Category: Doctor Who
Doctor Who episode 224: “The Invasion” – Episode Five (30/11/1968)
Having revealed its monsters, the story proper kicks in, and it’s pretty good actually. Most interestingly, writer Derrick Sherwin finds something new to do with the Cybermen – in danger, in The Wheel in Space, of becoming little more than lumbering robots. He adds an insane Cyberman, overwhelmed by emotion, stumbling about with arms flailing madly like a Universal Frankenstein’s Monster, and screaming horribly. It’s by far the most disturbing thing anyone’s thought to do with them since The Tenth Planet, using their residual humanity to overwhelm their computer brains: it’s such a neat concept that Tom Macrae essentially revisited it in The Age of Steel. This almost makes up for the sweet moment when another Cyberman is seen carefully helping its colleagues climb down a ladder into the sewers.
Doctor Who episode 223: “The Invasion” – Episode Four (23/11/1968)
At last, the Cybermen make their appearance just in time for the fifth anniversary episode. And the brief glimpse looks great – obviously a Cyberman, but with some nice redesigned elements that take them pretty much to the classic Cyberman shape. I wonder whether anyone watching this wasn’t aware who the enemy aliens would turn out to be – presumably the famous St Paul’s Cathedral photograph was used to trail this new story. And the clues dropped through this episode, including the idea that ’emotion could be used to destroy them’ and the discussion about conversion, ‘becoming completely inhuman’ definitely suggests Cybermen to anyone paying the slightest attention. On the other hand, the mentions of the Intelligence Task Force and the Travers-e, and the presence of Lethbridge-Stewart might have left some expecting a third Yeti adventure.
Doctor Who episode 222: “The Invasion” – Episode Three (16/11/1968)
On the one hand the direction and acting continue to be really impressive. Camfield’s casting is always good and his rep company are brilliant again. Kevin Stoney is superb as Vaughn: turning on the charm offensive to try to win over the Doctor, increasingly losing his patience with Packer, and finally giving perhaps the most terrifying villainous rant there’s yet been in the show. He even looks great: like the Doctor in negative, a mop of white hair, the same craggy face, a genuine equal and opposite for Troughton.
Doctor Who episode 221: “The Invasion” – Episode Two (9/11/1968)
This is shot like a spy thriller, going for realism, roving cameras and location filming in grotty, industrial locations, with sparse, urgent musical cues. The Doctor and Jamie get brought in by a suited Benton. There are surveillance photos of key characters (a far cry from the publicity shots they’ve used in the past – for example in The Evil of the Daleks). It’s all very hard edged.
Doctor Who episode 220: “The Invasion” – Episode One (2/11/1968)
The sixth production season begins with a serial that pretty much lands the upcoming Pertwee era 34 episodes early. The credits contain, for the first time, Terrance Dicks’ name as script editor – a post that he’ll hold, with one exception, until 1974. Also making an appearance for the first time is John Levene as Benton – playing at being a spy.
Doctor Who episode 219: The Mind Robber – Episode 5 (12/10/1968)
Right at the very end, The Mind Robber‘s grasp falls short of its reach. But up until then, the last episode maintains the pace and creativity of its predecessors which, combined with Troughton’s most intense physical comedy, ensures this will endure as one of the most memorable of all Doctor Who serials.
Doctor Who episode 218: The Mind Robber – Episode 4 (5/10/1966)
The resolution to the cliffhanger is a bit of a let down given it’s a repeat of the way the charging unicorn was overcome, but that’s about the only weak thing about this episode.
Doctor Who episode 217: The Mind Robber – Episode 3 (28/9/1968)
The risk of a story like this is that, like a Terry Nation script, it can be prolonged almost indefinitely by bunging in another confrontation with a creature from literature or legend. So it’s to the story’s credit that not only do the episodes run shorter than usual – this clocks in at 19 minutes – but that there’s some thematic coherence and structure that prevents this from feeling like a piece of derivative whimsy.
Doctor Who episode 216: The Mind Robber – Episode 2 (21/9/1968)
After an episode of minimalism, this suddenly floods the screen with a string of bizarre and unsettling images: Jamie transformed into a cardboard stand-up and then a swapped head (the Master of the Land of Fiction clearly has one eye on the merch opportunities). Zoe is trapped behind a door painted on a wall that becomes a jar. There are clockwork soldiers, redcoats, a forest of letters, creepy children and a unicorn.
Doctor Who episode 215: The Mind Robber – Episode 1 (14/9/1968)
Proving that necessity is the mother of invention, this astonishing episode was thrown together on a shoestring budget when The Dominators was cut down from six episodes to five. The cast consists of four speaking parts, the only set is the TARDIS, and the monsters are a repaint of robots from Out of the Unknown. There’s the potential for this to go wrong: the last time the show tried to do a small, self-contained episode, The Wheel in Space 1, which in many ways this superficially resembles (the limited cast, the TARDIS fluid links blowing and its temporary destruction, the tempting images on the scanner, the threatening robot and the incapacitated Doctor), David Whitaker made a bit of a hash of it. This looks even more impressive in comparison.
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