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Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time (Story 97)

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The premise of "THE INVASION OF TIME" is simple, but genius: WHAT IF... the Doctor became EVIL? "Invasion" is a sequel of sorts to the Doctor's last visit to his homeworld of Gallifrey in "Deadly Assassin" in which the Doctor saves the Timelords from the Master and in doing so becomes the sole surviving candidate in an election to determine the Timelord Presidency. The story opens with the Doctor apparently selling out his people to anonymous alien invaders. The Doctor berates and expels his companion, Leela and betrays his old Timelord mentor Borusa and before long succeeds in arranging the conquest of the planet. Once revealed, the invaders turn out to be B list, working for the Sontarans (as seen in this season's DW series 4, the "Sontaran Stratagem"). The Sontaran want control over time itself, via the relics of the President's office and the help of the Lord President of the Timelords a.k.a The Doctor...Once the Doctor's plan is revealed things really get complicated...a rebellion against the traitorous Doctor is underway, ultimately leading up to a battle for Gallifrey, even including a "unforgettable" chase through the deep recesses of the Doctor's TARDIS.

Some of the best moments of the story include conversations between the overbearing Lord Doctor and Borusa, his teacher's current & most memorable incarnation played by John Arnatt. Tom Baker is in top form when he in his over-the-top megalomaniacal glory for the first half of the story. The climatic TARDIS chase is memorable, not for the execution, which isn't so good, but the sense of the transdimensional nature of the Doctor's craft. The scenes in the TARDIS really convey the limitlessness and spark the imagination for the possibilities in store for the new series, hopefully. K9 mark I. and Leela say their farewells, but what's not so memorable, the unbelievable romance between the warrior woman Leela and the sheltered Captain of the Guard, Andred. Equally forgettable are some effects on the second string invaders, the Vardans, worse than their horrible shroud images is their actual physical form in some sort of cross between a WWII paratrooper and a TV news cameraman. One major flaw of the finale of the 6 part story is having the Doctor solve the conflict with a gadget, especially when that gadget is for all intents and purposes a big gun! Even fans new to the series, know "the Doctor just `ain't down with `dat!"

For all of it's script troubles, plot and FX flaws, Invasion is a must own for any Doctor Who fan, for it's many Timelord and Tardis milestones and because the Sontarans have just been revamped. Besides, this is history.

"Invasion" Drinking Game

Drink....

...everytime Gallifrey is saved from "the invaders."

...when Leela kills ( or throttles ) someone.

...everytime RASSILON is mentioned (the Presidential induction provides loads of these.)

...when you see the same BBC car-park stairwell in the TARDIS.

...when a Sontaran trips on patio furniture.

Time was one luxury that those involved in the making of "The Invasion of Time" had none of. After receiving an utterly unworkable script soon before things were supposed to get started, the producer and script editor had to team up and dash this one off at the last minute, making sure to incorporate only pre-existing sets and costumes since barely any leeway existed for crafting new ones. As if that weren't enough, filming had to be hurriedly scheduled so as to avoid inevitable strikes at the BBC looming on the horizon. Everything seems to have been working against them, in short, and yet somehow they pulled off one of the more unusually intriguing and unique Doctor Who stories of the 1970's.

How? Partly by making a virtue of necessity. The story returns us once again to the Doctor's home world of Gallifrey (for which sets and costumes still remained from Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin (Episode 88)), a rather tedious and drearily bureaucratic place enlivened only by petty political maneuvering and backstabbing, a society resting on its laurels after having achieved all it could ever achieve ages beforehand. Into this bland uneventfulness come the Doctor and his knife-wielding companion Leela, throwing everyone for a loop--including the viewer, as the Doctor begins to act more and more erratically, more and more like the very type of power-mad dictator he usually fights against. Tom Baker pulls this off with superb finesse, giggling (for instance) with wickedly barking mad glee as he supposedly introduces his fellow Time Lords to their conquerors, his apparent accomplices the Vardans. The writers keep us going for quite a while, too, finally revealing only rather late into the story that this is all but a risky yet clever stratagem on the Doctor's part to hoodwink the Vardans and save the day, expertly timing this revelation just exactly before the moment our confusion would've shifted into active dislike for our erstwhile hero.

Still, for all that, the strain shows. The concept behind the Vardans' threatening power--the ability to travel instantly along any wavelength, including that of thought--is as highly original as it is indeed formidable, but the less than special effect used to depict them (rattling tin foil superimposed onto the screen) is so dismal as to be distracting even to longtime fans tolerant of the show's chronic shortcomings in this area. Their humanoid form is not much more impressive, and then in an uncomfortable moment of anticlimax intended apparently to keep the story going for another two episodes at all costs, the Sontarans replace the Vardans with little real rhyme or reason. Don't get me wrong, the Sontarans are great, but this isn't their gig (shouldn't they be busy with the Rutans?), and limited physical beings with conventional space weaponry that they are, they seem much less a threat to the Time Lords than the prior Vardans. Second of all and in a similar vein, the frankly ingenious idea of having a chase through endless labyrinths within the Doctor's dimensionally transcendental vehicle the Tardis is sadly let down by actuality, it being painfully obvious that these are just old musty hallways in some building in England (a defunct mental hospital, as it turns out). Finally, Leela is swiftly and abruptly written out at the conclusion in an implausibly ridiculous manner glaringly inconsistent with her character--a particularly deplorable lapse for me, Leela being one of my favorite companions.

Given the circumstances, though, these problems are less surprising than the fact that it all ultimately beats the odds and holds together pretty dang well as an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable Doctor Who adventure. Some very memorable supporting characters contribute a lot to this success, including the Doctor's old mentor Borusa, venerable and yet foxily savvy, and the obsequiously scheming Castellan. On a larger scale, there is just something dreadfully compelling about the idea of an advanced society presuming itself invulnerable and so being taken off guard, and the unseemly politics of occupation are portrayed as convincingly as possible given the show's format. Finally, some of the off-the-wall oddball humor considered so typical of the Fourth Doctor really comes to the fore here, including a daring though momentary aside to the audience. Probably no other show could get away with this and still count as good solid serious science fiction, and on that strength alone "The Invasion of Time" manages as a fine example of classic Doctor Who, not to mention grace under pressure.

"The Invasion of Time" was one of the first "Doctor Who" stories I encountered, at a very young age, thanks to the novelization (Doctor Who and the Invasion of Time) by Terrance Dicks. I thus lack any objectivity towards this story. I've read the book, and later seen the TV episode, so often that I know every line by heart and could assemble the script like a jigsaw puzzle even with the lights off. It wouldn't make any sense to me now, nearly 25 years later, to question where the pieces are supposed to go. If offered the script to improve, I couldn't change it.

Plot-wise, it's best to think of "Invasion" as three successive two-part adventures. In the opening two acts, the Doctor has seemingly turned evil -- assuming dictatorial control of his home planet (Gallifrey, last seen in the wonderful Doctor Who - The Deadly Assassin) and opening the floodgates to alien invaders. This is Tom Baker at his manic best. In the middle story, the camera pulls back to reveal the Doctor's been on our side the whole time, as he enlists the help of an enormous cast to defeat the threat -- until the camera pulls back yet again to reveal that the Doctor's been duped by the Sontarans (last seen in the much less impressive Doctor Who - The Sontaran Experiment (Episode 77)) and has to journey deep into the rarely-seen heart of his own TARDIS to save the day in Parts Five and Six.

The DVD production team's editorial slant towards "Invasion" is roughly similar to mine. Via the stellar production note subtitle feature during the main story, and on the too-brief making-of featurette, they reveal a fondness for the big ideas and concepts that underlie the story -- even if the production values got caught up and trampled in the rush to make the Big Epic Season Finale on a less-than-shoestring budget.

I learned a lot about "Invasion" from the DVD, in fact, much more than I thought I'd be able to learn from a story whose twists and turns I've worn smoothe through years of re-use. The script, for example, was a last-minute filler replacement written in four days. Who knew? Or that the production was hastily mounted on location in a disused hospital, or that companion Leela (Louise Jameson)'s departure from the series was something the producer hoped to reverse at the very last minute.

The commentary track here is a little dull; we've already heard from Jameson, John Leeson (the voice of K-9, who occasionally slips into character), and FX man Mat Irvine on this month's companion release, Doctor Who: The Invisible Enemy/K9 and Company: A Girl's Best Friend. Co-author Anthony Read is a welcome addition to the booth, although he doesn't really add much until the final hour. Six minutes of deleted scenes are quite welcome -- we don't get these too often. A comedy reel on the story's pseudonymous author, "David Agnew", gets its few chuckles, while a short bit on the Doctor's since-defunct home planet Gallifrey feels oddly rushed.

While the visual effects don't hold up so well after 30+ years, the CGI overlay added by the restoration team offers one nice benefit: the Vardans now appear as menacing humanoid ghosts rather than as rattling drapes of tin foil, if you choose that option. Of course, the effects don't matter much, not with a large well-acted cast and a script full of such large ideas. Here's another case of "Doctor Who" doing something with next to nothing, and more than getting away with it.

what can I say, the more Doctor Who that is released the better the world is. great redone special effects and of course the original version.

I've been a Tom Baker fan all my life, so admittedly, there are few baker stories that I don't like. However, any fan of the series would be very hard pressed not to love this episode. This is pure, unbridled Doctor Who. This one is chock full of twists and turns and the appearnce of an old foe really blindsides you! Well acted, with some fabulous chemistry between the actors, especially the Doctor and the Cardinal. the whole thing leaves you with a feeling of mixed emotion of course, as the bad guys get it in the end, but we lose a Tardis companion. The possibilities of what actually happned to this companion are limitless, and have never been explored, and of course with the new series, anything is possible!!! This really is Tom Baker at his erratic best doing what he does best!

Very enjoyable story. Has our beloved Doctor turned evil and sold out Gallifrey to alien invaders? Tom Baker's acting is top notch. My only complaint about the story is Leela's romance with a Gallifreyian soldier is not very believable-no chemistry between them at all. I highly recommend this episode to other Dr. Who fans.

Primitive special effects, tacky production values and location shooting that turns the English countryside or derelict buildings into sci-fi settings have always been a big part of the charm of Doctor Who. The story and characters have to be compelling when the show so often looks as if it were pulled out of the BBC's backside.

"The Invasion of Time," however, was not one of those creative stories. It was a fair to middling production from one of the Fourth Doctor's more fallow periods, and it simply doesn't warrant the two-disc treatment it receives here. Yes, it is a six-parter, but the extra features clock in at well under an hour. "The Sea Devils," released on DVD three months previously, manages to squeeze six episodes, almost an hour of extras, plus a 120-page book in PDF format, all onto one disc. So disc capacity certainly wasn't an issue.

"The Invasion of Time" was the final story before the "Key to Time" season and marked Louise Jameson's last outing as Leela, but it all feels haphazard from start to finish. The story recycles sets and costumes from the previous season's "The Deadly Assassin." The special effects depicting the unseen invaders are laughably bad even by Doctor Who standards. The story is structured as a four-parter but tacks on a two-episode "dog leg" featuring a "surprise" appearance by the Sontarans, one of the easier aliens for the show to produce.

The padding in these last two episodes is shameless: Characters chase each other through the same scenery over and over and over, and we're told it's because they're walking through different, identical levels of the TARDIS. Yeah, right. You'd think the producers would at least try to put a little razzle-dazzle into such a rare, insider's tour of the Doctor's fabled time machine. Instead, the scenes were shot inside a decommissioned mental hospital--and they look it.

This was clearly not one of Tom Baker's finest hours (or two) as the good Doctor and is recommended for completists only. Casual fans of the Fourth Doctor will want to invest their hard-earned cash in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" or "City of Death."

The Invasion of Time has always been one of my favorite Doctor Who stories. Unfortunately, the nasty special effects that were created for the Vardans really ruined the story for me. (Well, maybe the clumsy Sontaran trying to leap over the chaise lounge chair was pretty lame too.)
However, thanks to the advent of CGI technology, the viewer is able to replace some of the bad special effects. This helps the story immensely.
I recommend this story for the tried and true Doctor Who fan.

The Tom Baker era epsidoe entitled "The Invasion of Time" has the Doctor dealing with some unkown alien force that is determine to conquer Gallifrey and place the Time Lords and all there power under thier control. However the Doctor has kept Leela out of the loop and is treating her verry badly. Even going so far as to intruct K-9 to stun her if she tries to activate the TARDIS screen to see outside.
Once landing in Galliefry's standard time the Doctor is greeted by guards prepared to take him and Leela to the Castelan. On the way they pass Chancellor Barusa old freind and teacher of the Doctor and there the Doctor before him claims the titles, rights and privlages befitting the Lord President. Leela is shcoked and even Barusa is surprised since he fled before he could take the mantle and with it left a gap at the highest level of thier power.
Meanwhile the Doctor is being monitored by the aliens he is working with and waiting, but for what and when will the strike? Leela is being prepared for the ceremony that will allow the Doctor to become Lord Preisdent. And being watched by the captain of the guard so she doesn't try to escape or flee the citadel.
Many of the Time Lords are aghast that the Doctor is demanding the induction so soon and not following proper protocol. Barusa is also perpelxed by why the Doctor has returned and wonders if something else is going on. The Doctor prepared begins to recite the oath as Lord President and given the trappings of office with the Sash of Rassilon and the Secpter of Rassilon. Even so much as given the Key to Rassillon only to discover that no President has ever found in there time. For they and they alone must search for it. The aliens fear that the key is lost and without there plans will not work. With the final oath spoken and the crown of Rassilon placed upon his borw he then takes in all of the inforamtion and power of the Matrix the single greatest computer the universe has ever seen. (And you don't get 42 as an answer.) The Matrix overpowers him and soon chaos ensues. The Castellan has taken over and Barusa and the other Time Lords are placed under arrest until such time that it can be determined what happen to the Doctor.
Meanwhile the Doctor recovers but orders Leela to be exiled out into the wastelands for her own good. Barusa is forced to obey the Doctor no matter what and worse still it seems the aliens are preparing for invasion and using pshyic powers they try to destroy the force wall protecting the planet. With the Doctor acting strange, Leela exiled and the Time Lords being forced to obey alien invaders will they surivie? And what does the fabled Key of Rassilon have to do with all of this? What importance does the Doctor known that no one else does? Will this be the end of Galliefry forever?

I hold this one up to be one of my favorite Tom Baker stories of all time along with "The Ark in Space", "Genesis of the Daleks", and "Planet of Evil", and if I could choose just one story from the Tom Baker era to sum up his Doctor, then this one would have to be it. The only thing that's missing from this story is a hammer horror feel to it. But other than that, this one's got everything. It has a great script with interesting plot twists at every turn. You've got lots of mystery and action with some great humorous moments in this one. Two alien races are invading Gallifrey - the Vardans and the Sontarans. Performances are great. Tom Bkaer's Doctor is as good as ever as he is featured eating and offering everybody jelly babies in this one. For the first half of the story the Doctor appears to be a traitor by helping these alien beings invade his own world and he even turns against his own companion, Leela, in this one. And when the truth is finally revealed, the Doctor is never more heroic. K9 stands by the Doctor's side throughout the whole thing, and he is certainly a dog of action when you see him battling Sontarans with his laser nose. This is definitely a five star script.

And although the production suffers a little bit due to the fact that the BBC was having money troubles then and suffering from a strike, the story is so good you are able to forgive this story for it. Plus the new CGI effects included on this DVD also greatly improve the story - although I think I like the original shot of Gallifrey better than the new CGI shot, but other than that, the new effects are a lot better. The story is great, and is highly recommended!