DOCTOR WHO-THE ANDROID INVASION

 

DOCTOR WHO-THE ANDROID INVASION part 1

 

“Let’s try the pub.”  Yes, he would say that.

 

A potentially great premise, a strange town with mysteries that seem unsolvable. A fairly good start that, retroactively when you find out what’s going on, doesn’t make ANY sense. Illogical explanations. Aliens that have a plan that doesn’t make sense but we are expected to wait until later to find out that…well, it doesn’t make sense or what it’s supposed to be about. It still doesn’t make sense. A Doctor who’s making lots of mistakes. Robot replicas of the Doctor and everyone else. Gimmicky bits that are way cool but doesn’t make sense. All we need is a female who is trying to kill the Doctor and we’ll get that, too, in a bit. A cool cliffhanger (Sarah’s trying to rescue the Doctor from a doorway while a panel in a wall opens up to a cool looking alien that’s watching her—a Kraal--and a great alien design). No regard for long term continuity, a Doctor who doesn’t act like the Doctor you’ve watched your life, and no regard for even short term character history. You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m describing or for that matter, that you or I was watching a horrid Moffat era time waster. We’re not.

 

I’m so, so sorry because I’m sure there are those of you that love this story but we’re actually watching one of the four worst Tom Baker stories and one of the top 20 worst DW stories of all time (it might be in the top five if not for the entire Moffat Era, well seasons five through nine anyway).

 

First, the Kraal plan: they built every stick of grass and replicated an entire town and its people…well, except for the coins. Their plan for these reasons and others make no sense. ABOUT TIME list a load of these reasons, almost all of them actually. If the aliens who have a virus--- as we find out later, of course----and this virus could destroy all life…why not just send it on down to the planet. Why do this…uhm, test? Test of what? To fool who? How does this actually test anything?

 

Second:  the Doctor is fooled by the planet right off. But WHY is the Brig in charge of a space program? If Sarah did a story here, why doesn’t she recall the Space Defense Station? The Doctor does but he doesn’t seem to be aware the Brig is there since he wants to contact UNIT from there? He leaves Sarah alone in the pub…but why? Love some of Tom’s Tom-isms (“I just dropped in. I do from time to time.”…and many others). Hiding behind a pod, he ducks in an unconventional way when he’s shot at (while Sarah’s standing straight up, being a dope). Unfortunately, they can’t save this tiresome story and a tiresome episode.

 

I used to give this episode a pass and criticize  the other three but truth is: this is poor and lame, considering all the others before it (and I mean almost all the others right back to AN UNEARTHLY CHILD). It’s hard to remember Terry Nation wrote mostly great stuff before this, with only THE CHASE being particularly bad (yes, I even like THE KEYS OF MARINUS and in a strange way, THE CHASE is so bad it’s funny…but ANDROID INVASION, following on from some of the best of Baker’s early stories---almost all of them, isn’t funny at all).

 

Honestly, Sarah’s annoying in this. She falls off a cliff after yapping on while the Doctor, as they run from a foursome or more of androids with loaded fingers, yaps on about---yes, his yapping at a time like this is strange, even for this Doctor---some past adventure in the past----and she isn’t listening, just urging to get out of this place even though they are long past the firing androids. He tells her, as she hangs on the cliff, not to look down. SO she looks down. For his part, he’s annoying, too. He holds a tree branch away for her to come through and then lets it go on her----I guess it’s a Bakerism and honestly if you’ve ever been hit by a branch, it’s not funny. Sarah thinks the Doctor would leave her when …she puts her key in the TARDIS and it vanishes. WHY? Why would she do that? Why would IT do that? Oh, and if you saw a strange pod would you think it was just useless, old junk? Worse---would you see it open, nearly get scared to death by a BODY inside, and THEN go and lean over the body…to give a good striking distance to strangle you? In addition, the Doctor knows things are trying to shoot them and he leaves Sarah watching strangers in a pub…and for her part she not only knocks over a glass of water or a jar of water to alert the beings to their presence in the pub…she then opens the door and gets caught in the pub!! And people complain about Adric! Maybe they’re idiots who are just prejudiced against boys and give Sarah’s idiocy a pass because she’s so pretty.

 

WHY does the Doctor think the things that fired on them are just guards from Earth WHEN THEY SHOT BULLETS AT THEM FROM THEIR FINGERS?

 

Oh and the Doc seems to have picked up a new power: he can jump off the roof of a building like THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and survive. The android “guards” pick him up and instead of…well, shooting him like they were trying to do, bring him inside. Almost forgot, the Doctor meets Crayford and…despite Crayford holding the gun straight at the Doctor, the Doctor manages to lean down and shove a desk at him…which is nowhere near the gun. Crayford shoots the gun but it’s now in a down position for some reason and shoots the desk. Guards and / or he also have wide open shots at the Doctor several times and completely miss. Okay, I might be able to take that, given how many bullets I’m willing to overlook that miss say, INDIANA JONES in THE TEMPLE OF DOOM but with all the other mistakes and tedium--- Wow.

 

 

 

One nice thing is the location work. The town they shoot this in is wonderful looking. Too bad they didn’t have a better story to produce in it. This is one of four of the worst Tom stories (ANDROID INVASION, THE INVISIBLE ENEMY, MEGLOS, and THE LEISURE HIVE).

 

BTW, if they’re going for an INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS vibe, they should have deemed THIS story awful and unfilmable and unworkable and started from scratch by doing what they did with all the other stories since Baker lost Harry…and just ripped it off directly. Oh, wait, they already did that perfectly with TERROR OF THE ZYGONS.

 

The android helmets are props right out of GERRY ANDERSON’S UFO. Why do the fake pub customers, some lookers among them, let Sarah go instead of…oh, killing her…? And on and on….

DOCTOR WHO – THE ANDROID INVASION part 2

 

Gosh, this was hard to get through. The set up in ep1, to be fair, with the coins, the shoot to kill police, and the white suited technicians and such, is what happened around Chernobyl and in smaller scale events in the UK in the Whitehaven Area. Or so ABOUT TIME states (they’re really wonderful books, you should get them if you’re any kind of DOCTOR WHO fan). On the other hand, here, it’s not a nuclear accident of any kind but aliens doing stupid things for no good reason. Once reveals the faces of the alien Kraals look good and it’s nice to see two of them distinguished between a scientist and a military one but they’re hardly Davros and Nyder.

 

While the alien plan is stupid, Sarah and the Doctor act even stupider. Sarah has just rescued the Doctor and they hide from UNIT soldiers at the same space center…where they then, all smiles just stroll into an area and find Benton there, Sarah sickeningly smiling at scaring Benton from behind at her return…and then the two are surprised that “their” Benton turns a gun on them! Are they dopes? They’ve been shot at since they arrived and yet they seem to think that nothing strange is going on. The Doctor then thinks it safe to hide behind the desk at the same place instead of “hoofing it” as Sarah wants to. THEN they hoof it. THEN the Doctor, when Sarah stupidly twists her ankle, hides her up in a tree, takes her scarf (the duplicate Sarah made is made with a scarf?), and leaves her there…because the last time he’s done that worked out so well! She FORGOT to tell him the TARDIS is gone! What? She’s a dope here. He thinks it’s normal for the TARDIS to do this, too, later when he provides an explanation. THEN, the tracking dogs do NOT smell the Doc’s scarf or hat. THEN, Sarah comes down too fast and the dogs and men follow her closely and she’s captured. She’s not killed but they put a sheet over her face to make us think she is dead…the viewers are gimmicked (Moffat inspiration? In fact a lot of this is probably giving Moffat inspiration, even now). For some reason the aliens give her a scarf…they may have seen her with one on a screen but if she doesn’t have it now, why let her have one? The duplicate tells the Doctor there are duplicates. We see Benton and Harry here for what will be the last story of both of them (Benton seemingly murdered in ep4) but they’re both androids. Even though the double Sarah is a double and leading the Doctor into a trap and it’s SO obvious it’s one of them, she tells the Doctor about the duplicates.

 

And on and on and on. Okay, I can tolerate flaws in story telling but this is just ridiculous. We DO get some Tom-isms but they’re not as good as some of his other ones. For more stupidity, the Doctor RETURN to the pub. WHY? To find out what’s going on? In a shock that lasts a second, the opens a door to the back and the pub man is standing there in close up. There’s also a test as the Kraal scientist makes an android and then shoots it. The androids can’t recognize each other. Some of them seem to need orders and some of them don’t. We never find out why a space shell is lying about the fake forest outside the village---you know the one with the guy who tried to strangle Sarah. Was it faulty? Why is there a spy hole across from the room where the Doctor was kept?

 

I’m sure I missed some other awful things to write about here.

 

Really …if DOCTOR WHO were always like this, I probably wouldn’t bother watching. Or it would be quite a chore: as it was between 2010 and 2016 where almost nothing long or short term made ANY sense. This episode is tedious and boring. I guess it just could not keep up the pace of the last …I don’t 90 stories?

 

In the meantime, I will struggle to get through eps 3 and 4 of this mess. And make no mistakes, this is a giant mess and not even Tom or Lis can save this story. It’s just as well Nick wasn’t in this travesty. 

 

The cliffhanger is Sarah’s face falling off when the Doctor pushes her? Huh? It’s a lesser version of similar scenes this stole from THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN and maybe even WESTWORLD, which they all stole it from?

 

In short, thank goodness the next story is better.

DOCTOR WHO-THE ANDROID INVASION part 3 and 4

 

More badness. Sarah’s so very stupid in this. She must overhear how Stygron promises to test his virus on a human and that human is she BUT she decides, once captured, in a cell, to drink the water provided by the aliens! What a dope. She doesn’t thanks to the Doctor telling her that water is  a good conductor of electricity. And while it makes a nice (sort of) action sequence for a short time, WHY does Stygron destroy the testing area? The blast goes off with the door open and just makes the Doc and Sarah fall in slow motion. The Doctor, captures, tries to escape by throwing himself over all four android men? I DO like when the Doctor is talking to Crayford and Tom’s face shows his irritation at Crayford’s blithering and then even better…Tom fakes he’s talking, moving his mouth and talking to himself as if he’s sarcastically disagreeing with Crayford but it doesn’t matter as he knows Crayford’s been brainwashed. At this point he still thinks Crayford’s eye is really damaged (another plot point that makes no sense). Why does a rocket need G Force protection? Why is labeled US when it is supposed to be a UK rocket? I do like the location work but…again, what is that scene where the Doctor is just walking around, purposelessly and suddenly from behind (him and us!) he grabs the Doctor who didn’t see him? Was Styrron disguised as the camera? It’s a nice moment but where was the alien hiding?  I also like that after Sarah (pushing the lever the wrong way and causing the Doctor more pain for a slight moment, something that might happen again) rescued the Doctor, he’s a bit incoherent and spouts something about a fairy tale. Tom makes this episode work in a way that it shouldn’t. Still, it’s a bad story through and through and the plan of the aliens makes no sense. They can’t find another planet suitable for them to live on?

 

I have to admit I considered skipping the rest of this but glad I didn’t. Still, this is a really poor story, probably the worst story up to now.

 

The cliffhanger at the end of 3 is Sarah in an open chamber pod being crushed by the G force and the effect is well done as well as Lis’s acting of it all; the Doctor is not in his pod yet and he falls. So…how does this resolve? We’re simply not told. Oh and the fleet is waiting….no one mentions this. Do they just back off? And die?

 

The last episode shows us Benton on the floor and looking quite dead. Others seem to be knocked out or dead. The android Benton orders them taken away. Why aren’t Harry and Faraday killed? Faraday was only in this episode. There is, to be fair, a fair amount of action here. And then it’s over. Wait. Why don’t the aliens just chuck the virus down to Earth? It’s supposed to be very virulent. Yet…it breaks when Stygron falls on it…so doesn’t it kill everyone? I guess it has to be touched directly? Anyway, thank goodness this one is over. Not a fan. Of this story. I DO like the ending scene but it feels like replay of TERROR OF THE ZYGONS ending. In fact this story feels like a retread of that story. An inferior retread.