Doctor Who: The Android Invasion
(4 episodes, s13e13-e16, 1975)

 

London: Are they there yet? It looks like the right place and the right time, but appearances can be deceiving.

The Doctor has a new coat, and our heroes are being followed by a twitchy UNIT soldier as they explore the area. They encounter four figures in spacesuits who start shooting from their fingertips, and, of course, they run. Sarah Jane nearly bolts off a cliff, but the Doctor saves her. The twitchy soldier isn’t so lucky as he runs headlong to his doom.

Or does he?

There’s a body, which is a sure sign of death – well, usually – but that corpse’s wallet is full of shiny new coins, all from the same year. They discover a strange pod near the soldier, and then get shot at again by the trigger-happy spacers, so our heroes get to exercise Rule #1 of Zombieland. They eventually end up in the village of Devesham, but the town is abandoned. The pub is full of half-full drinks, those strange coins, and not much else, and Sarah Jane remembers from her days as a journalist that the space center is a short distance away.

Sarah Jane spots the spacers walking with the newly resurrected soldier, and she accidentally breaks a glass, which arouses suspicion. The spacers come close to opening the door when a pickup truck arrives with the villagers. They all stiffly walk about town, some of them filing into the pub and sitting down. An uncomfortable silence follows until the clock strikes eight, at which point everyone acts normally.

Yeah, that’s normal.

The Doctor heads for the space center to contact UNIT, and he leaves Sarah Jane (with the TARDIS key) to investigate the village. She is soon discovered, and the crowd is deathly silent. They ask her to leave, and she does, but encounters one of the spacers by the truck. When he turns, his face is all electronics. She runs away, and a clear theme is established: Running, and lots of it.

The Doctor arrives at the space center, but the place is deserted except for a single unresponsive soldier. Sarah Jane arrives at the TARDIS and places the key in the lock, but gets distracted by a pod nearby. The TARDIS dematerializes on its own and a figure grabs her from the pod. He attempts to strangle her, but she runs (again).

With all this running, I’d be dead by now.

At the space center, a disembodied voice called Styggron tells Crayford, a man with an eyepatch, that something is abnormal. Crayford investigates as the Doctor reaches the Brigadier’s office, which is empty. Crayford soon discovers the Doctor and interrogates him. The Doctor runs, and the UNIT soldiers open fire. He is soon apprehended, and Sarah Jane pursues his captors. She starts to unlock the door when a strange face peers out from the wall. It looks kind of Sontaran, but it’s not.

The mysterious voice hides again, but tells Crayford about the new arrivals. Crayford is excited by the development, but knows that they must be destroyed. Crazy thing: Crayford is supposed to be dead, a victim of an earlier spaceflight that Sarah Jane reported on, but he is clearly moving about. Meanwhile, the travelers run into Warrant Benton, but he pulls a gun on them. He appears to power down when Crayford orders the operation cancelled, and the Doctor and Sarah Jane hide. Soon after, Crayford orders Harry Sullivan to cordon off the perimeter, and the travelers decide to run for the village and attempt to warn London.

With friends like that, who needs enemies to run from?

Sarah Jane twists her ankle so the Doctor stashes her in a tree and distracts the pursuing dogs. The soldiers capture Sarah Jane (who left the tree) shortly thereafter. Sarah Jane wakes up strapped to an alien-looking table and being attended by Harry, who starts an analysis of her. The Doctor reaches the village and tries calling UNIT, but the phone is dead. The phone in the pub is also dead, and the keeper tells him that the lines are down after an overnight gale. The Doctor orders a ginger beer and throws darts, but discovers that the board has never been used. It is a camera for the aliens, who are watching everything.

At this point, we get a good look at the non-Sontaran aliens. They are the Kralls. The makeup is pretty bad. The mouths do not move well at all.

Doctor Who has done better.

Anyway, the pub has other oddities: The horse brass on the wall is plastic and the calendar has only one date. The dead phone rings, revealing that Sarah Jane has escaped. She asks the Doctor to come to the village store, and after he hangs up, the phone once more becomes inoperative. The Doctor follows the clues to the store and Sarah Jane tells her story. He offers her ginger pop to soothe her nerves, something she couldn’t stand before, and she enjoys it. The Doctor puts all the pieces together and takes Sarah Jane back to the TARDIS.

Back in the secret base, the Krall use Crayford’s patterns to create a hostile android, which they use to demonstrate a newly developed weapon used to stop the androids. Meanwhile, the Doctor finally finds out that the TARDIS has dematerialized — presumably continuing on to Earth — and the he reasons that they are not on the real Earth and that Sarah Jane is not the real Sarah Jane. Sure enough, she attacks him, he pushes her away, and her face falls off to reveal an android. The Doctor runs off as the Sarah Jane-droid opens fire.

And just where was she keeping that pistol?

More details emerge about the dastardly plan: The Kralls intend to destroy the village in nine minutes, and plan to use the real Sarah Jane as a test for a virus to kill humans. Sarah Jane listens to the discussion, then sneaks away when the coast is clear. Back at the village, the spacer androids gather up the villagers and drive them back to the Krall ship. In the village, Stryggon restrains the Doctor as he places the bomb. Sarah Jane arrives (her ankle injury having mysteriously vanished) and saves him using the sonic screwdriver. They barely make it back to the base as the bomb explodes, eradicating the entire façade, but are immediately detained by the androids. In detention, the Doctor explains the android situation to Sarah Jane, deducing that they are on Oseidon.

So, not London.

Craydon comes in and explains his story: He’s contacted Earth with an elaborate hoax story, and he plans to return to Earth as a hero with the Kralls by his side. He claims that no humans will be harmed. The Kralls want the Northern Hemisphere, and they will leave the Southern Hemisphere for humanity. The Doctor is not sold on the story, and neither am I. I’m rather partial to the Northern Hemisphere.

Styggron has the Harry-droid spike a water pitcher with the virus and take it to the cell. Meanwhile, the Doctor opens the floor tiles and plans to electrocute the guards. The androids take the Doctor to the scanning room, but he warns Sarah Jane to save the water for the trap. As the Doctor is prepared, Styggron discloses his plans for human genocide.

Sarah Jane sets a small fire to lure the guard, then springs the trap and disables the android. She then rescues the Doctor from the scanner and they race for the rocket as it lifts off. Sarah Jane makes it into a protective pod, but the Doctor does not.

Cliffhanger: Will they survive?

Yes, and in cheap narrative fashion: The Doctor awakens her some time later. No really, that was it. All the race for the pods because they can’t survive the crushing g-forces and hey, by the way, nice nap you had there and by the way we’re going to ride these android pods to the surface but we may not survive re-entry since the pods aren’t designed for us.

On the real Earth, the real Harry, real Benton, and real acting commander Colonel Faraday monitor Crayford’s return. Benton and Harry are concerned since the TARDIS has arrived without the Doctor or Sarah Jane. The pods are sent to Earth, but the Doctor and Sarah Jane are separated on re-entry. Sarah Jane lands in the forest and finds the TARDIS. The Doctor-droid finds her and almost has her convinced that he’s real until a nearby pod opens to reveal a Sarah Jane-droid.

The Doctor reaches the space center and asks the guard (the model for the previously “dead” soldier) to notify him if another Doctor arrives. He asks the technicians to jam the electronics by pointing the radar dishes at the ground. Meanwhile, he figures out that key personnel have already been replaced and makes a run for it with Sarah Jane. The Doctor poses as his duplicate, re-enters the complex, and confers with the technician. The dishes are put in position, but the Doctor-droid stops him from turning on the power. Crayford stops the Doctor-droid from killing the technician and the Doctor, but is flabbergasted by the Krall plan for genocide. Crayford runs for the ship while the Doctor fights the Doctor-droid. The Doctor ends up near the control panel and turns on the jammer, stopping the androids in their tracks.

Sarah Jane reaches the ship and frees Harry and the colonel, but she is ambushed by Styggron. Crayford tries to stop Styggron but is killed. The Doctor-droid arrives and flips Styggron into the virus vial, and then the Doctor-droid is shot. The threat is over. The day is saved.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive at the TARDIS, but Sarah Jane wants to go home, and this time by taxi. The Doctor offers to take her home in the TARDIS, and Sarah Jane relents.

She does know that she’s not going home yet, right?

This was a well-written adventure with a lot of twists and turns. They cheapened cliffhanger between episodes 3 and 4 stole some of the momentum, but I still had fun with it.

 

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

 

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.