By Jessica Holmes

Hello again, it’s time for me to talk very excitedly at you about the latest Doctor Who serial: The Invasion (written by Derrick Sherwin from a story by Kit Pedler). As the programme dabbles in military sci-fi, the Doctor runs into an old friend—and an older enemy.

Yes, you're seeing correctly. He is indeed using his recorder as a telescope and Jamie's shoulder as a mount. This might be my favourite Doctor-companion pairing ever.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

So, what exotic locale has the Doctor and co. landed in this time? Uh, England. The twentieth century. And the TARDIS' circuits are in desperate need of repair. Seeing as they have friends in the 20th century, the Doctor suggests looking up Professor Travers in London (whom they met in "The Web of Fear"). Hopefully his skills resurrecting a robot Yeti will translate to repairing an immensely complex time and space machine.

Before we get to that, however, dark deeds are afoot. The Doctor picked a bad place to land, requiring the aid of a van driver to smuggle him and his friends out of a compound owned by the mysterious, ruthless and well-armed International Electromatics company.

On arriving in London, the Doctor and company find that Professor Travers and his daughter Anne are out of the country. They’ll have to settle for the suspiciously similar substitute Professor Watkins (Edward Burnham) and his niece Isobel (Sally Faulkner). Teeny problem: Professor Watkins hasn’t been seen in a week. Not since he went to work for… International Electromatics. (Dun dun duuuuuun!)

The Doctor and Jamie head to the I.E. company offices in London in an attempt to get some answers. And answers they get (of a sort) from the company director, Tobias Vaughn (Kevin Stoney). Snappy dresser. Nice office. Doesn’t blink often enough.

And he’s far too nice. He gives Jamie a free radio and offers the Doctor his workshop’s help with the TARDIS circuits, assuring him that Watkins is perfectly fine. No, of course they can’t actually see him. He’s busy.

The Doctor suspects Vaughn’s got something to hide, and he’s absolutely right. Vaughn is hiding an alien computer in his office—an alien computer that’s currently planning an invasion, and insists that the Doctor must be destroyed if their plans are to have a chance to succeed. It also tells him that the Doctor has the ability to travel between worlds, and Vaughn becomes obsessed with finding out how.

But the Doctor isn’t the only man with a distrust of Vaughn and his company, and he’s not the first to try investigating them. Say hello to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, headed by our old friend Brigadier (formerly Colonel) Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney). They’ve made it their business to investigate the unusual and otherworldly, and they’ve been taking an interest in I.E. for quite some time. If they pool their knowledge with the Doctor, they might be able to put a stop to whatever Vaughn’s plans are. The Brigadier gives the Doctor a transceiver radio and assures him that if he needs help, U.N.I.T. will be ready to provide it.

Nice 'tache.

And he might need it sooner rather than later, because the women got tired of waiting and went to the I.E. offices to look for them—and they haven’t come out of there since. The Doctor and Jamie arrive too late to stop Vaughn’s enforcers bundling the women onto a train (in crates, no less), but Vaughn ever so kindly offers to give them a lift to the I.E. factory compound so they can search for them.

U.N.I.T. observes this with some concern, and the Brigadier has them discreetly tracked… if you call helicopters ‘discreet’.

Meanwhile, Vaughn’s head enforcer Packer (Peter Halliday) is hard at work coercing Prof. Watkins with threats to Isobel’s wellbeing. Watkins is a stubborn bloke, though, and Packer doesn’t scare him. Vaughn, on the other hand… when Vaughn turns up to make a threat, that’s another matter.

Such as when he threatens to hand Zoe over to Packer’s mercy. He’s worked out the Doctor has a machine that allows him to travel between worlds, and he wants it for himself. Hand over the TARDIS, and nobody has to get hurt. The Doctor instead makes a run for it. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t hand over the TARDIS even if he wanted to. It turned invisible when he arrived; he’s probably forgotten where he parked it.

The Doctor/Jamie method for getting through tough situations: when in doubt, grab Jamie/the Doctor and hold on for dear life.

The Doctor and Jamie make a narrow escape via the building’s lift shaft, and hide out in a train car for a little while. They find some crates, and Jamie is alarmed to discover that his is not empty. There’s something alive in there! However, he doesn’t get a chance to investigate, because they need to search for the women—and we need to tease the mystery out for one more episode.

Speaking of the mystery, how about a clue? Vaughn discusses with Packer his plans to double cross his extraterrestrial allies. Watkins is insurance against them. The machine he’s building has the potential to destroy Vaughn’s allies with the power of emotion. They’re vulnerable to it, you see. Vaughn’s happy to use their technology and strength for his own gain, but would rather they didn’t take over the world. They aren’t going to kill everybody, oh no. They’re going to convert them. Into what? Well. Take a guess.

When Vaughn demands that the Doctor and Jamie hand themselves over, the Doctor calls in his favour from the Brigadier. Cue the daring rescue! As a U.N.I.T. helicopter hovers above, Jamie helps the women escape from the compound’s main building, and the group ascend from the rooftop via a rickety rope ladder under a hail of bullets.

A furious Vaughn now must alter his plans to bring the invasion forward. He prepares to return to London, getting in contact with his inside man at the Ministry Of Defence. U.N.I.T. must be stopped.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has a burning question. What was in the crates? Out of the frying pan, he throws himself back into the fire, sneaking back to the I.E. London office to take a look at their cargo bay. This time, he’s lucky enough to get a glimpse of a crate being opened, and the thing inside is waking up. Stepping unsteadily from the crate, glinting in the dim light…is a Cyberman.

Nice earmuffs.

A Few Thoughts

I often get a bit annoyed with long serials, but I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed every episode so far. The mystery unfolds at a fair pace, new revelations revealing new questions, rather than the repetitiveness and backtracking that some serials lean on to pad their runtime. There’s a good degree of suspense, helped along by the rather good soundtrack and interesting cast of characters. Speaking of which…

Some people say a story is only as good as its villain, and if that’s true, this is shaping up to be an excellent serial. Vaughn is a great villain. He’s smooth, clever, he’s affable, but just a little bit too much. He’s smarmy, and there’s something peculiarly loathsome about smarmy people, isn’t there? And yet underneath that cool, polished surface, there’s a positively explosive temper, and a true nastiness to him. The tension between these sides of his personality is absolutely delicious.

You can't hear it, but 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' is playing in the background of this scene. I wish I was joking.

Speaking of having hidden depths, it surprised me that Zoe chose to hang back and play fashion model with Isobel rather than investigate the office with Jamie and the Doctor. Of course, on the purely practical level it was necessary to separate the group somehow, but the method is something I find curious. I don’t really know what to make of it. On the one hand, it could be said that this is just pigeonholing Zoe and Isobel into a stereotypically feminine and frivolous activity while the men do the important stuff. And well, I don’t think that’s entirely inaccurate. And I think it is fair to point out that even when the women do show initiative in attempting to come to the rescue of the chaps, the fact they immediately get captured and need the men to save them rather undermines the whole thing.

On the other hand, Isobel is a self-employed woman making her own way in the world, and Zoe has never really had much of an opportunity to simply enjoy or explore her own femininity. She expresses in "The Dominators" a degree of discomfort in fashion that isn’t solely utilitarian, and we saw in her introductory serial how she was raised as more of a human computer than an actual teenage girl. Perhaps this is the first time in her life she’s ever been at liberty to have fun. Nothing wrong with that.

So yes, there’s nothing wrong at all with the women’s choice of activity, but there is room to criticise how the story uses that choice to reinforce traditional gender dynamics. Gender politics as they apply to storytelling can be pretty complicated. Who knew?

When confronting supervillains, it's important to wear the silliest accessory you can find. That way, they'll be too distracted to harm you.

Final Thoughts

As glad as I am to see the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, I haven’t yet made up my mind as to how I feel about the introduction of U.N.I.T. On the one hand, they’re cool. No denying that. They seem trustworthy enough. I like the Brigadier, and think the new facial hair suits him very well. Yet I worry about the idea of the Doctor making too much use of military allies. I only hope their answer to every alien problem won’t be to just shoot it.

Well, all that remains to be seen. And I’m very much looking forward to it.