I take it that the BBC was trying to position the Cybermen as the next Daleks, i.e. - the next character to be made into toys and household bric-a-brac of all sorts, i.e. - the next cash cow, as we had a story featuring them not all that long ago - The Wheel in Space. That one was broadcasted in the spring of 1968 while the tale here, The Invasion, started in November 1968 and ended just before Christmas. It looks like there were 2 Cybermen stories a year during the Troughton era.
Somehow this one became an 8-parter. I guess that, since the previous couple were 5-parters instead of 6, the 2 surplus episodes were gobbled up here. Episodes 1 and 4 are missing but were animated back in circa 2006.
It picks up where The Mind Robber left off with the TARDIS reassembling itself after the computer in the Land of Fiction met its demise. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are safe and sound back in the console room. They find themselves looking down on the dark side of the moon when they see a missile being launched from there. Some script editor type just couldn't get enough of broken TARDIS components and so here we have a stuck landing circuit putting our heroes in jeopardy as the ship cannot move out of the missile's path.
Luckily the Doctor pounded on the console enough to unstick it and getting them out of harm's way just in the nick of time. The TARDIS lands on Earth in an indeterminate era that looks an awful lot like the late 1960s. International Electromatics is the evil mega-corporation in this period. They head over to Professor Travers' place - they last met him when Yetis were running amok - but find that he is no longer there and in his place is a lovely blond woman named Isobel.
It's funny how a woman at home alone seems perfectly happy to have a group of strangers, including 2 men, just burst into her house asking questions. The reason Isobel is alone is that she's seen neither hide nor hair of her uncle, an employee of International Electromatics, in a while. On the bright side, Zoe is young, attractive, and happy to pose for Isobel's camera. With all of the late 60s fashions, including some rather mini mini-skirts, I was reminded of Thomas in Blowup as the aspiring Annie Leibovitz maneuvered around and laid on the floor to get just the right shot.
Zoe decides to stay behind for a photoshoot while the Doctor and Jamie head out to investigate this mysterious International Electromatics and try to learn of Prof. Watkins', Isobel's uncle, fate. They trespass, of course, and are being watched by a couple gentlemen in a car. Our time travelers end up in the office of the corporation's Grand Poohbah, Tobias Vaughn. I ran into him when I read the Virgin New Adventure, Original Sin, so it was neat to see where he came from.
Vaughn is a very Bond-like villain - cold, calculating, and a complete megalomaniac. And, it turns out, he has some kind of contraption hidden behind a secret panel in his office. Once I heard its voice, I figured out that it was a Cyber Planner. "Oh no. Not again!" I cried desperately hoping that this Planner was better than the one in The Wheel in Space and that its scheme wouldn't be so Byzantine. "Ixnay on the stellar engineeringscray and just invade the Earth!"
We learn that Vaughn is in league with the Cybermen who are planning to invade the Earth with his help. Just like in The Wheel in Space, the Cyber invaders need some kind of guide beam and here it is in order to get their bomb to its target. Lo and behold, Vaughn just happens to have a deep space communications system on the campus of his factory. I don't understand. How do the Cybermen get anywhere/do anything without some signal giving exact directions? Did they need one in The Moonbase? I don't recall that being the case.
Unsurprisingly, Vaughn plans to double cross the Cybermen. He's got Isobel's uncle essentially under house arrest so that he builds this device called a cerebraton mentor which generates emotions within whomever is shot by it.
In a nice bit of redirection aided by the animation, we learn that one of the guys in the car following the Doctor and Jamie is Benton! And he works for U.N.I.T.! And the pièce de résistance is that the Brigadier is now the Brigadier and he's heading the U.N.I.T. investigation of International Electromatics.
With U.N.I.T. and an invasion story set on Earth, this must surely be the proto-Pertwee story. It feels just like one of his stories while he is marooned here on Earth. It's a fun action romp with our heroes being rescued by helicopter as Jamie hangs onto a rope ladder for dear life. Plus, there's lots of shootouts.
In one scene, Vaughn uses the cerebraton mentor on a Cyber test subject and the welling of emotions drives the stoic soldier into a fit of raging lunacy. It runs off emitting a horrible wail. We see it later when Isobel, Zoe, and Jamie are in the sewers trying to get a good picture of Cybermen as photographic proof for U.N.I.T. big wigs. Maddened by the fresh emotions that churned within him, the Cyberman seemed combinedly possessed by all the weeping angels that fell from Manhattan and it stumbles towards them with a rachitic menace. This scene brought Earthshock to mind.
Speaking of Cybermen, they now have 5 fingers instead of 3 and are looking more like the 1980s version that scared me as a kid. The chest units are much less bulky and they just have a more robotic appearance as opposed to a cybernetic one. They look less like people with some electronic parts. It was also really neat to see the iconic shot of them with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background. Hibernating Cyber troops are being sent to Earth wrapped in gauze and packed in these casket-like crates. When reactivated, they burst out of the gauze a la Tomb of the Cybermen and they are accompanied by some great, eerie electronic music on the soundtrack.
For reasons I don't understand, the Cybermen accede to every one of Vaughn's demands until the end. Why? Did the human really have that much leverage? Also notable is just how long Cybermen take to fire. It's like they wait until they're sure you're going to stay in their crosshairs for another few minutes before they decide to fire.
Did Wendy Padbury go on vacation during the making of this story? Zoe spends an inordinate amount of time having her picture taken by Isobel. When she is finally torn away from the extended photoshoot to help in the effort against Vaughn and the Cybermen, she is still wearing her furry boa. Just couldn't part with it, I guess. On the one hand, I can understand how a teenage girl would be flattered and enjoy having her picture taken. For hours. But Zoe is this math savant and a bit poindextery and being a model just seems out of character for her.
Whole episodes go by where she's barely seen and, when she is, she's posing for Isobel's lens. However, she does get a couple nice scenes in. In the first, she and Isobel go in search of the Doctor and Jamie at International Electromatics HQ. The receptionist is a recalcitrant mainframe computer who frustrates Zoe to no end. And so she speaks to it in some computer gibberish and gets it working on some unsolvable math problem which causes the thing to start smoking and explode. Towards the end, she calculates a pattern for missiles to take in order to maximize damage to the Cyber fleet. Zoe is earning her keep in these scenes, no doubt, but such acts of intelligence were few and far between.
Tangentially, I thought it was a shame that Mel never got to prove herself with scenes like these.
I also have to wonder if Frazer Hines went on holiday too. Jamie's leg gets grazed by a bullet about two-thirds of the way through the story and he's offscreen recuperating until the very end of episode 8.
Vaughn's head of security is a gentleman named Packer. He's rather ineffectual and continually gives his boss the "That's not what our pals the Cybermen want..." routine and at one point Vaughn loses it. He yells, "Just obey my orders!" as he slams his fist down. Or did he throw a pen on his desk? Regardless, that scene was right out of Downfall.
The Invasion has some iconic Doctor Who moments and serves as a template for many a story to come. It has its flaws but there is also great fun to be had. Look how young Benton and the Brigadier are! The Doctor and Jamie continue to work great together. There are some funny moments such as when the Doctor dodges Cybermen gunshots by jumping around like a cartoon character and, in another, he is unsure whether to go left or right so he flips a coin. He looks to his left but heads right.
Vaughn is a fine villain and he's human to boot. He gets shot by Cybermen at the end and we see him collapse. However, we also know that he has some degree of Cyber augmentation as the Doctor noted earlier that there was something inhuman about him while in another scene Vaughn laughs off being shot in the chest at point blank range. I am going to have to re-read Original Sin because I just don't recall how it is that he survived and managed to star in a novel.
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