The Invasion of Time - Episode 5

So the Sontarans have finally appeared. After being stuck with the horrible tin foil (or nice Vardens if you had been watching the CGI version), it was nice to know that they wont be making an appearance. They cant be that good an alien race if they allow the Sontarans to use them in this way. The appearance of the Sontrans on the stairs continues to impress me and I think that they manage to give this final season story a bit more gravitas than it would have had. Whether it is the best of the six part finales remains to be seen but considering that this is the only one to feature a returning monster then its certainly up their.

Despite this being their third story and the race suppose to be clones, the Sontarans we get in this story don’t look like anything that we had seen before. Just by looking at their hands shows that the budget clearly didn’t stretch to proper prostecthics. There is one shot where Derek Deadman (who plays Stor) is talking to Kelner and the mask he has to wear looks a bit iffy. I think that these issues will surface in a more noticeable way in the final episode but I think that the mask is going to be one of the problems I have with this story. Certainly if memory serves me right.

It didn’t take Kelner long to become best buddies with the Sontarans. Luckily the Sontarans don’t want to know and don’t see much value in him and refuse to listen when Kelner tries to tell them that the President is the Doctor. I still think that Kelner is the best of the supporting characters but I think that its down to Milton Johns’ portrayal of this role. John Arnatt is good as Borusa but becomes a bit more of a sidekick to the Doctor which given that Brousa is suppose to be the President’s number two isn’t perhaps surprising.

The Doctor becomes the first President to hold the great key. I think that calling it the Great Key is perhaps being a bit too kind because it looks just like a normal key. Speaking of the great key, it does lead to one of the nicest moments in the episode when the Doctor hands the great key to Leela and tells Borusa that he trusts Leela and Leela smiles. After not getting the impression that they were on the same page, it was nice to see in Louise Jameson’s final episode the two seemed to be working well.

As the penultimate episode this story feels like its still in transition even though more happens in it than in the previous episode. I think that it’s a very good episode and ends in a really bonkers way. The Doctor and Rodan (presumably the others as well) are in a tiny bit of trouble and the screen goes white with the Doctor looking at the screen. I think that with just one episode remaining this story has managed to deal with the lack of money a lot better than ‘Underworld’.