By Jessica Holmes
Hello again! Another year draws to a close, and so too does the latest Doctor Who serial, "The Invasion". Last time, we saw the Doctor try his hand at espionage in an attempt to uncover the villain Vaughn's wicked plans. Now that it's revealed that Vaughn is working with the Cybermen, can the Doctor and UNIT put an end to their plot, or is it curtains for the human race?
Let's check it out.
In Case You Missed It
Having borne witness to the birth of a new Cyber-menace, Jamie and the Doctor hurry back to UNIT. They report their findings to the Brigadier, who laments that thanks to Vaughn’s mind control, he’s lost the backing of the Ministry of Defence. To get help from UNIT command in Geneva, he’s going to need actual proof of the Cybermen.
It’s handy that there’s a photographer on hand then, isn’t it? However, the Brigadier rebuffs Isobel’s offer to go down into the sewers and photograph the Cybermen. Why? Old-fashioned sexism. Ugh. It doesn’t stop Isobel going down into the sewers with Jamie and Zoe to prove him wrong– though given the attempt ends in disaster, with two dead men and no decent pictures to show for it, I’m not sure she proved her point.
Meanwhile, Vaughn tests his secret weapon on one of the newly awakened Cybermen, driving it mad with pure fear. I actually felt a little bit bad for it. And scared of it. Those modulated screams will have given plenty of kiddos nightmares, I guarantee it.
He’ll need it soon, because the Cybermen have every intention of converting a small selection of humanity and then slaughtering the rest. And Vaughn can’t have that. He’s no great humanitarian but ruling the world doesn’t mean much if everyone’s too dead to follow your orders.
As for the Doctor, he’s trying to find out the particulars of the Cybermen’s plans for invasion. He suspects that the mysterious electrical circuits hidden in every piece of IE equipment have something to do with it, but how?
Not even Prof. Watkins (rescued offscreen) can enlighten him, but he can tell him about the secret weapon Vaughn made him build, which leads the Doctor to realise that the mysterious circuits could be used to produce a hypnotic signal. It’s like the hypnosis the Cybermen used back in "The Wheel In Space", but on a much grander scale.
The Doctor and UNIT can’t make enough signal-blocking devices to protect everyone in the world before the invasion begins; they can barely cobble enough together to protect themselves. And then the signal begins to transmit, and everyone who hears it loses consciousness. And then Cybermen come pouring forth from the sewers in their hundreds. It’s a terrific sight, Cybermen marching down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s one of my favourite shots in all of Doctor Who, right up there with the parade of Daleks outside Parliament. And there’s nobody who can stop them.
Nobody except the Doctor and a couple dozen UNIT soldiers, that is.
Already starting to butt heads with the Cybermen over control of the invasion force, Vaughn dispatches Packer to try and retrieve the Professor in hopes of forcing him to mass-produce more of his secret weapon. Packer uses his characteristic restraint in doing so, both failing to retrieve the Professor and injuring him in the process. And Jamie, too.
Finding themselves alone against the world-ending threat, the Brigadier and the Doctor start brainstorming ideas for resistance. The main problem is that the hypnotic signal is being broadcast from the Cybermen’s ship, which is currently sitting somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Not exactly within reach of missiles, and they don’t have a rocket handy. Or do they? The Russians had been on the verge of a rocket launch when the signal went out. If UNIT were to commandeer the rocket and replace the manned capsule with a warhead, they could use it to knock out the ship. I can’t imagine the Kremlin would be terribly happy about that, but they’re asleep right now.
Mind made up, the Brigadier sends a squad to Russia to take care of the rocket. Meanwhile, the Doctor decides to confront Vaughn. He tries to appeal to Vaughn’s better nature, but the unfortunate fact is that Vaughn doesn’t really have one.
More Cyberman ships are rapidly approaching Earth, but with Zoe’s help computing a tactical launch pattern, UNIT are able to intercept them with ground-based missiles. This loss leads the Cybermen to blame Vaughn for his failure to fully subdue the human populace, and they change their minds about their plans for humanity. They aren’t going to keep any of us around after all, converted or not. They’re going to deploy a bomb to wipe out all life on Earth.
Furious at his allies for betraying him before he got the chance to do the same to them, Vaughn agrees to help the Doctor. They need to switch off the Earth-based radio beam which the Cybermen will use to guide their bomb. I’d have thought that if a single bomb was powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth, it doesn’t really need a precise guidance system, but hey-ho.
Forming an unlikely alliance, Vaughn and the Doctor infiltrate the IE factory compound, slipping past hordes of Cybermen to reach the radio controls. As they advance, UNIT brings up the rear, engaging the Cybermen in a firefight from which UNIT emerges victorious.
And a good thing, too, because Vaughn doesn’t make it all the way to the radio controls. The Cybermen catch him and the Doctor in an ambush, and the Doctor has a very narrow escape as Vaughn perishes. To his credit, Vaughn takes a few of the Cybermen with him.
UNIT take care of the radio controls, saving the world from the bomb… for now. However, the world is still fast asleep, and the Cybermen are moving their ship to deliver the bomb at close range. The survival of humanity depends on the Russian rocket hitting its target.
A nail-biting few minutes ends in a mighty explosion—in space!
All’s well that ends well. By daylight, Isobel manages to get some very nice snaps of the Cybermen (and the Doctor, too) which land her a job in photojournalism. The Professor and Jamie recover from their injuries, and as for the Doctor, he finally manages to get those TARDIS circuits fixed.
Now, if only he could remember exactly where he parked it…
"Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!"
A Few Thoughts
The Cybermen are back! And they have a new design. Again. They do change quite a bit, don’t they? A Dalek is a Dalek is a Dalek but Cybermen never seem to settle. We’ve done away with the droopy notches at the edge of the mouth in favour of a more straight-faced look, and added a headpiece. It looks a bit like a bulky headset, like they’ve just come down from the Abbey Road Studios.
There’s been another change to their vocal design, a little heavier on the modulation. It sounds absolutely marvellous on the mad Cyberman. The warbling screams are positively haunting.
However, I am worried that they’re starting to get a little bit too robotic. If we lose sight of the fact that the Cybermen were once very much human, we lose what makes them special as villains. There’s a billion evil murder-robots. They’re fun, and I like them. The Cybermen, however, are horrific, and that’s why I love them.
I can’t think of an elegant way to segue from talking about the Cybermen to talking about women's lib, so let’s just lurch over there, shall we?
There was an attempt, of sorts, to inject some feminist messaging into the serial. At least, I hope it was a good-faith attempt, because it really didn’t work.
As mentioned earlier, the Brigadier was reluctant to let Isobel go and photograph the Cybermen, on the grounds that she’s just a young girl and this is a job for his men. Isobel rightly enough tells him off, and when Jamie agrees with the Brigadier (he at least has the excuse of literally being from the 18th century), she and Zoe swan off to prove the men wrong, dragging Jamie with them. A win for women’s lib, you’d think. And you’d be wrong. The expedition to the sewers results in the completely avoidable deaths of two men, and to add insult to injury, Zoe’s pictures are dismissed by the Brigadier as useless. The messaging is loud and clear: the silly little girl should have just listened to the men and let them handle things.
After this point, Isobel spends the rest of the story flirting back and forth with one of the UNIT men. While their banter is cute, don’t get me wrong, it also feels like she’s being shunted back into the standard role for all pretty girls in stories: something for the men to flirt with.
At least Zoe does get due credit for her maths genius. Thanks to her calculations, UNIT are able to take out 90% of the incoming Cyber-ships. The UNIT chaps are quite keen to keep her around. After all, she’s much prettier than a computer. Insert weary sigh here. Well, at least they admitted that she saved their bacon.
Speaking of UNIT, they’re quite an interesting addition to the world of Doctor Who. Having been established as a permanent fixture on contemporary(ish) Earth, I wonder if we’ll see them again the next time the Doctor and company wind up round our neck of the woods. I’m not averse to that, they’re fun to have around. It is important to me, however, that they don’t turn into a tool the Doctor can call on to simply run in and shoot the problem. That wouldn’t be Doctor Who to me. Cleverness and ingenuity should be what wins the day, not a greater force of arms.
Final Thoughts
Now that I’m done sounding like a total wet blanket, I have to say I really enjoyed this serial. It’s tremendous fun, very exciting, and I loved the cast of side characters.
On the heroic side, the Brigadier, old-fashioned sexism aside, is just plain cool. I’m sure I said the same when he was first introduced as a Colonel, but it still applies. This is a man who is utterly unflappable. Give him a job to do, and he’ll get on with it, efficiently and without a hair of his moustache out of place.
The narrative didn’t do her any favours, but I really did like Isobel and how she stood up to the men. Her uncle the Professor is also very interesting to me. He doesn’t meekly go along with Vaughn’s plans, but fights him every step of the way. There’s a moment late on in the serial where he tells Vaughn that though he has no choice but to serve him, given half the opportunity he would kill him. And (this is my favourite Vaughn moment) Vaughn gives him that opportunity, handing him a loaded gun.
You might expect that the Professor would find himself unable to follow through on his threat, but he really goes for it, firing on Vaughn three times at point blank range. Unfortunately it turns out that Vaughn is bulletproof thanks to his cybernetically augmented body, but still, he tried. I have to give him credit for that.
I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed Vaughn. He’s an absolute delight to watch; a total slimeball, utterly despicable, absolutely captivating. We get to see him at the height of his strength, cool and smug and in control, and at the depths of wretchedness when all his plans come to nothing. What a great character.
The Invasion isn’t without its flaws, but it’s a jolly good time, and that’s what we’re here for.
4 stars out of 5 for "The Invasion."
