August 28: The Invasion of Time Parts Five & Six

The Sontarans have invaded Gallifrey!  Only a small force, but still!  It's an interesting twist to this tale, turning the Vardans into just an opening salvo for the real threat.  And what is going on with Castellan Kelner?  He seems perfectly content to sell his people down the river to whatever force is willing to exert their dominance.  Either he's unbelievably spineless, or he has it out for the Time Lords for some reason.  Or he's that desperate to gain power.

It must be said that these two episodes, despite the presence of the Sontarans, don't have quite the same impact as the first four.  There are some interesting plot elements moving along in part five (such as the Doctor's plan to patch the hole in Gallifrey's forcefield using his TARDIS), but because the Doctor is now the hero completely -- even more so than in parts three and four, where he still had to occasionally pretend to be evil -- Tom Baker slips back into his comfort zone, which just isn't quite as compelling.  Of course, there are still some nice moments -- the confrontation between Borusa and the Doctor about the Great Key is very well done (although there seems to be an implication that, as no President knows where the Great Key is and the Chancellor does, no Chancellor can become President (unless they get a mindwipe or something)) -- but it's not as mesmerizing as those first two episodes were.  Another good cliffhanger, though -- Tom Baker sounds pretty desperate as he yells, "We're being thrown into a black star!"

Leela convinces Castellan Kelner to tell the Doctor where Stor
is. (The Invasion of Time Part Six) ©BBC

Part six is the weakest of the bunch; there's an awful lot of padding with wanderings inside the Doctor's TARDIS, and the whole thing ends when the Doctor shoots a big powerful gun at the lead Sontaran, Stor.  All this and Leela's afterthought leaving scene.  It feels a little bit like a cheat, and the fact that they've shot portions of the interiors on film leads to a visual discontinuity -- particularly as this is all supposed to be in the same place.¹⁰³  Still, the omnipresent TARDIS hum does help with this a bit, but it could have been much better.  And Stor's mask does look a lot better on film than on video.

Of course, given that the whole production was under a lot of pressure (between a strike and the initial script set to end the season (Killers of the Dark by David Weir) being far too expensive to film), it's somewhat impressive that The Invasion of Time works as well as it does. Sustaining a story over six weeks is no easy task in the best of circumstances, and the fact that things don't start to fall apart until the end is a testament to everyone involved.  The only major complaints are the severe underuse of the Sontarans (they show up and then basically stand around until they're dispatched) and the disappointing farewell that Leela gets.  Apparently she loves Andred?  Well then.  It's not quite on the level of Dodo's goodbye, but it still feels like a textbook example of how not to write a main character out of a show.  But everything else is quite well done -- though one wonders how things would have gone without Tom Baker in the central role.  He's the glue that holds The Invasion of Time together, and this is really the shift where he begins to completely dominate the show.

It hasn't always been the most successful of seasons, but season 15 manages to provide some good stories and point out a new direction for Doctor Who.  There's a definite shift by the end of the season to go in a more "big concept" SF direction, and while it doesn't always work, there's still enough that does to keep things worth watching.  In some ways it's a welcome return to the philosophy that governed the show during season 3, rather than the more visceral threats of monsters and retold horror stories -- only this time, they have the dominant personality of Tom Baker as the main actor.  How these two things interact will determine the outcome of the next two seasons.







¹⁰³ It's even odder when you consider that some of this stuff was in fact shot on location on video -- all of the stuff in the President's office, for instance, is shot on Outside Broadcast video (they ended up building sets on location, due to a strike), and the scenes in the TARDIS workshop are clearly on OB video.  So why didn't they do the whole thing this way -- was it that much cheaper to shoot material on film?  Or did the idea simply never occur to director Gerald Blake?