The Invasion - Episode 1

So now we get to amazingly the second longest story of the season. Normally eight episode would be long enough to rank and the longest but not during this season. This is the first time that we have had Cybermen since the less that spectacular ‘The Wheel in Space’. This is the first of two episodes to be animated and if I recall was one of the first DVD’s to receive the animated treatment. Now did I miss something? Only I remember the Master going into the TARDIS but at the start of this episode there is no sign of him.

There is a different feel to this story and that stems mostly from the incidental music. It’s very much like the sort of drama that you would see on ITV and it doesn’t have the same sort of vibe as other stories in the season have. This is something that I really like about the Invasion. There are many things that I like about this story including Tobias Vaughn and obviously the Cybermen but more of them later.  It starts off with the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe getting a journey in the back of a lorry and you can tell that this isn’t going to be a normal story when the driver gets gunned down in quite a grim manner for 1968’s story.

This story was due to see the return of Professor Travers from ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ and ‘The Web of Fear’ however they don’t appear and we get Professor Watkins and his daughter Isobel. The moment that we meet Isobel isn’t the best for the character. I must admit that I don’t really like character very much. It might have something to do with the rather unpleasant treatment she gives the Doctor. She buddies up with Zoe and this means that Zoe is separated from the Doctor and Jamie, allowing them to visit the IE building. This story marks the debut of U.N.I.T which would become an integral part of the show. However the first person we see is Benton and even then its quite serious. Not the loveable Sergeant that we would know soon after. It’s not the proper introduction but it’s the prologue if you would like it the return of Lethbridge-Stewart.

The animation still stands up and I thought that it was very impressive when I first saw it. Compared to future animation releases I think that there is a nice simplicity to it and it helps the story and I’m guessing that it adds something to the episode because obviously as the episode is lost (for the moment), we will never know whether this episode is as atmospheric as the animation suggests.

Kevin Stoney returns to Doctor Who after playing Mavic Chen in ‘The Daleks Master Plan’ and I’ll be saying several times over the course of this run that he is easily the best thing in this story and is superb from the very first moment his head appears on a screen. As Tobias Vaughn, his character has an ice coldness to it. Aside from that the performances of the regulars are all quite striking as far as I am concerned. After the relatively light hearted feel of ‘The Mind Robber’ it’s good to give the three regulars something approaching mainstream drama. The story feels like its setting things up and doing it properly.

It’s a cracking opening episode. There is a great sense that from the very beginning to the very end of the episode that this eight part run is going to be a highlight of Troughtons’ run.