It is with deepest regret that DWO announces the passing of Classic Series Doctor Who Script Editor & Producer, Derrick Sherwin.

Derrick began his work on Doctor Who as Script Editor for the following stories: The Web Of Fear, Fury From The Deep, The Wheel In Space, The Dominators & The Mind Robber. He then took on the role of Producer for The War Games & Spearhead From Space.

Derrick also wrote the 2nd Doctor adventure, The Invasion, which was the first story to properly introduce UNIT. It was also his idea to exile The Doctor to Earth for Jon Pertwee's early 3rd Doctor stories.

Derrick's other career highlights include acting credits for; Here Lies Miss Sabry, United!, The Scales Of Justice and even an uncredited cameo appearance in Spearhead From Space as a UNIT Commissionaire.

DWO would like to extend our sympathies to Derrick's family and friends.

[Source: DWO]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 234: The Invasion, Episode Eight

Dear diary,

I think the biggest problem I have with a story like this is that after eight episodes, the ending still occurs in the blink of an eye. It’s an issue that I’ve been having with the series dating all the way back to The Daleks (which, incidentally, feels like a lifetime ago); you’ve got so many episodes building up, raising the stakes, and then they run out of time and the solution is all too simple.

Toady, it comes in the form of the missile launch. Around the halfway point, the Doctor declares that they have two options to stop the Cybermen from dropping their bomb – shut off the radio link at Vaughn’s complex outside the city, or blow up the Cybermen’s spaceship. The brigadier boldly announces that the Russian rocket won’t be ready for at least ten hours, which leaves them only the one choice.

Dutifully, the Doctor and Vaughn (now fighting against the Cybermen, not for the good of humanity but because he hates them; another lovely little touch) set off for the compound to knock out the radio signal. This mission accomplished, the Cybermen move their ship in closer to Earth, rendering the whole operation pointless. It’s ok, though, because the Russians have found a different way of preparing the rocket, so it’s primed and ready to go. Hooray! It hits the Cybership, defeats the ruthless, inhuman killers, and everyone gets back to normal, with Zoe pursuing a new career as a model.

Oh, I’m not complaining really. As much as the tension is dissipated in a matter of seconds, like so much of the story, it’s not about the payoff, it’s about the journey. So what if the Doctor and Vaughn’s trip to the IE compound is ultimately a waste of time? It looks gorgeous. Camfield’s direction really does seem to be at the best when he’s working outside on film, and it looks stunning for the whole sequence. The entire section takes up a fair bit of screen time, as we move into the big ‘UNIT Vs the Cybermen’ battle that I’ve been waiting for. Any disappointment at the lack of Cyberman action in yesterday’s episode must surely be made up for by the fight sequence here.

There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes photos of this filming, with cameramen sprawled out on the floor, shooting up at the Cybermen looming over them, so this scene is one of those which sits pretty prominently in my mind. If anything on this watch though, it makes me long to see the Yeti attack on Covent Garden from The Web of Fear. If it’s anywhere near as good as this, it would be a great treasure to see returned. The location really helps this scene, too – it’s that kind of industrial landscape that’s always fascinated me, and to see the two sides fighting surrounded by all the crumbling brick buildings and the huge metal girders is fantastic.

I think the main thing I’ll be taking away from The Invasion is how it’s altered my perception of what to come. I’ve mentioned it already during this story, but as regular readers will know, I’ve not been looking forward to reaching the Pertwee years. That early 1970s period has always been my least favourite ‘era’ of the programme, and as it crept closer I was beginning to wonder if it might be the thing that breaks me. In actual fact, though, I’ve found myself enjoying the slow evolution of that phase of the programme – the introduction of the contemporary Earth-based stories starting from The War Machines, the introduction of the Brigadier, and now UNIT turning up on the scene, too. Seeing characters like Benton arriving make it feel as though the programme really is evolving into a new style, whereas I’d previously always thought of it as being a massive shift in style right out of nowhere.

The only thing that does strike me is how much the UNIT we see here in this story differs from the organisation that works alongside the Third Doctor (or, at least, how much it differs from the version of UNIT in my head). The small number of soldiers present in the final battle here is explained away by not having enough ways of blocking the Cyber-signal – the Brigadier even explains that they’ve only got enough men awake to form a single platoon. As the years go by, though, they always seem to operate on a small number of personnel, with or without half the group put to sleep by the Cybermen.

It’s also a shame that we never again see UNIT’s aircraft base. It’s used well here as a means of getting from one location to another and drops all the right people off in all the right places as and when needed. This kind of funding just isn’t available to them in the 1970s, and that’s a shame. I have a feeling that it could feel like a bit of a step backwards when they start operating out of an old house in the home counties.

Overall, it’s an odd send off for the Cybermen, considering that they won’t be showing up – properly – in the programme again until Tom Baker takes over. Obviously, at the time, they didn’t know that we’d be seeing the last of them for now, but it’s still a bit of an unusual way to see them off. I’ve always loved that the Cybermen take over from the Daleks as the default ‘villains’ of Doctor Who once Patrick Troughton comes along, and I’m really pleased that, on the whole, I’ve rather enjoyed their stories. I’ve always found it a shame that they never made a Third Doctor and Cybermen story, but I think that The Invasion gives a good enough example of what that would be like that I’m not going to miss loosing out for a few seasons.

If I’m completely honest, this story hasn’t lived up to my expectations (or my memories), but it’s still been an enjoyable way to spend the last week, and it’s telling that I reached Episode Eight still not bored by the setting or the characters. There’s several things that I think I’d do differently, but it’s certainly doing an awful lot right.

Don't forget to 'like' the 50 Year Diary Facebook Page - where I'll be asking about your favourite Troughton stories before long!

ba 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 233: The Invasion, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

There’s a moment in today’s episode where one of our brave UNIT soldiers makes a dash for Professor Travers’ house, and bursts in the door exclaiming that there are ‘hundreds of Cybermen’ outside on the streets of London. And yet, despite them putting the human race to sleep and bursting out of every manhole cover they could find at the end of yesterday’s instalment, we don’t actually see any Cybermen in this episode outside of the cliffhanger reprise.

In some ways, it’s just continuing my complaint from yesterday. Whereas I couldn’t get the idea of a bustling city outside of these sets to sit right in my mind, I now struggle to imagine a city infested by the Cybermen. It feels like this story should be taking place against this vast canvas - The Web of Fear taken out of the underground and scaled up massively – but it all falls a bit flat. We seem to simply move through the same few sets, from Vaughn’s office (which is the same in both his London HQ and his complex outside the city, with the backdrop replaced behind the window), via the sewers, to Travers’ house.

The Invasion has always been down in my mind as the Troughton-era Cyberman epic; his equivalent to Hartnell’s Daleks’ master Plan. Actually though, it’s not really about the Cybermen, it’s all about Tobias Vaughn. In some ways, I’m quite pleased by this. Kevin Stoney puts in such a brilliant performance throughout the story that it’s great to see him given the space to really showcase his talents. Throughout, he’s been built up as the upper hand in the deal with the Cybermen, but it’s all beautifully undercut today when the Cyberplanner simply drones (and that voice really is a drone) ‘we no longer need you.’

It’s similar to The Wheel in Space that the Cybermen are kept in the background, keeping the attention of the kids while the story really follows a completely different narrative strand. It worked well enough in that situation, with the Cybermen finally making their real attack in the sixth episode, but here we’re stretched out another two. It’s not losing my interest yet (and since this is the longest story since The Daleks’ Master Plan, I did worry that it might), but I do hope we get some good Cybermen scenes in our final twenty-five minutes. As much as I love Tobias Vaughn, this is their final appearance for ages, and I’d love to see them go out in style.

Something else that’s carried across from The Wheel in Space is Zoe’s character in this episode. She’s been a little sidelined in places so far (trying on feather boas and posing for photographs while the Doctor and Jamie head off to do the real work), though she’s more than made up for it by charging out with Isobel and getting stuck in wherever the opportunity arises. Be it hunting for her friends at the IE building, or heading down into the sewers to catch a Cyberman, Zoe’s been willing to take part when needed.

Today, though, we get to see her intelligence shine through again. It’s a great scene when she asks for the missile launch to be delayed for just thirty seconds while she makes her calculations to knock out as many of the Cyberships as possible, and it’s very reminiscent of the Doctor bounding around the computers back in The Ice Warriors working out his own calculations. There’s a glimmer of her own arrogance turning up again, too when she’s told that she’d better be right with the numbers and she simply replies ‘I am!’

(But surely we could have had some Cybermats in the sewers? It seems so obvious!)

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 232: The Invasion, Episode Six

Dear diary,

A little after halfway into this episode, Ellie arrived at the flat. She didn't take a seat to watch with me, but couldn't fail to be at least a little invested in what was happening (mostly because every so often I'd point at the screen and excitedly exclaim 'Cyberman!'). With a couple of minutes to go, she joined me on the sofa and watched the end of the episode. 'Oh,' she spoke up, as the tips of the Cybermen's helmets began to appear over the steps outside St Pauls, 'Is this the really famous bit?'

I think it probably says something for this moment of The Invasion, that someone who has pretty much no interest in the 1960s era of the programme can identify 'The Cybermen at St Pauls' as one of those really iconic Doctor Who moments.

For me, though, it's not really all that. It's been years since I last watched The Invasion (probably not since the DVD was first released in 2006), and over that time, I'd built up the sequence of the Cybermen marching down the steps into this really big, bold thing. There's a brilliant photo taken on location of a silver giant stood on the steps, looking towards the sky with the dome of the cathedral in the background. It's an image that's so burnt into my mind that I was sure it matched a shot in the actual sequence, but it doesn't. If anything, the St Pauls moment forms just one tiny bit of that sequence, and it felt almost like an anti-climax for me.

Now, in part, this is all the result of forty years adding significance to the moment. As I say, if even Ellie can highlight it as an important bit of the programme's history, then it must be doing something right. Watching it without all that prior knowledge must be fantastic. And lots of the scene is - the moment that the manhole covers start to fly open and Cybermen start climbing out is brilliant, and it's odd just how right they look crawling out from under the streets. I think the feeling of disappointment at the ending has been added to by other factors, though…

The Invasion, as I've said before, is very much a follow up to The Web of Fear. Because of that, for some reason, I've got it in my head that London is deserted. Completely evacuated, like it was for the Yeti incident. It makes it tricky to panic when characters talk of the entire city being controlled, because I actively have to remind myself that there is a city full of people out there. When Watkins is told of Isobel's freedom, and Vaughn suggests that she's probably waiting at home for him, it felt odd to me - because it feels like the city should be deserted.

It doesn't help, then, when we get the establishing shots of the city in the seconds building up the Invasion. All the streets are completely deserted (that's the hazard of filming first thing in the morning, I guess!), and when we do finally get to see people falling under the Cybermen's control, there's only three or four of them, and we cut between them rapidly. Don't get me wrong, it's very effective, and I know that they don't have the budget for a whole host of extras being taken over by the strange noise echoing through the air, but it feels like as a key junction in an eight-part story… there should be more to it.

Oh, but it's not all complaints. There's loads packed into today's episode that I love - and 'packed' really is the operative word. When the Brigadier sends some men to intercept Vaughn's guards and free the professor, I was a little disheartened to see the action cut to after the battle, with its events relayed to Vaughn via Gregory. Knowing what Camfield can do with an action sequence, I was looking forward to getting to see it out on location, and it felt like a cop out to avoid showing it (I will say, though, that seeing the mini-battle between UNIT and the Cybermen in the sewers does make up for this a little. I love the clanging metal sound effect as a soldier batters a Cybermen's arm with his gun!). As the episode goes on, though, it soon becomes clear that it's cut to keep things moving - there's too much to get through!

It means there's one or two other places where the action cuts very suddenly, and it leads to a slightly disorienting effect (the one that springs immediately to mind if Jamie announcing that he's returning to his dream and then cutting to him being woken sometime later to carry on with the story. It's an effective way of letting time pass, but it feels very out of place to cut so quickly from one to the other), but it means we're moving at a pace rarely seen in the programme.

When we do slow down a little, it's for wonderful moments. The confrontation between Vaughn and the professor is perhaps one of my favourite scenes from the series so far - it's so well done on every level, from the writing, performance, and direction. Vaughn taunting Watkins with his charm is brilliant, actually handing the man a gun so that he can follow through with a threat of murder. The way he laughs when the bullets cut straight into his cybernetic body with no pain is simply fantastic: pitch-perfect in every way. The only thing that could have possibly made that better would be not finding out about Vaughn's partial upgrade earlier in the story, as it would have added a whole new layer to the scene.

One last thing, by the way: how right does the Doctor look, staring down a microscope in a UNIT laboratory? After everything I've said, I'm becoming a UNIT convert mighty quickly!

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 231: The Invasion, Episode Five

Dear diary,

As much as I loved the animation in yesterday's episode, nothing quite beats having the actual thing to watch. It's striking right from the off - the reveal of the Cyberman is much better when you can see it properly than it was in the animation. In the cliffhanger yesterday, the odd pulsating of the 'cocoon' just looked odd whereas now it's actually creepy. One thing, though… how do they hold those electrodes onto it? They don't seem to attach anywhere!

The sight of the Cybermen ripping their way out of hibernation is fantastic, and we get a few great opportunities to see it throughout today's episode. I'll admit that it doesn't always work (at one point, the recently burst cocoon gets caught on the Cyberman's handlebars, and the rest of the scene - shot from behind our metal monster - just looks odd because of it. In another instance, you can see where someone just off camera is trying to pull the cocoon away from another Cyberman), but when it does, it really does. The best ones are the shots where the Cybermen literally burst out from storage, ripping open their pods and stepping forward into the open.

It benefits from the fact that this design of Cyberman is gorgeous, too. There's no wonder that Big Finish tend to use them as the default model, because they're so brilliant. I've said before that the Tomb models are my favourite 60s version, but d'you know? I think it may be these ones. There's something about them - and the fact they look more like the 'standard' Cyberman model, with the addition of the 'ear muffs' - that just really works. The sight of one being inflicted with emotion and crying out in pain is pretty striking, and it relies on our former knowledge of the creatures. Admittedly, it doesn't look quite as effective in the closing seconds, when the creature lurches out of the darkness down in the sewers…

Some praise really does need to be reserved for the Cyberplanner: it's always been a slightly odd design, as though the leader of their invasion fleet has been built from assorted bric-a-brac, and even in this story, the Direction hasn't always done it the best of favours. When we see it in close up, it really does look cobbled together, and the effect is completely lost. Today, though, in a long-shot and towering over Vaughn, it works! We've got a few shots from behind the structure, too, which also make it look better than it has done.

I think one of the things that I'm enjoying most about this story at the moment is the fact that we've reverted to having three companions again. For a while, I was thinking about how much I'd rather Anne Travers turn up in the story than Isobel, but now that we're thick into the action she's fitting right in. I love that she and Zoe plot to go into the sewers and find the evidence the Brigadier needs, and then tempt Jamie into coming along, too. It makes for a nice dynamic, the likes of which we've not seen since Ben and Polly departed. I also love how normal it feels that a policeman thinks they're just a bunch of kids larking about in the sewers - the scale of what's going on is growing by the episode (especially now that the invasion has been moved up to tomorrow!), but for most people it's just a load of fantasy. No wonder the Brigadier needs to get hold of some evidence pretty sharpish!

The policeman is the second casualty of this story to come completely from nowhere. Back in Episode One, the poor driver that gives the Doctor and his friends a lift gets shot down in cold blood without the Doctor even realising (a few episodes later, he even muses to the Brigadier that the chap's probably fine), and here the policeman meets his fate simply by touching the outer fringes of the Doctor's life. The series has a gritty edge to it when we come back down to Earth, and it packs far more of a punch to see an innocent policeman meet his demise than it does some random scientist on the high-tech base-of-the-week.

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 230: The Invasion, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Oh, all right then. I'm a complete convert to the style of animation used in this story. For some reason, I'd always recalled it as being a bit ropey - almost like cheap flash animation that featured characters barely moving. Actually, it's completely the opposite to all that! I think I'm actually a little disappointed that Cosgrove Hall didn't get to make any more of the missing episodes - if they could all have been to this standard, then I'd be a very happy fan.

In some ways, it's also quite nice to have Cosgrove Hall connected with Doctor Who, even if it's only in a small way (and Scream of the Shalka, their other Who project, is seeing a DVD release next month too). For many people, it's a name that's synonymous with childhood and British animation, and is as much of a treasure to UK television as Doctor Who itself. Sadly, the company was wound down a few years ago, so chances of getting them involved with the Who range again are pretty much nil*.

It's interesting, though, that when The Invasion first came out on DVD, in 2006, we were told quite simply that the cost of regular animations were beyond the budget of the DVD line, and that we'd only managed to get hold of this one because of some complicated agreement with the Doctor Who website (I think I'm right in saying that these two episodes were commissions for the web, to follow on from their various other animation pieces, but that for some reason that plan fell through, too late in the day to cancel. Thus, we end up with these two episodes here on the DVD). Fast forward seven years and suddenly animations aren't just viable - they're plentiful!

This year already, we've had The Reign of Terror (I always found it amusing that the first two stories to be released with animated instalments were the second ever story with missing parts, and the second to last story with them. There's a kind of neat symmetry to that!), and a sneak-peak of The Tenth Planet on the Regenerations set, with a full release to follow later in the year. The Ice Warriors is out any day now, and then there's The Moonbase to come in a few months, too. Here's hoping that the last few stories with only two missing episodes (The Crusade and The Underwater Menace) can also be given the treatment - it's a lovely way of plugging the gaps.

And what a gap to plug in today's episode! Helicopters are simply becoming part and parcel of the programme's format, now, so it's nice to actually see one! Both their previous appearances have been in missing episodes, too, but here we get some idea of how the scene could have looked, and it's fab. I've no doubt that the animation takes one or two liberties (the shot of the helicopter flying away while Jamie dangles from the rope ladder, for example, probably looks a little better here than it might have actually done!), but it really helps to up the scale of the whole thing.

And yet, for me, it's still in the characters that The Invasion is really shining. Particularly in Tobian Vaughn. I've already said plenty of nice things about the performance we're being given here but the way that Vaughn's facade gently slips away throughout the first two thirds of today's episode, before he eventually snaps and begins to shout is fantastic. The best bit, however, comes a few minutes later, when he demands to be put through to a government minister. He snaps at the receptionist as she appears on the video screen, before remembering himself, and slipping back into his 'charming' persona. Characters are rarely as fully-rounded as this, and I think Kevin Stoney has to take a large amount of the credit, there.

And then the cliffhanger! We all knew it was coming, yeah, but you know what? I bloody love Cybermen, so it's all good by me!

*For the record, while everyone tends to list Danger Mouse as their favourite Cosgrove Hall production, for me it was always about Count Duckula. I still get the theme tune stuck in my head now and then.

a 

a  a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 229: The Invasion, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The Doctor and Jamie as they appear in this story are, for me, the 'definitive' versions. Whenever I think of the pair, it's as they are here: right down to the way that Troughton's hair falls. I'm not sure why it's like this as opposed to any other episode, but it's always been the version that's stuck in my mind. The scenes as the pair climb the lift shaft together and emerge onto the rooftop just looks absolutely right to me, as does their time sneaking along the sides of the trains and peeking inside to take a closer look at the supposedly 'empty' crates.

I think the fact that so much of Season Six is still available to watch as opposed to stuff from earlier in the Second Doctor's era (there's almost twice as many surviving episodes in Season Six than there are in Seasons Four and Five combined!) means that this has rather become the default version of Troughton's incarnation for many people. Take, for example, three recent releases of Second Doctor merchandise: The Wheel of Ice, an original novel released last year, and two 50th anniversary releases in the form of the second Destiny of the Doctor CD and the second issue of the IDW Prisoners of Time comic. All three of these feature the TARDIS team of the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe as opposed to the earlier set ups of this era.

I wonder if that might be why this version of the Doctor is so ingrained in my mind? Until undertaking this marathon, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Moonbase were the only pre-Season-Six stories that I had any real knowledge of (though I'd seen bits and bobs from other tales, usually orphaned episodes), whereas I've seen a lot of Season Six before - merely by existing in the archive, it becomes far more accessible than his earlier stuff.

It's a shame, really, because I've noticed just how much Troughton's Doctor has evolved across his time on the programme. The Second Doctor - though still quite a fun character - gets to show off his darker side far more often these days than he did to begin with. He used to be a bit of a clown who secretly knew what was going on, but now he's maturing a lot. Even his look has moved on over time - compare the way his hair sits now compared to the way it was during the earliest stages of Season Four and there's a distinct difference. It's possibly something I'm projecting onto the character, but I think he looks older now far more than the three years that we've seen pass would allow.

It's another reason that I'd love to see him in a few more Jamie-less adventures, so we could get a real sense of time passing for this incarnation. I'd dearly love to have more to watch from his earliest adventures, so that this phase of the programme didn't feel so weighted to the late 1960s.

It's another one of those days where I could just wax lyrical about how brilliant Troughton and Hines are together, and a great instance of them really drawing my attention - I hadn't noticed that we were missing Zoe and Isobel until the pair clambered aboard the train carriage to take a look for them: I'm too busy caught up with them and their interactions with Tobias Vaughn.

Vaughn has always been hailed as one of Doctor Who's very best villains, and it's not hard to see why. Kevin Stoney turns in a performance that's pitch-perfect (he slightly over-plays it with the 'niceness' when face to face with the Doctor and Jamie, but this becomes a plot point when even the Doctor draws attention to it), and he's well suited to the part. He was just as good playing Mavic Chen back in The Daleks' Master Plan, but giving him a far more real character and placing him in a very real setting makes his performance all the more brilliant - we can really connect to the idea of this person existing behind the fake smiles of big business.

Perhaps worryingly, all my memories of his character come from this first half of the story, before the Cybermen actually make their appearance. Once they arrive on the scene, I can't really recall what happens to Vaughn. I'm hoping that it's more down to my own bad memory than the character being sidelined as the story goes on, as he's one of the greatest things to turn up in the programme…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 228: The Invasion, Episode Two

Dear diary,

It doesn't matter how much praise I had yesterday for the animated version of Episode One - it's lovely to be back into moving images again today because we're back in the world of Douglas Camfield! I've made my thoughts on his work perfectly clear enough times since the start of the diary, and it's nice to see that he doesn't disappoint here in his last contribution to the black and white era of the programme.

I'm not sure that there's anyone else who could have taken the helm on this story, to be honest. In many ways it's The Web of Fear brought out onto a bigger canvas, so Camfield is right at home. I think he's at his best during the early scenes of the Doctor and Jamie trying to shake off their pursuers - it looks far better than Doctor Who of this era has any right to, and I'd love to see these film sequences remastered for High Definition. It helps that these scenes take place against a backdrop of late 1960s London - a period I've stated my affection for more than once - and yet they're made to look very different to any of the programme's previous excursions to the big city.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth gave us lots of scenes taking place around the capitol's landmarks (Indeed, this story will tick another off the list before it's through), The War Machines took place in some rather nice-looking upmarket areas as well as the warehouses of Covent garden, The Faceless Ones dropped us into the alien environment of Gatwick airport, and the previously mentioned The Web of Fear trapped us in the claustrophobic tunnels of the Underground. The scenes in today's episode puts us in the grimy industrial streets, and they feel just right for this story - they're hard edged and pose a great backdrop for the threats looming over our heroes.

It's tricky to watch these moments now, knowing that one of the men rounding up the Doctor and Jamie is the future Sargent Benton - it stops them from seeming too shady. It's a testament to the way that Camfield has directed the sequences that you still get the impression things are about to go very wrong for the Doctor, despite knowing that UNIT is around the corner. It's also apt that when we get the first shot of a proper UNIT soldier, inside their aircraft base (speaking of which - how posh is that? They never got that kind of funding in the 1970s…), the attention is drawn to the patch on his arm, as though it's supposed to mean something to us. An audience at the time wouldn't have known quite how important UNIT were about to become for the programme, but it feels like a significant moment, all this time on.

It's lovely to see Nicholas Courtney back as the Brigadier, too. I can quote the scene where he meets with the Doctor again verbatim, and often think of it whenever I see the Brig turning up on screen in any story. I'm never sure why, but it's always seems fitting. I think the thing that surprises me the most about all this is just how glad I am to see UNIT coming together and in a story that's not all that far removed from what's hovering on the horizon. I've made no secret of how much I've always disliked the Pertwee era, but as we move closer and closer towards it, and I can see the elements falling into place, I'm actively looking forward to it. It's a distillation of all the things I'm enjoying in the Troughton era, but with an added dash of colour. It's lovely to be feeling this way - as I'd expected to start stalling in my marathon around about now, in an attempt to delay my arrival to the 1970s.

I could draw attention to the Brigadier's comment that it's been 'four years' since the incident with the Yeti, considering that it will pose a stumbling block for UNIT dating further down the line, but that feels too much like causing problems for myself. There'll be plenty of time to discuss that later. For now, I'm just sitting back and enjoying a story which seems to take the best that Doctor Who has to offer and merges it all together brilliantly.

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 227: The Invasion, Episode One

Dear diary,

It's almost a shame that we can't trade the two missing episodes of this story for two episodes of The Mind Robber. The idea of that story being made up of animated episodes just seems so right, doesn't it?

That's not to say that the animation here doesn't work, mind. Let's be honest, it's gorgeous. When The Reign of Terror first came out on DVD, several people complained that they preferred the style used on this release, and I thought they were mad. I'd just seen Reign and thought it was brilliantly done, whereas I remembered The Invasion looking a bit more static. In my mind, for some reason, I'd almost imagined this as a bit of a flash cartoon, like the ones done for the Doctor Who website back in the day.

But actually, this really is beautiful stuff. The shot of the TARDIS console, its central column gently rising and falling as we emerge from the titles is absolutely stunning. I know it wasn't quite like that on original broadcast, but now it's one of the best shots of the 1960s. Elsewhere in the episode, the animation really captures the noir style that I've always associated with this story (and looking at some shots of the Doctor and Jamie being escorted from the IE building made me realise that it was this I was thinking of back in The Enemy of the World) and simply sicks you in. I think it's always a good sign when you stop focussing on the fact that you're watching an animated fill-in for a missing episode and start just enjoying the story itself.

That's not hard to do with The Invasion, really. It's always been a story that fascinated me, even back when I was taking my first steps into the world of Doctor Who. For me, it was this mythical eight-part Cyberman story: their last appearance in the 1960s and featuring what many hold up as one of the greatest TARDIS teams of all. The fact that there were two episodes missing didn't even really factor in for me at the time, because I wasn't all that aware that there even were 'partially-complete' stories. I think I thought that it was either in the archive in full… or it wasn't.

The point was moot anyway, because my first experience of The Invasion came in the form of the soundtrack. When I think of all the missing episode soundtracks I've been through now in the course of The 50 Year Diary, it seems bizarre to think that I'd ever bothered to experience an existing story in this way. But back then, new to this world, I didn't know all that much better. Coming across the VHS tapes was a rare burst of excitement, but it was the newer merchandise that was easier to get my hands on.

Imagine, then, my thrill at discovering the 'Cyberman tin' in a shop on one shopping trip to Norwich. Back then we used to visit a couple of times a month, and I'd save up whatever cash I could for the trip. I can actually remember standing in Kulture Shock (I think the shop still exists, but in a severely reduced form. On a recent visit back home I noticed that the bridal shop which took over the premises has now closed too, and it sent an odd, nostalgic pang down my spine), picking up the tin and reading the list of contents: The Tenth Planet soundtrack (brilliant! Not only was this the Cybermen's first ever story, it was the First Doctor's last!), a CD featuring a reason of David Bank's Cyberman book (I've owned that book for years, but I don't think I've ever read it. Or listened to the CD, for that matter…), and… no? Surely not?

The soundtrack for The Invasion. I'm surprised I didn't pass out in shock, to be honest. At the time I was still living at home, and I spent the next week rationing the episodes of the story out to strictly one a night (hah! Some things never change…) while I made my way through. I can't remember much about my reaction to the story - I think I was simply too busy being excited to hear it. This was the big one. In the same way that the First Doctor had that big, epic adventure with the Daleks in the middle of his last season, the Second Doctor got a massive showdown with his enemies in the middle of this one.

What I can remember is that I was a bit surprised by the absolute lack of Cybermen for the first half. I think I was probably a bit miffed by that. For me, it was all about this being some big Cyberman epic, a big farewell to them as they departed the series for the foreseeable future. Older and wiser (stop laughing in the back), I can appreciate the way that the story builds up to the big reveal, and I think it's probably going to be all the better for it.

I always assumed that the appearance of the Cybermen at the end of Episode Four would have come as some big surprise to audiences back in the day (although, of course, the Radio Times had blown it right at the start of the story), but now that I'm making my way through, I can see how the reveal of the Cyber-planner here is a great hook for them - it only turned up a few stories ago, and we know it's a bit of Cyberman technology. It's another perfect example of why the series really is better enjoyed chronologically - it adds a whole new context that you miss when watching in DVD release order.

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