4.23: The Invasion of Time

In which the Doctor’s clever plan could use some work.

Broadcast: February-March 1978

Watched: July-August 2020

The Invasion of Time, Part One

Well, this is different. I think this is the first time we start in media res? It’s certainly the first time we start with the Doctor clearly in the middle of a secret plan, which involves working with aliens and which he’s obviously keeping from his companion - the roots of the New Adventures’ Doctor here. [The 7th Doctor of the ‘90s novels did this kind of thing all the time.] It’s an oddly tense episode - the Doctor yelling at Borusa is quite uncomfortable, and the whole thing is built up to a boring Time Lord ceremony with no monsters. God knows what they made of it at the time.

Other things... I like that to switch to amber alert you need to put an amber bulb in. The Vardans are a bit too “recent drama school graduate” to be threatening. Nice to see the TARDIS swimming pool.

What the hell is up with Borusa, that he’s played by four actors in seven years? Does he have some kind of debilitating disease? (My phone corrects Borusa to “Boris”, by the way.)

There’s a scene in which Leela is obviously meant to be flirting with Andred, which surprised me as I thought her ending was a last minute addition, but the actor playing Andred hasn’t noticed. [It was a last minute decision, but the actors tried to foreshadow it in their performances.]

The Invasion of Time, Part Two

Watched 20 minutes of this before my internet went down. FFS. Anyway, so far as I can tell there’s just one plot point in it - “The Doctor wants to turn off the planet’s defences”. The idea of a grumpy air traffic control Time Lady should be fun but isn’t. Was Tom drunk when they filmed this? Suddenly a lot of mugging to camera, in a “I don’t need a companion, just give me a cabbage” kind of way.

It’s not bad, and different is good, but I’m not sure we’ve seen enough of Gallifrey to care about it. There’s a sort of distancing effect to the whole thing.

The Doctor talking to himself when Borusa locks him in is quite fun though.

[annoying break in viewing goes here]

Now finished episode 2. The ending, with the Doctor yelling at people, then K9 blowing some shit up while Rodan shouts “We are being invaded!”, then the Doctor’s laughter when the Vardans appear... okay, seeing the Doctor act as the villain is weirdly traumatic.

The Invasion of Time, Part Three

“...outer Gallifrey.”

Interesting choice to have the Doctor’s apparent betrayal followed almost immediately by him explaining the plot to Borusa in a lead-lined room. Sort of surprised they didn’t keep the fiction going for longer.

The Castellan really is a f*cking weasel isn’t he. No hesitation, he’s instantly collaborating, plotting to overthrow the Doctor and drawing up death lists.

I like that Rodan’s supplies are very obviously posh chocolate buttons.

“I’m in my tenth regeneration, you know,” makes no sense, as if Time Lords regenerate into older men.

The Invasion of Time, Part Four

“Rodan can come. [She has a speaking part.]”

A lot of the run time here is spent on shots of people walking purposefully down corridors. There’s something here suggesting that the Citadel’s sophistication makes it corrupt and open to takeover, while the noble savages outside are simpler but harder to get at... but it’s not really coherent enough to be called a theme, let alone one that’s properly explored.

Bold to make Andred, a man being out-acted by both a small robot dog and his own hair, a square-jawed romantic lead. Also he’s overcome so easily that it sort of undermines the last cliffhanger.

The Doctor making a crack about how good his companion is at killing people is a bit weird.

Is one of the Vardans some Irish tinfoil? The fact they turn out to be just humanoids is a bit meh. Although I quite like that their leader is a short arse.

The cliffhanger sort of requires you to recognise Sontarans with their helmets on, and hmmm. Also, this should be a de-construction of the Doctor’s smugness - he’s all pleased with himself that he won, even though his plan to let a bunch of aliens invade Gallifrey got a bunch of people killed... and then suddenly, he hasn’t won at all! This should be a moment of reckoning.

Except, it isn’t, and the Doctor is going to get a lot, lot smugger.

The Invasion of Time, Part Five

“That’s the difference between you and me, I’m very concerned.” Are you, though? Because this is kind of all your fault, Doctor?

I’ve been thinking about why this story isn’t more important. A story in which recurring aliens invade Gallifrey should be one of the greats, shouldn’t it? One of the key texts? But it isn’t, this isn’t a story that really comes up that often.

And I think it’s because the whole thing is fun but sort of inconsequential. The Doctor isn’t confronted with his hubris. And, even more so than in Assassin, the Gallifrey that’s invaded is the silly one, not the godlike-race-watching-from-the heavens one.

So this story is fun but also sort of a joke. It manages to have less of a season finale quality than Seeds of Doom, a story about the Brigadier not being available to watch someone turning into a giant cabbage.

Anyway. All the stuff about “the great key” feels like a load of meaningless bollocks, but it’s quite funny that all the possible keys are the sort of keys you could get cut at Timpsons.

The way that Castellan instantly decides he’s on the Sontarans’ side is kind of hilarious. The endless sequences of people running down corridors with the odd bit of comedy mugging are not.

Sometimes it feels like they want everyone who isn’t the Doctor to refer to “time capsules” rather than TARDISes, and then at other times it feels like they’ve forgotten.

The cliffhanger is very confusing. The Castellan is using technobabble against us! Oh noes!

The Invasion of Time, Part Six

“Doctor. You’ve saved Gallifrey.” It’s never really explained why the Doctor helped the Vardans invade in the first place, though, is it?

Oh Christ the Doctor has a big gun and literally shoots the villain, what a f*cking ending. As a Gallifrey story about the Doctor’s hubris that starts as an epic and ends with a meaningless bang this has exactly the same flaws as Trial. Yet no one ever talks about that do they?

The way Rodan trails the Doctor and Leela all the way through the “funny” exploring the TARDIS sequence makes more sense when you know she was meant to be the new companion. [Actress said no.] The interior of the TARDIS is far, far more disappointing than the reality of Gallifrey.

...I had forgotten when I typed that that this sequence was actually the entire episode. FFS. Also, the scene by the swimming pool where Andred throws a folding chair at a Sontaran is f*cking pathetic.

I was going to ask what the weird squeaking noises were but then a Sontaran got eaten by a plant, so.

The amnesia thing is a weird twist.

Leela’s departure is incredibly unconvincing, but we already knew that. Andred is marginally preferable to David Campbell, mind. Why do companions keep falling in love with incredibly wooden actors during stories about invasions? 

I do like the way K9 turns out to be Leela’s dog, not the Doctor’s, though.