July 28: The Android Invasion Parts Three & Four

This third episode feels very transitional, as if writer Terry Nation wants to get to the actual invasion on Earth but knows he needs to wrap things up on Oseidon, home planet of the Kraals.  What this means is that the Doctor is put in great jeopardy at roughly the halfway point ("Resistance is inadvisable," Styggron tells the Doctor when he captures him), tied to an obelisk in the center of the fake village with a matter dissolver bomb at his feet, but then there's still 10 minutes of action left for what would have otherwise been a natural cliffhanger.  You'd think this would make things more exciting, but what it actually amounts to is the Doctor and Sarah locked up for a bit and then getting free (Sarah by tricking and destroying an android guard, the Doctor by being rescued by Sarah from Styggron's brain drain machine -- "I feel disoriented," the Doctor says after Sarah rescues him.  "This is the disorientation centre," Sarah replies.  "That makes sense," says the Doctor) before being knocked out by some intense g-forces as the rocket they're inside lifts off.

Styggron meets with Marshal Chedaki. (The Android Invasion
Part Three) ©BBC

Still, we do get some villainous plans and character motivations outlined in this episode, which is always welcome.  Styggron wants to wipe out humanity with a virus in a disguised Vaseline jar, paving the way for the Kraals to leave their doomed planet and start afresh -- standard villainy, then.  Guy Crayford is a little more complicated; he believes that he was abandoned by humanity while out in space and was rescued and healed by the Kraals, who were able to restore everything except his eye.  That doesn't completely explain why Crayford's so willing to help the Kraals, but to be fair, he thinks they're just going to take over half the planet and not actually kill anyone.  Nevertheless, it's not the strongest motivation ever.

Part four is probably the most interesting of the lot, since they actually get to the invasion attempt, which means we get a chance for some doubles shenanigans as well as a chance for characters to not act like robots.  It's nice to see Benton and Harry for real again, even if they're both woefully underused -- but even this limited screen time has some good moments, such as when Colonel Faraday (the Brigadier replacement for this story, as Nicholas Courtney was unavailable) mentions that Crayford has been further into space than any other human being, and Harry and Benton both exchange a knowing look.  There's also a bit of fun with both the Doctor and his android duplicate wandering around the Space Centre, both convincing the other androids that they're the android version.  It's more fun, but it feels like they could have done a lot more with this part of the premise -- possibly played up the uncertainty as to who was an android and who was human more.  What we get is entertaining but limited in its ambitions.

And unfortunately, this story rather hinges on the single most stupid moment in all of Doctor Who, where Crayford learns that the Kraals have duped him -- the proof being that Crayford still has his eye underneath that eyepatch.  How in any universe did Crayford not know this?  He never looked to see what the missing eye looked like?  Not once?  He just trusted on blind faith that oh, by the way, you only have one eye now?  But no, this is a revelation to him -- had he ever checked, it's doubtful he ever would have helped the Kraals with their plan, but he didn't and all he gets for this betrayal is being killed by Styggron.  But it's okay; the Doctor reprograms his android to attack Styggron (er, even though he sent out a signal that jammed all the android circuits; still, this is just about acceptable, I guess), thereby knocking him on the deadly virus container which shatters, killing Styggron (rather nastily, it must be said).  The invasion has been stopped.

It's not the worst story ever, and there are a number of welcome moments of levity and wit in a season that has been significantly more serious as of late, but ultimately The Android Invasion feels more like something Terry Nation did to earn a paycheck than anything else.  There's no sense of exploring a theme or reworking a classic story in Doctor Who terms (something the show under Hinchcliffe has started increasingly doing), and while Barry Letts' direction isn't bad, it is a little loose, and the whole thing sags as a result.  But other than the gobsmackingly stupid idea of Crayford and his eye, there's nothing really terrible here -- but there's nothing very striking or memorable either.