denouement, there were
echoes in it of the ending of “The Wheel In Space”. What I mean by that is the
the Cybermen still need to be guided in from space by a radio signal. Alright,
this time it’s the great cyber bomb which is going to destroy the earth, but
the principal is the same. How do we deal with it – switch the flippin radio
off. Not rocket Science. Mind you, rocket science is what they use to shoot
down the cyber ship. I wonder why Derrick Sherwin decided to have UNIT ask the
Russians to borrow a rocket to launch a missile at the cybership, rather than
the Americans? I wonder what would have really happened in 1968 if the western
world had asked the Soviet Union – Can we borrow one of your lovely rockets,
please?
I think that “The Invasion” demonstrates just
which different factors have to all work together to make a good Doctor Who
story. By rights, 8 episodes should be too long to sustain a single story, and
really and truly there isn’t really quite enough plot to keep you going here.
What makes it work is good – and in some cases great – acting, terrific
direction, and design which is far better than it has any right to be for the
money that the show could afford to spend. No doubt about it, this was the
shape of things to come.
What
Have We Learned?
The Cybermen
don’t actually have to do that much – just be there looking impressive
UNIT
have remarkable resources at their disposal
Kevin
Stoney is a class act whenever he is the chief villain
We
can add hand grenades and intensified emotions to the ever growing list of
things which can kill Cybermen
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