The Invasion (Doctor Who)
The Invasion is the partly missing third serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in eight weekly parts from 2 November to 21 December 1968.
In the serial, the megalomaniac Tobias Vaughn, the head of the hugely successful electronics company International Electromatics, forms an alliance with the Cybermen to take control of Earth.
The Invasion marks the first appearance of UNIT, the second appearance of Lethbridge-Stewart, now promoted to Brigadier, and introduces Corporal Benton, later to become a sergeant during the Third Doctor's era. It was the first incomplete Doctor Who serial to be released on DVD with full-length animated reconstructions of its two missing episodes.
Plot
After escaping the Land of Fiction, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find that they have materialized near the Moon in the late twentieth-century. A missile is fired from the surface, forcing the crew to land the TARDIS in England. With the visual stabiliser damaged, the TARDIS is rendered invisible and they decided to head to London to find Professor Edward Travers for his assistance. Hitching a lift with a van driver, they learn of International Electromatics, a mysterious company which has become the world's leading electronics producer. Arriving at Travers' address, the crew learn he has left for America with his daughter, Anne, and left the house in the care of his colleague, Professor Watkins, and his niece Isobel. As the professor has gone missing working for International Electromatics, the Doctor and Jamie leave to investigate its head office. After being caught, they are brought to Tobias Vaughn, the company's Managing Director. He claims that Professor Watkins was at a delicate stage of his work and refusing to see anyone, though the Doctor notices unusual behavior and quickly becomes suspicious. When they leave, Vaughn opens up a section in his wall to reveal a Cyber-planner.Shortly after their meeting, the Doctor and Jamie are abducted by two strangers and taken to meet their commanding officer, Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. Having been promoted to Brigadier after their encounter with the Great Intelligence, he reveals that he has been placed in charge of a military taskforce called UNIT, which investigates unusual activities around the world. Currently investigating International Electromatics after multiple claims surrounding the organization, the Brigadier asks for their assistance, having lost contact with an operative investigating the company. Tired of waiting for the Doctor and Jamie to return, Zoe and Isobel leave to investigate the company on their own, only to be captured after Zoe destroys a robotic receptionist. The Doctor and Jamie follow them and are also captured, after noticing them being loaded into transportation cases.
Taken to the company's countryside base, the Doctor and Jamie meet Isobel's uncle, who is working on a "Cerebration Mentor" device, intended to be a teaching machine. The professor reveals that Vaughn is working with an unspecified ally and that they are planning to take over the world. After escaping from their security guards, the Doctor radios the Brigadier to rescue them and also locates Zoe and Isobel. During the investigation, Jamie finds a living creature in some kind of cocoon inside one of the containers. The Doctor and his companions escape via helicopter, but by doing so alert Vaughn that UNIT is a threat to his plans. Back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor investigates photos of UFOs near the factory and reasons that Vaughn's allies are alien invaders. Heading back to the factory to intercept one of the pods, he and Jamie witness scientists reviving one of the creatures from the cocoons: a Cyberman.
Further investigation by UNIT is stymied by the interference of a retired general at the Ministry of Defense, who is actually under Vaughn's hypnotic control. The Cybermen begin moving through the London sewers in preparation for the invasion. Hedging his bets in case he needs a weapon to maintain control of the Cyberman after they have arrived, Vaughn tests a prototype of the "cerebration mentor" machine on an awakened Cyberman. The Cyberman is driven insane by the emotional overload and flees into the sewers. Whilst the Doctor investigates an International Electromatics device, Isobel, Zoe and Jamie venture into the sewers to obtain proof of the Cybermen's presence on Earth. After becoming trapped between a group of normal Cybermen and the victim of Vaughn's tests, they are rescued by Captain Turner and a UNIT squad.
In order to circumvent Vaughn's plant at the Ministry of Defense, the Brigadier leaves to seek help from UNIT international HQ in Geneva. In his absence, Captain Turner arranges for Professor Watkins to be rescued from International Electromatics to help the Doctor. Using accounts from the professor, they deduce that the Cybermen intend to send a hypnotic signal through the devices produced by International Electromatics, which will incapacitate the world's population and nullify resistance. In the nick of time the Doctor is able to protect his companions and their UNIT allies with specially-made depolarizers that neutralize the Cybermen's signal. As the Cybermen take over, the Brigadier arranges for the Doctor and company to be transported to UNIT headquarters in Geneva to help battle the invasion.
After completing production on more depolarizers, the Doctor leaves to confront Vaughn in London whilst UNIT works to stop the Cybermen. Uncovering Russian plans to launch a rocket at the ship sending the signals, Turner leads a squadron to assist them whilst Zoe helps the Brigadier predict the Cyberfleet's movements. Using British artillery, they are able to destroy the full fleet, causing the Cybermen to turn on Vaughn and decide to destroy Earth with a megatron bomb. When the Cyber-planner reveals that they no longer need Vaughn, he uses the "Cerebration Mentor" Prototype weapon to destroy it. With his plans ruined, Vaughn agrees to thwart the invasion and helps the Doctor locate the homing signal. With UNIT sending troops to help, they are able to defeat the Cybermen guarding the beacon and turn it off, though Vaughn is killed in an ambush. The megatron bomb is destroyed by an anti-missile defense rocket, while the Russian rocket destroys the Cybership broadcasting the hypnotic control signal, ending the invasion.
With repairs on the circuit completed, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe return to the TARDIS, accompanied by Isobel and Turner. After finding the ship, the trio bid farewell to the two before dematerializing.
Production
Originally The Invasion was going to be a six-part story called Return of the Cybermen. The character of Professor Travers was to have appeared for a third time, but the decision was made to replace him with Professor Watkins as using him would involve paying Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, although Travers is still referenced by name several times. The sequence where Gregory describes UNIT's attack on an IE car and then is subsequently killed by a Cyberman was written into the script after time pressures prevented the production team from filming the car attack on location.Filming
Wendy Padbury does not appear in episode 3, as she was on holiday. Frazer Hines was on a scheduled break during the last episode but did appear in a pre-recorded film insert at the conclusion.According to Frazer Hines in an interview on the audio CD of The Invasion, Sally Faulkner's skirt kept getting blown up around her neck whilst climbing up the rope ladder to the helicopter. To avoid the same thing happening to his kilt, he remembered reading somewhere that The Queen had lead weights sewn into the hem of her skirt to stop this from happening to her. It so happened that Frazer's dresser was a keen fisherman, who sewed some lead weights into his kilt.
This was one of the first Doctor Who serials in which scenes were recorded out of order. This was due to the then-improved videotape editing technology.
Post-production
Due to director Douglas Camfield's refusal to use regular composer Dudley Simpson, Don Harper was hired to do the music for this serial. It would be Harper's only work with Doctor Who.Cast notes
Kevin Stoney previously played Mavic Chen in The Daleks' Master Plan and would later play Tyrum in Revenge of the Cybermen. Peter Halliday, who plays Packer, also supplied the voice of the Cyber-Director in all eight episodes of the serial, in addition to the Cybermen voices in the last four episodes. In addition, Halliday went on to do several other roles in several later serials in the series. Edward Burnham also portrays Professor Kettlewell in the Tom Baker serial, Robot. Clifford Earl previously played the station sergeant in The Daleks' Master Plan. Sheila Dunn previously played Blossom Lefavre in The Daleks' Master Plan and would later play Petra Williams in Inferno. Sally Faulkner later played Miss Tremayne in the audio play Winter for the Adept. Ian Fairbairn had previously played Questa in The Macra Terror and would later play Bromley in Inferno and Doctor Chester in The Seeds of Doom, both stories directed by Camfield.Broadcast and reception
, Martin Day, and Keith Topping in The Discontinuity Guide noted that the serial "shows the advantages of recognisable Earth settings" and described it as "an all action romp". In The Television Companion, David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker wrote that The Invasion was "one of the very best stories to feature the Cybermen", with praise for Stoney's Tobias Vaughn. In 2009, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times wrote that the story was plotted with "scarcely a dull moment", with the first four episodes "grippingly plotted" to lead up to the cliffhanger of the Cybermen. Mulkern also praised the dynamic and characters of the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, as well as Tobias Vaughn. The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn said that the story's length allowed for "an awful lot of contrivance, drawn-out scenes, and running back and forth between locations with one group of characters just missing the other group", but it still remained enjoyable, especially because of Stoney's performance. He also noted that "there's a tendency in this story to cut corners, sometimes forgivably and sometimes not". Ultimately, Bahn felt that the story was more about Vaughn than the Cybermen and, like Mulkern, highlighted Zoe's character. DVD Talk's Stuart Galbraith gave The Invasion a rating of three and a half stars out of five, noting that it borrowed from other science fiction tales and could have been shorter, but ultimately was entertaining and delivered an "atmospheric tale full of dread and high-tension suspense". In 2013, Ben Lawrence of The Daily Telegraph named The Invasion as one of the top ten Doctor Who stories set in the contemporary time.Commercial releases
In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by Ian Marter, was published by Target Books in May 1985. The novelisation restores material cut from the original shooting scripts including the UNIT raid to rescue Professor Watkins and Vaughn convincing Routledge to shoot himself. In this novel the Russian Air Base is named as Nikortny, a punning tribute to actor Nicholas Courtney.Home media
As with many serials from the Troughton era, a complete version of The Invasion does not exist in the BBC's archives, as Episodes 1 and 4 were lost. However, their soundtracks survive, recorded off-air by fans at home.Audio
The soundtracks for The Invasion and The Tenth Planet along with a bonus disc, The Origins of the Cybermen, an audio essay by David Banks, were released in a collector's tin called Doctor Who: Cybermen.Video
The story was released on BBC Video in 1993, with the missing Episodes 1 and 4 summarised on-screen by Nicholas Courtney.In June 2006, the BBC announced that the animation studio Cosgrove Hall, who previously created the webcast Scream of the Shalka, had produced full-length animated versions of the two missing episodes. These episodes, along with newly remastered copies of the rest of the serial, were released on DVD on 6 November 2006.