The Invasion: Episode Eight

Vaughn must now work with The Doctor to prevent an all out catastrophe.

It has been a long time reaching this point, but The Invasion has never at any stage been boring. It's funny to think we didn't get to see a Cyberman until the exact halfway point. Part six for me was the best episode, mainly down to the iconic imagery it had, although Part eight doesn't quite hit those heights, it still has some wonderful scenes. Lots of action, as UNIT battle The Cyber threat head on, plenty of action.

Comedy gold from Troughton as he runs to escape gun fire, it's a hilarious scene.

I mentioned in Part one that I was split overall in Troughton's best Cybermen story, I love this one, but overall I think I prefer Tomb of the Cybermen, possibly benefiting from being more compact.

There's a bit of a filming quality next, with the Krotons.

Stretching a story about aliens invading Earth over eight episodes was a bit silly, even for a show as great as Doctor Who, simply because there was no possible way to keep the plot equally interesting throughout those eight chapters. I mean, even the writers of 24 are smart enough to let a storyline occupy four episodes at most, before moving to the next piece of the puzzle. Here, the slowness was particularly evident in the opening parts, as the actual Cybermen didn't appear until Ep. 4 and the real trouble began only in Ep. 7, meaning there was only one more show left to end The Invasion in a satisfying fashion. Fortunately, the epilogue is, for the most of it, really watchable.

Picking up from the previous chapter's cliffhanger, the episode opens with Vaughn at last fully convinced of the necessity to stop the Cybermen once and for all, leading to an unlikely cooperation with the Doctor. Meanwhile, UNIT's mission in Russia proceeds as planned. Here's hoping that the combined effort of the Time Lord and his human allies will be enough to save the planet.

Like Part 7, this finale benefits from letting Troughton do precisely what he wants: his Doctor is more energetic and lovable in this final installment than he has been for the rest of The Invasion, and the scenes he shares with the brilliant Kevin Stoney ring with real charm and suspense. Though in trouble, they are able to find whatever little humor there is and exploit it to perfection, adding a little relief to the danger. Unfortunately, Ep. 8 also follows its predecessor in not showing the evil robots at all, depriving the climax of a physically present villain that, albeit silent, would provide the situation with more adrenaline. I also found it hard to appreciate the country-side ending, which is just too relaxed to really fit in the apocalyptic nature of the rest of the story.

Not that bad a conclusion, but overall The Invasion isn't very special. If this really is Troughton's best adventure, as a magazine article suggested, I'm curious to see his worst.

7,5/10

Review for all 8 episodes:

This is a truly classic story of the Cybermen invading Earth with the help of megalomaniac businessman Tobias Vaughn played brilliantly by Kevin Stoney. The villainous Vaughn is a superb character, performed to perfection and is actually the main adversary for The Doctor with the Cybermen very much in the background. This is not a bad thing as the Cybermen when they do appear have more impact and do their job as a 'monster' perfectly (especially in iconic scenes rising from the sewers to be seen starting to position themselves at locations such as St. Paul's Cathedral). Menacing, exciting and entertaining. Meanwhile Vaughn does his job perfectly, intellectually and verbally jousting with The Doctor better than any Cyberman really could.

To keep such quality up over 8 episodes is very impressive and it does so with cleverness and style. This is an all time classic, one of the greatest. It is a wonderful blend of great acting by regular cast and guest cast, characterisation, dialogue and direction (by Douglas Camfield). It has a good helping of action, tension, an intelligent script and is top notch storytelling from writers Sherwin and Pedler. Great stuff! All 8 episodes 10/10.

There is much to enjoy about this serial and, in terms of Doctor Who history, there is much to make note of. The plot sees the Doctor arriving on Earth in the middle of a sinister plot by International Electromatics and assists the military taskforce UNIT (as led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) in identifying and countering the threat. It should be said early on here that I didn't watch the animated versions of the missing episodes – only those originals that remain. As a result of this I think I was made out of it a little bit as can often happen when chunks of the serial is missing. The second thing to say is that the audio and video quality of some of these episodes was really very poor, so again another obstacle to enjoying it.

I say this as a caveat because I thought The Invasion was a mixed bag. The focus is very much on the human side of things, with the introduction of UNIT and the coordination from IE allowing for plenty of dialogue scenes. Many of these are pretty good but too much of the plot is based on convenience and coincidence and this undermines it to a certain extent. Beyond this the dialogue driven scenes don't have quite the impact they should and this is something which is highlighted by some of the stronger ones but also the couple of very good cliffhangers involving the Cybermen. When they finally show up, their appearance is dramatic and they visually leave an impression in the breakout of the pod, the dark sewers and walking through the streets of London. That said it doesn't quite have the impact of the Dalek invasion serial, but it is still good and the danger and urgency they bring is appreciated.

The ideas behind UNIT are fine and I hope they will be well used moving forward – obvious I know them from the Who era I have already seen, so it was interesting to see them starting out here. The performances are a bit mixed. The UNIT people generally add seriousness to the proceedings (particularly Stewart) but the rest are hit and miss. Some of the character give the thing a bit too much of a "swinging 60s" feel which takes away from the drama. Troughton is solid for the most part but the lingering image I have of him here is him running from the Cybermen grabbing his rear end like it is being burnt – which is misplaced comedy in my opinion – add to this him modeling on the floor seconds later, and to think people complain about Matt Smith (albeit such things are his default). Padbury and Hines are both good here and generally work well. The Cybermen are too remote a presence for too much of the serial and, when they come, they maybe don't have the menace they could have done.

The Invasion does have much to like but it never really feels like it gets the most from all its parts. It does have a nice structure and some good cliffhangers but it doesn't sustain the sense of danger and urgency that it needed to be really strong. A case of "almost" for me in this case.

I love this show too much, I actually can't wait for the next episode because this episode ended horribly and I'm still thinking about what will be happening in the next episode.