The Invasion (Doctor Who)

After escaping the Land of Fiction, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find that they have materialized near the Moon in the late twentieth-century. A missile is fired from the surface, forcing the crew to land the TARDIS in England. With the visual stabiliser damaged, the TARDIS is rendered invisible and they decided to head to London to find Professor Edward Travers for his assistance. Hitching a lift with a van driver, they learn of International Electromatics, a mysterious company which has become the world's leading electronics producer. Arriving at Travers' address, the crew learn he has left for America with his daughter, Anne, and left the house in the care of his colleague, Professor Watkins, and his niece Isobel. As the professor has gone missing working for International Electromatics, the Doctor and Jamie leave to investigate its head office. After being caught, they are brought to Tobias Vaughn, the company's Managing Director. He claims that Professor Watkins was at a delicate stage of his work and refusing to see anyone, though the Doctor notices unusual behaviour and quickly becomes suspicious. When they leave, Vaughn opens up a section in his wall to reveal a Cyber-planner.

Shortly after their meeting, the Doctor and Jamie are abducted by two strangers and taken to meet their commanding officer, Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. Having been promoted to Brigadier after their encounter with the Great Intelligence, he reveals that he has been placed in charge of a military taskforce called UNIT, which investigates unusual activities around the world. Currently investigating International Electromatics after multiple claims surrounding the organization, the Brigadier asks for their assistance, having lost contact with an operative investigating the company. Tired of waiting for the Doctor and Jamie to return, Zoe and Isobel leave to investigate the company on their own, only to be captured after Zoe destroys a robotic receptionist. The Doctor and Jamie follow them and are also captured, after noticing them being loaded into coffin-like containers for transport.

Taken to the company's countryside base, the Doctor and Jamie meet Isobel's uncle, who is working on a "Cerebration Mentor" device, intended to be a teaching machine. The professor reveals that Vaughn is working with an unspecified ally and that they are planning to take over the world. After escaping from their security guards, the Doctor radios the Brigadier to rescue them and also locates Zoe and Isobel. During the investigation, Jamie finds a living creature in some kind of cocoon inside one of the containers. The Doctor and his companions escape via helicopter, but by doing so alert Vaughn that UNIT is a threat to his plans. Back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor investigates photos of UFOs near the factory and reasons that Vaughn's allies are alien invaders. Heading back to the factory to intercept one of the pods, he and Jamie witness scientists reviving one of the creatures from the cocoons: a Cyberman.

Further investigation by UNIT is stymied by the interference of a retired general at the Ministry of Defence, who is actually under Vaughn's hypnotic control. The Cybermen begin moving through the London sewers in preparation for the invasion. Hedging his bets in case he needs a weapon to maintain control of the Cyberman after they have arrived, Vaughn tests a prototype of the "cerebration mentor" machine on an awakened Cyberman. The Cyberman is driven insane by the emotional overload and flees into the sewers. Whilst the Doctor investigates an International Electromatics device, Isobel, Zoe and Jamie venture into the sewers to obtain proof of the Cybermen's presence on Earth. After becoming trapped between a group of normal Cybermen and the victim of Vaughn's tests, they are rescued by Captain Turner and a UNIT squad.

In order to circumvent Vaughn's plant at the Ministry of Defence, the Brigadier leaves to seek help from UNIT international HQ in Geneva. In his absence, Captain Turner arranges for Professor Watkins to be rescued from International Electromatics to help the Doctor. Using accounts from the professor, they deduce that the Cybermen intend to send a hypnotic signal through the devices produced by International Electromatics, which will incapacitate the world's population and nullify resistance. In the nick of time the Doctor is able to protect his companions and their UNIT allies with specially-made depolarizers that neutralize the Cybermen's signal. As the Cybermen take over, the Brigadier arranges for the Doctor and company to be transported to UNIT headquarters in Geneva to help battle the invasion.

After completing production on more depolarizers, the Doctor leaves to confront Vaughn in London whilst UNIT works to stop the Cybermen. Uncovering Russian plans to launch a rocket at the ship sending the signals, Turner leads a squadron to assist them whilst Zoe helps the Brigadier predict the Cyberfleet's movements. Using British artillery, they are able to destroy the full fleet, causing the Cybermen to turn on Vaughn and decide to destroy Earth with a megatron bomb. When the Cyber-planner reveals that they no longer need Vaughn, he uses the "Cerebration Mentor" Prototype weapon to destroy it. With his plans ruined, Vaughn agrees to thwart the invasion and helps the Doctor locate the homing signal. With UNIT sending troops to help, they are able to defeat the Cybermen guarding the beacon and turn it off, though Vaughn is killed in an ambush. The megatron bomb is destroyed by an anti-missile defence rocket, while the Russian rocket destroys the Cybership broadcasting the hypnotic control signal, ending the invasion.

With repairs on the circuit completed, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe return to the TARDIS, accompanied by Isobel and Turner. After finding the ship, the trio bid farewell to the two before dematerializing.

Originally The Invasion was going to be a six-part story called Return of the Cybermen. The character of Professor Travers (who appeared in the two earlier Yeti stories) was to have appeared for a third time, but the decision was made to replace him with Professor Watkins as using him would involve paying Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln (who were against their characters' usage following The Dominators), although Travers is still referenced by name several times.[1] The sequence where Gregory describes UNIT's attack on an IE car and then is subsequently killed by a Cyberman was written into the script after time pressures prevented the production team from filming the car attack on location. (Ian Marter, however, did reinstate the lost car attack scene in his novelisation.)

^† Episode is missing

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping in The Discontinuity Guide (1995) noted that the serial "shows the advantages of recognisable Earth settings" and described it as "an all action romp".[6] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker wrote that The Invasion was "one of the very best stories to feature the Cybermen", with praise for Stoney's Tobias Vaughn.[7] In 2009, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times wrote that the story was plotted with "scarcely a dull moment", with the first four episodes "grippingly plotted" to lead up to the cliffhanger of the Cybermen. Mulkern also praised the dynamic and characters of the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, as well as Tobias Vaughn.[8] The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn said that the story's length allowed for "an awful lot of contrivance, drawn-out scenes, and running back and forth between locations with one group of characters just missing the other group", but it still remained enjoyable, especially because of Stoney's performance.[9] He also noted that "there's a tendency in this story to cut corners, sometimes forgivably and sometimes not".[10] Ultimately, Bahn felt that the story was more about Vaughn than the Cybermen and, like Mulkern, highlighted Zoe's character.[10] DVD Talk's Stuart Galbraith gave The Invasion a rating of three and a half stars out of five, noting that it borrowed from other science fiction tales and could have been shorter, but ultimately was entertaining and delivered an "atmospheric tale full of dread and high-tension suspense".[11] In 2013, Ben Lawrence of The Daily Telegraph named The Invasion as one of the top ten Doctor Who stories set in the contemporary time.[12]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Second Doctor

• The Invasion on Tardis Data Core, an external wiki
• The Invasion at BBC Online
• Doctor Who ReAnimated! – news article on the DVD release with a link to a teaser clip of the animation.
• Doctor Who Locations – The Invasion