The Android Invasion
review

Holistic Review: A hugely entertaining story with superb performances by the regulars and a surprisingly tense plot.

Oh, Android Invasion, how much do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I'm fully aware that a big part of my affection for this story is rooted in my childhood — one of my two earliest Doctor Who memories comes from it. Actually, after so many years of watching it, I'm starting to get a little fuzzy on exactly what my earliest memories from this story are, but I know for sure one of them was the moment when an android reaches out from its pod and grabs Sarah's leg. I suspect that fuelled years of being-grabbed nightmares, now that I think about it. I have a feeling that the cliffhanger of Sarah being crushed on takeoff also stuck with me. And I distinctly remember thinking that the Kraal pods looked like whales — even today, I can't see them without that thought crossing my mind! (Please bear in mind that I was probably around three when I first saw this story.) It's also thanks to this story (and the book Travel Without the TARDIS) that I really wanted to try ginger beer. If memory serves, I finally discovered Idris brand ginger beer around 1988 at a store called Fowler's Gourmet in Durham, North Carolina. I'm glad that was my first, because to this day, Idris is still one of my favorites (along with only two others — Barr's and the Ginger People) — it's got a great ginger flavor without being so spicy that I can't drink it.

So I have a very long history with this story, but experience has sadly taught me that my childhood memories do not always match my current tastes. Much of the Pertwee era and even stories like Pyramids of Mars have risen in my opinion since I saw them as a child, whereas ones like... well... actually, the only one I can think of that's gone down is The Sea Devils, but you get my drift. There's no guarantee that, just because it scared me as a child, I'm going to like it now.

But I do. I wholeheartedly love it, and in fact, rewatching it, I can find very little to criticize. I know I'm venturing dangerously into minority territory here, but it's the truth. I fully recognize that The Android Invasion doesn't reach the dizzying heights of some of its seasonmates, but just because it's a little more simplistic doesn't make it less enjoyable — it's just enjoyable in a different way. In my opinion, this is a story that keeps the adventure coming fast and furious, never lets up on the plot twists, soaks the first half of the script in mystery and intrigue, and caps it all off with a delightful storyline for Sarah. So let's get down to business.

The first place to start is the plot, but given that I've pretty much talked about that already, I'll keep it brief. Basically, this story is just exciting. It starts out creepy and mysterious, moves into interesting and scary when we find out what's going on, then jumps to nonstop action and plot twists. Things settle down in part four, once the plot relocates to the real Space Defense Station, but there's still enough going on (and a very welcome visit from dear Harry and Benton, the real ones!) to keep things lively. And the dénoument is, somewhat unusually, both very satisfying and long enough to feel well-earned, with a nice little wrap-up at the end. People claim numerous plot holes; I don't see that many. Either they're easily explained, or they're just not all that troublesome.

Monster-wise, we have the Kraals and their androids. The Kraals aren't brilliant, but they're moderately successful. Thankfully, Styggron refers to whole other groups of them in other parts of the ship, and we see at least three of them at once, so we don't get the sense that it's just Styggron and Chedaki running the operation on their own. Their look (compared by others to rhinoceroses and rocks!) is pretty striking but the masks are rather inflexible, Styggron's mouth just managing a weak up-down motion when Martin Friend speaks. Fortunately both actors give good vocal performances, particularly Friend, who makes Styggron seem nicely psychotic in almost a Sontaran-like way. They'll never be the most memorable monsters from the period, but as enemies go, they're worthy. The androids, though, are great. As spacesuited figures, they're incongruous and eerie, and I love the way they fire bullets from their fingertips (with a lasery sound!). Throughout the beginning, the replicas give the story a completely paranoid feel, which only increases once we learn what they are and why everyone seems to be behaving so oddly — when the secret is let out, the plot suddenly has the opportunity to swap lots of characters for their android doubles, and it takes full advantage of it. We have a robot Sarah accompanying the real Doctor, a robot Doctor briefly fooling the real Sarah, at least one scene in which we don't know which Sarah has just rescued the Doctor (fortunately for him, it turns out to be the real one), and another in which we don't know which Doctor has just been fatally shot (fortunately for him, it turns out to be the fake one). I am, however, amused that when the androids are alone together (and no-one's watching), they're quite content to behave in an android-like fashion and speak in stilted English.

I love the choice of location to portray Devesham — East Hagbourne is a beautiful, quaint village. The village cross is extremely striking, and for some reason I find the pub exterior quite memorable, as well. One of these days I'd love to visit. The Space Research Centre building is great, too — it's got a cool entranceway, a bit of brick statuary that makes for a fantastic shot composition, and the sections of pebble path add aural interest when someone (mainly Sarah or the Doctor) runs across them.

There are some very nice effects in the story. At the very beginning, when the odd-acting UNIT soldier gets his face scraped by a twig, it leaves behind a perfect bloody scratch. I'd love to know how they did that — red dye on the end of the leaf or something? It looks flawless. As does the bit of fake ivy slowly beginning to warp under the onslaught of the sonic screwdriver. The dissolve when the illusion of Devesham is destroyed also looks great, and they picked a nice stark location (or is it a set?!) to portray Oseidon. There's a slightly odd shot of the Kraal pods coming down to land behind a hill, but then when we actually see the Doctor's pod land, it's done beautifully. Then there's the great bit when Styggron breaks the virus canister with his craggy little head, which immediately dissolves into an icky-looking yellowish-green goo. Bleah! Superb. Just about the only one that I don't love is the sequence with the rocket. It's all passable — the Doctor and Sarah look fairly good standing outside it, and the rocket launch is nice even if it doesn't look seamless — but you can tell that they've been CSOed in front of a model, and (if you look pretty hard) that the launching rocket is really from the United States, not Oseidon. But having only one or two brief dodgy effects in four episodes is doing pretty well, I'd say.

Then we have great set design and props — I'm particularly fond of the sawtooth motif in the Kraal ship, and the plastic canisters (the virus sterilization device and the water pitcher and glasses) are coooooool, almost iridescent looking. I want some myself! (On an unrelated note, I like the way that the actors all handle the sterilization container!) As for sound effects, the Kraal mind-scanning device makes a great noise, very painful sounding, and the androids also make a noise that sends childhood-fear chills up my spine.

There aren't a lot of costumes in this story that really attracted my attention, but I must give special praise to the Doctor's cool green hat (I just love it) and Sarah's costume, which seems just quirky enough to be interesting. WARNING: off-topic discussion ahead! I do regret, though — and this is not an episode-specific complaint, it's just that this is a good chance for me to vent about it — that we don't ever really get a sense of Sarah's tastes from her clothing choice. That's not entirely true, because she does (at least in this era of the show) seem to favor slightly cutesy clothes, like the hat and shoes here, or her ruffles in Planet of Evil and the striped overalls in The Hand of Fear. But otherwise she wears clothes that are so diverse as to be meaningless. Jo was afflicted by this problem even more terribly, maybe because she really never even got to wear anything striking. Other companions have done pretty well for themselves — in the early years, we all knew Ian liked to dress up, Barbara wants her sensible clothes, and Dodo picked bright bold outfits. Jamie was going to wear his kilt, Zoe something futuristic, and Victoria was testing the boundaries of her personal etiquette. After Sarah, we get Leela, who's always in skins, and the Romanas, who were either going to wear something lavishly fashionable or something even quirkier than Sarah. In later years, the costuming of the companions helped by just not giving them any other options. And when that finally went out the window, we got Peri, who wanted shorts and something clingy, and Ace, who was fine as long as she was comfortable and had on her bomber jacket. But what about Steven? Ben? Polly? Liz? Nyssa? Mel? And the mind-boggling Tegan, whose tastes ranged from airline uniforms to forest nymphs (delicate) to horrid orangey dresses with fur coats (no fashion sense) to lacy underwear (feminine) to leather and bright colors (strong)? The last one seems to look the best on her character, which makes sense because the implied meaning it sends is the same as Tegan's personality. The point is, there wasn't a lot of costume continuity for these characters, which is a shame. Look at a show like Buffy — part of what ties us to the characters is that we know them so well, even down to their taste in clothes. Willow's going to favor something fuzzy and cute, Xander likes to look a little scruffy, Oz goes for T-shirts with odd logos, Anya wants something feminine and frilly, Tara tends toward practical dresses with jackets, Cordelia wants the designer label, Spike has his leather jacket and deep-colored shirts, Buffy'll take anything as long as it's cute and fashionable ("I think I want me to have it"), and Giles, well, Giles is in tweed. That's without even going into secondary characters, most of whom also have clothing trends. And it's amazing the effect this has on your feeling of familiarity with a character — it's not just an actor who's being costumed for something new every week, it's a person who has fairly predictable tastes in clothing. So, I apologize for that little rant — it really has nothing at all to do with this story, because I think Sarah's costume is great and it actually is in keeping with what has by now emerged as her true personality. It's just an interesting notion to consider.

I'd also like to compliment Barry Letts on his directorial job. He does a great job throughout — aside from his beautiful shots on location, I'd like to single out the slow-motion scene when the shockwave from the Kraal device blast hits the Doctor and Sarah just as the ship's doors close. He also does a nice job of making the "cliff" that Sarah nearly falls over actually look steep, even when shot from below — although there's no denying that it looks significantly less sheer from that angle, and it's a shame the production team didn't realize at this point that unless your cliff is real, you shouldn't shoot it from below. (They apparently learned this lesson in time for Mary Tamm in The Stones of Blood, but forgot it again when it came time for Lis to topple down another gentle incline in The Five Doctors.) Also, the stuntmen deserve some recognition, notably for the superb swandive taken by the UNIT soldier at the beginning, and the backflip that Styggron does just before he's killed.

The regulars are both superb, with Sladen in particular giving one of her best performances in the series, and the friendship between their characters is clearly very strong throughout — possibly because there's a sense of "us against the world" in just about the entire story. Lis Sladen delivers practically every one of Sarah's lines in a quotable way, which you'll notice by the high proportion of them that I feel obliged to include below. More often than not, it isn't the lines that sparkle, it's her delivery. As far as I'm concerned, this story is a prime example of why so many people adore Sarah Jane Smith. It's great that her journalistic background not only gets mentioned again, it actively gets used — and not only does it provide Sarah with some good scenes of questioning the locals, her knowledge of Crayford's flight and the layout of Devesham and its environs proves vital. She also gets to rescue the Doctor not once, but almost three times, whereas he never really has to bail her out of anything, and then she outdoes her personal best by rescuing Harry and Faraday too! She also gets to be the sensible one — it's Sarah, not the Doctor, who gets a bad feeling about the spacesuited men ("No, wait, Doctor, I don't like the look of them"), whereas he's ready to brush aside her concerns until the men start shooting!

In fact, the only thing that really disappoints me about this story is the title. The mystery in the first two episodes is beautifully done, and genuinely perplexing and creepy... if you haven't been told what the story title is. Otherwise, during the first scene, you just say to yourself, "Oh, that UNIT soldier is walking strangely because he's just a malfunctioning android" and "of course he hasn't come back from the dead, he's just been repaired." So, to truly enjoy this story, you have to forget that you know what you know. Just sit back, put the title out of your mind, and let yourself get caught up in the atmosphere of it.

Minor points:

Mmm, yes. That was fun. More like this, please! I'll accept that the plot has its weak points; but they're minor compared to many other stories, and if you take into account the engaging atmosphere, superb Doctor-companion interaction and excellent characterization of Sarah, this is a story that I think is just superb. It may not be as polished or as sophisticated as some other stories from season 13, but I don't think it's any less grand.

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