227 The Invasion: Episode Eight

EPISODE: The Invasion: Episode Eight
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 227
STORY NUMBER: 046
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 21 December 1968
WRITER: Derrick Sherwin & Kit Pedler
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Invasion

"The Cybermen will deliver their bomb on the same radio beam they used for their invasion. You've got to turn it off, man. You've got to turn it off!"

At missile control the crew celebrate Zoe destroying the Cyberfleet. The Brigadier is contacted by Benton who tells them that they overheard on the Doctor's radio that the Cybermen will send their Megatron bomb to Earth. Vaughan destroys cyber machine with the Cerebration Mentor . The Doctor says Vaughan must turn of the radio beam that the cyber ships was using as guidance to stop the Cybermen delivering their bomb. Packer is killed by a Cyberman which is in turn killed by the Doctor with Cerebration Mentor. The Doctor calls UNIT in to attack the transmitter at the IE compound and have the Cyber ship attacked by missile. The Brigadier sends a helicopter for them. Captain Turner reports the Russians are ready to launch their rocket with a warhead attached. The rocket is launched. The Doctor and Vaughan are taken by helicopter to the IE compound where they attack Cybermen with the Cerebration Mentor. They find their destination is guarded by Cybermen. UNIT arrives and battle Cybermen on the ground. Rocket launchers and grenades prove successful. The Doctor & Vaughan reach the transmitter control but Vaughan is slain by Cybermen and the Doctor chased away. However he meets UNIT who destroy the Cybermen and the transmitter. The Cybermen spaceship approaches earth to avoid the Russian rocket and deliver the megatron bomb. The Russian Rocket is diverted. The Cyber Megatron Bomb is launched, but Henlow Downs fires it's missiles destroying the bomb and the Russian Rocket destroys the Cyber ship. Later Captain Turner drives Isobel along with The Doctor, Zoe & Jamie to the field in which they left the invisible Tardis. The Doctor makes it visible and they dematerialise to the astonishment of Isobel & Captain Turner.

I'm sorry, but apart from the location filmed battle sequences this episode is struggling a bit. UNIT troops vs the Cybermen looks good, but there's large amounts of stock footage used, two from the previous episode, one of which I could swear is used twice in this episode but flipped, and a new section of the rocket launching. A lot of the important action, mainly the destroying of the transmission control, happens off screen presumably another casualty of the locations problems that cost us Watkins' rescue previously. Sergeant Walters disappears this episode, replaced by Benton. John Levene's elevation to speaking role in this story is sometimes reported as he replaced another actor who was continually late but it maybe this story just applies to this episode. The Cybership design in this episode returned to our screens recently in "A Good Man Goes To War"

Making it's Doctor Who début in this story is the TCC Condensers round the corner from "The Acton Hilton", the BBC's famed rehersal rooms. The production team spent three days shooting there on the 9th, 10th & 12th September 1968.

The location would be back twice in Jon Pertwee's first year as the Doctor! The Staircase you can see here features prominantly in the third Doctor's first story Spearhead from Space. The same story would see Nicholas Courtney returning to the program for the Brigadier's third appearance, and indeed he gets to lead Unit Troops into the same location on hat occasion too!

The warehouse space you can see behind the soldier is seen in Ambasasdors of Death as the fight location in the first episode.

We also get to see one of the locations we missed in the first episode: Williamstrip Farm near Coln St Aldwyn was the location for the Tardis landing and we return here for it's departure at the end of the story. All scenes here were shot 3rd September 1968.

I've not managed to spot where he is but apparently in this episode is familiar supporting artist and stuntman Terry Walsh making his début as a UNIT Soldier. He'll play a few more of them over the next few years too!

We have a few new names bolstering the Cybermen's ranks too, Richard King would return in the Silurians as a Technician, Frontier in Space: Episode Three as a Lunar Guard and Frontier in Space: Episode Five as a Draconian Emperor Guard. He's in Doomwatch as a Man in In the Dark and Moonbase 3 as a Technician in Castor and Pollux & View of a Dead Planet.
Peter Thornton had previously been in Out of the Unknown appearing as the Lorry driver in Stranger in the Family which you can see on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set.

This is Patrick Troughton's last meeting with the Cybermen, and in fact the last Cybermen story until Revenge of the Cybermen in April 1975 by which point Tom Baker will be the Doctor. Jon Pertwee, barring cameos, never encounters the Cybermen during the five years he was in the title role. Having waited six plus years for their next major appearance the Cybermen then wait seven more till March 1982 when they return in Earthshock.

This story is also the last involvement in Doctor Who for Kit Pedler. He, along with frequent collaborator and former script editor Gerry Davis, would go onto create the popular early 1970s television show Doomwatch looking at dramatised threats for science and environmental issues. Like Doctor Who many of it's episodes were junked but the surviving episodes have been released on The Doomwatch DVD set. Kit Pedler died on the 27th May 1981. Michael Seely has written a biography of Kit Pedler entitled The Quest for Pedler, available from MIWK publishing, which is well worth a read..

The Invasion is the longest Second Doctor story so far, beating the seven part Evil of the Daleks. But as things turn out it won't even be the longest story this season! It's a bit of an odd beast: I spend the first half of the story distracted waiting for the Cybermen are going to actually turn up and when they do they're hardly in it and when they are they're just goons in a role that any monster could have filled. There's two great Cybermen moments, as the first one bursts out of it's cocoon at the end of episode 4 and as they come up out the sewers in episode 6. Even the battle in this episode isn't so great with the Cybermen falling a bit too easily. If anything the first half of the story, episodes 1-4, before the Cybermen appear is better than the second half with the mystery element of the story and the exchanges between Vaughan & The Doctor driving the story. Episode 3's cliffhanger with SOMETHING moving in the crate Jamie's hiding in is superb. I said that a lot of those episodes is padding and it is but it's being done so well there. I like The Invasion, and think it's very good but I think it could have been so so much better than that and an absolute classic like the two Douglas Camfield directed stories which it sits between.

The Invasion was adapted for book form by Ian Marter and published in October 1985. The cover is one of my favourites of the entire range and the only book to have an Invasion style Cyberman on the cover to actually feature them - they also appear on the covers of The Cybermen (Moonbase) and Tomb of the Cybermen. The Invasion was released as a double pack video during the 30th anniversary year 1993 with links recorded by Nicholas Courtney replacing the missing episodes 1 & 4. The Soundtrack to all eight episodes was released on CD in a box with The Tenth Planet as Doctor Who: Cybermen in 2004 and a solo release followed in early 2006. A DVD of the six surviving episodes and animated reconstructions of episodes 1 & 4 was released in 2006.