Terrance Dicks’ arrival in The Invasion is closely followed by the first script from Robert Holmes. Between the two of them they will have a hand in every single Doctor Who story to be broadcast during the next nine years. This first collaboration doesn’t immediately suggest itself as the shape of things to come, but what is notable about it is how swiftly it moves in comparison to pretty much every story broadcast in the last year.

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This is a really disappointing end. A lot of the elements should work – the Doctor joining forces with Vaughn to defeat the remaining Cybermen; the UNIT attack on the Cybermen’s last outpost, and the destruction of the Cyberman fleet. But in the end, there are just too many disparate elements (and Sherwin keeps throwing in more) that means even Camfield’s attempts to make it all dynamic can’t hide the fact that this is overly busy.

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Astonishingly, having finished the previous episode with a full scale Cyberman invasion, the Cybermen don’t appear in this at all. Instead, we get something much more surprising and interesting: the Doctor confronting the villain, while the Brigadier and Zoe destroy the invasion fleet.

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After the prolonged build-up it’s good that the serial is now delivering. This episode opens with some of director Douglas Camfield’s trademark military action, with UNIT confronting Cybermen in the sewers with grenades. And when the cowardly Perkins (channelling the spirit of Driver Evans) gets gunned down, it’s notable that there’s both an immediate effort to retrieve his body, and a later scene where Isobel expresses her regret at his death. This feels a bit more true than all those later UNIT stories where the troops are redshirt cannon fodder for the monster of the month.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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