The Invasion - Episode 4

T'was the night before Christmas and all was well as I watch episode four. Wendy Padbury returns off her holiday and it’s the second of the animated episodes. The early part of the episode is made up with re-introducing Zoe and Isobel to the story. It’s interesting to note that episode four aired on Doctor Who’s 5^th birthday. This is effectively the transition episode because as we enter the second half of the story this is where the good stuff starts to enter into the story and there are still some things from the early episodes that continue here such as the wonderful incidental music.

Vaughn is showing that he has a way of trying to control the Cybermen or his allies. Now it’s nothing new that someone working with the main villain thinks that they can control them but this is the best plan that we’ve seen so far. Vaughn has been planning this for ages and so it seems that it cant fail but we all know how this one ends. I like how Vaughn continues to use Packer as a bit of a whipping boy. I’ve not mentioned the performances of the regulars recently and that’s something I will put right here as there seems to be a seriousness that I haven’t seen to the Doctor for a while. Even Jamie didn’t seem his usual self and together both Frazer Hines and Patrick Troughton give very solid performances. Consider she didn’t really have much to do in this episode, Wendy Padbury reminds us that she is here and its good to have them back.

The part where they are trying to free Zoe and Isobel was quite well done and was probably the most actioned pack scene that Doctor Who has ever done. I think though that whilst it was good to have Zoe back, Isobel didn’t really do much apart from remind us that she could have taken some photographic evidence. This leads us to the fact that its not going to be easy to put an end to Vaughn or IE.  The name mentioned in episode two, Billy Rutlidge gets mentioned and we get a scene with him. He seems like a normal civil servant who doesn’t really have much power to resist Vaughn and it’s easy to see how Vaughn has the power he has.

Of course with this being a Cybermen story they weren’t going to make an appearance until the very end and they form the cliffhanger and even though its an animated episode its still an effective way to end the episode and I suppose the viewer must have known that the story would be stepping up a gear which is just what we need. A good episode.