Broadly speaking, The Android Invasion works as an average story of the golden era of the show, with an amazing cast and a realistic and well-realized setting.
Story: 5
The biggest problem with this story is the basic plot. Short and sweet: it is stupid and makes little to no sense. It is a bit silly even. It feels misplaced in a season so dark and grim such as this one. There is no real reason for the Kraals to use the titular androids, as they do nothing at all to advance their plan. It seems as if Nation has a hard time figuring out if the main villains of the story are the Kraals or the androids. The rushed conclusion to the story leaves several unanswered questions: what happens to the rest of the Kraal fleet? Did Benton survive? How could the Doctor reprogram his android copy to turn against Styggron, if he had jammed all the androids in the previous scene?
It also seems as if Nation creates flawed solutions to steer the plot in the direction he wants. He makes the supposedly indestructible androids a bit more destructible just to be able to put in a shocking reveal at the end of Episode Two. He makes the TARDIS automatically return to Earth just to force the Doctor and Sarah to board the space ship. And do not get me started on the eye patch!
Another quite annoying problem: the inclusion of Benton and Harry Sullivan in the story. Do not get me wrong here, both are great characters and a joy to watch on screen, but they have no reason to be in this story. Both characters only have a few lines and they serve merely as supporting characters throughout the entire story. Why Nation simply could not have replaced them with other UNIT personnel (or better yet, leave UNIT out of this one completely) is beyond me.
Tom Baker fighting himself in Episode Four is a small but funny sequence and very convincingly realized. That being said, the doppelganger of the Fourth Doctor does not pop up until the very end and is not very well utilized, so it remains a gimmick.
Acting: 8
This story finds its strength from the great performances by the relatively small cast. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen are a seasoned duo by now and it is a joy to watch their playful banter throughout the story.
The actors playing androids do a pretty good job of coming across as malfunctioning robots. The quirky clockwork music also helps to make them believable.
Milton Johns is back for the second of his three appearances on the show. He plays Crayford the same way he played Benik in The Enemy of the World and will play the castellan in The Invasion of Time. It worked the first time around, but here it's just distracting.
Martin Friend and Roy Skelton appear in costume as the part-human part-rhino invaders known as Kraals, bringing the inevitable alien into the mix. They both do fairly well, but they never really get to do anything particularly menacing, which is a bit of a pity.
Patrick Newell (of The Avengers-fame) feels misplaced as Colonel Faraday, serving as a replacement for a part originally meant for Nicholas Courtney.
The Doctor: 8
Tom Baker stands out particularly well in this story, giving his Doctor even more depth than before. His ability to act politely and stay completely calm even when threatened brings an interesting layer to his Doctor.
The Companions: 6
Benton and Harry can't be called companions here since they appear as androids. Sarah once again has a lack of anything interesting to do, other than becoming an android, which creates some interesting tension.
The Monster/Villain: 4
The Kraals look like melted Sontarans (a missed opportunity for experienced costume designer Barbara Lane) and their real motive to invade Earth is to wipe out all humanity and make it their new home. Such originality. It's rather dull, which also makes the Kraals fairly forgettable aliens.
Crayford initially bears some resemblance to the evil Brigadier seen in the Season Seven story Inferno (including the menacing eye patch!), but this side is quickly forgotten as the story progresses. Crayford stays very constant throughout the story, with his eventual character development finally surfacing in episode four in a surprising, yet unoriginal, turn of events.
Production: 9
The production meets the expected standards. Ex-producer Barry Letts returns to direct this story and does a remarkable job. Slow-motion is used cleverly in a couple of scenes and Letts takes advantage of several well-placed close-ups as well. The CSO-shots still look quite convincing today, and the music sets the right mood at the right time. Philip Lindley's set design is not particularly jaw-dropping, but it works effectively and blends in with the location footage seamlessly. The androids prove to be a special treat, as they look extremely convincing even in close-ups.
Pacing: 7
The Android Invasion features a good amount of action and running, but it still feels somewhat dragged out. After the atmospheric and even somewhat creepy opening episode, the mood falls flat and the action feels uninspiring. There is no real emotion in the story, not in the actions performed by the characters and not in the non-existent sub context of the plot. It just sits there, going from point A to point B without really giving any food for thought to the audience.
Atmosphere: 7
In a season full of dark and haunting tales, The Android Invasion marks a nice change of pace, being slightly more lighthearted. There's more variation to this season than to seasons 6 and 8, others that utilize a certain template.
Impact: 4
The Android Invasion isn't fondly remembered, mostly due to it being placed between two classic stories and because it doesn't do anything interesting with its premise. The Kraals became another forgotten alien species.
Replay Value: 7
While not the worst story ever, it's just isn't as good as it should be and consequently I won't be rewatching it any time soon.
Random Observations:
It feels weird watching a story written by Terry Nation not to feature the Daleks. The last time he contributed such a story was The Keys of Marinus in 1964.
This is another story with similarities to Westworld, just like The War Games and Carnival of Monsters before this one.
I get the feeling Terry Nation has gone from copying himself to copying others. The guards chasing the Doctor and Sarah around look like the aliens in The Ambassadors of Death and have guns inside their hands like the Autons in Spearhead from Space. This kind of clockwork droids shows up again in the revived series, in The Girl in the Fireplace (2006) and Deep Breath (2014). That being said, Nation also clearly still loves his humanity killing viruses!
This story marks the final appearances of John Levene's Benton and Ian Marter's Harry Sullivan in Doctor Who. It's sad to see them leave the show on such a slow note.
Doctor (upon being captured): "Is that finger loaded?"
The classic cliffhanger ending of Episode Two (featuring a Sarah Jane Smith literally losing her face) is another very iconic Doctor Who moment and a pretty shocking one at that.
The concept of the Doctor meeting a copy of himself is of course not a new thing for the show. It's the first of several times for the Fourth Doctor, but previous incarnations have met copies of themselves in The Space Museum (1965), The Massacre (1966) and The Enemy of the World (1968).
From the file marked "Things That Make No Sense": If the Doctor had a robot detector with him all this time, why did he not use it in the first place? And why was there no copy of the Brigadier, when there were copies of other UNIT personnel?
Review by Theo KallströmVIP 6BlockedParent2020-06-22T15:51:22Z
Broadly speaking, The Android Invasion works as an average story of the golden era of the show, with an amazing cast and a realistic and well-realized setting.
Story: 5
The biggest problem with this story is the basic plot. Short and sweet: it is stupid and makes little to no sense. It is a bit silly even. It feels misplaced in a season so dark and grim such as this one. There is no real reason for the Kraals to use the titular androids, as they do nothing at all to advance their plan. It seems as if Nation has a hard time figuring out if the main villains of the story are the Kraals or the androids. The rushed conclusion to the story leaves several unanswered questions: what happens to the rest of the Kraal fleet? Did Benton survive? How could the Doctor reprogram his android copy to turn against Styggron, if he had jammed all the androids in the previous scene?
It also seems as if Nation creates flawed solutions to steer the plot in the direction he wants. He makes the supposedly indestructible androids a bit more destructible just to be able to put in a shocking reveal at the end of Episode Two. He makes the TARDIS automatically return to Earth just to force the Doctor and Sarah to board the space ship. And do not get me started on the eye patch!
Another quite annoying problem: the inclusion of Benton and Harry Sullivan in the story. Do not get me wrong here, both are great characters and a joy to watch on screen, but they have no reason to be in this story. Both characters only have a few lines and they serve merely as supporting characters throughout the entire story. Why Nation simply could not have replaced them with other UNIT personnel (or better yet, leave UNIT out of this one completely) is beyond me.
Tom Baker fighting himself in Episode Four is a small but funny sequence and very convincingly realized. That being said, the doppelganger of the Fourth Doctor does not pop up until the very end and is not very well utilized, so it remains a gimmick.
Acting: 8
This story finds its strength from the great performances by the relatively small cast. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen are a seasoned duo by now and it is a joy to watch their playful banter throughout the story.
The actors playing androids do a pretty good job of coming across as malfunctioning robots. The quirky clockwork music also helps to make them believable.
Milton Johns is back for the second of his three appearances on the show. He plays Crayford the same way he played Benik in The Enemy of the World and will play the castellan in The Invasion of Time. It worked the first time around, but here it's just distracting.
Martin Friend and Roy Skelton appear in costume as the part-human part-rhino invaders known as Kraals, bringing the inevitable alien into the mix. They both do fairly well, but they never really get to do anything particularly menacing, which is a bit of a pity.
Patrick Newell (of The Avengers-fame) feels misplaced as Colonel Faraday, serving as a replacement for a part originally meant for Nicholas Courtney.
The Doctor: 8
Tom Baker stands out particularly well in this story, giving his Doctor even more depth than before. His ability to act politely and stay completely calm even when threatened brings an interesting layer to his Doctor.
The Companions: 6
Benton and Harry can't be called companions here since they appear as androids. Sarah once again has a lack of anything interesting to do, other than becoming an android, which creates some interesting tension.
The Monster/Villain: 4
The Kraals look like melted Sontarans (a missed opportunity for experienced costume designer Barbara Lane) and their real motive to invade Earth is to wipe out all humanity and make it their new home. Such originality. It's rather dull, which also makes the Kraals fairly forgettable aliens.
Crayford initially bears some resemblance to the evil Brigadier seen in the Season Seven story Inferno (including the menacing eye patch!), but this side is quickly forgotten as the story progresses. Crayford stays very constant throughout the story, with his eventual character development finally surfacing in episode four in a surprising, yet unoriginal, turn of events.
Production: 9
The production meets the expected standards. Ex-producer Barry Letts returns to direct this story and does a remarkable job. Slow-motion is used cleverly in a couple of scenes and Letts takes advantage of several well-placed close-ups as well. The CSO-shots still look quite convincing today, and the music sets the right mood at the right time. Philip Lindley's set design is not particularly jaw-dropping, but it works effectively and blends in with the location footage seamlessly. The androids prove to be a special treat, as they look extremely convincing even in close-ups.
Pacing: 7
The Android Invasion features a good amount of action and running, but it still feels somewhat dragged out. After the atmospheric and even somewhat creepy opening episode, the mood falls flat and the action feels uninspiring. There is no real emotion in the story, not in the actions performed by the characters and not in the non-existent sub context of the plot. It just sits there, going from point A to point B without really giving any food for thought to the audience.
Atmosphere: 7
In a season full of dark and haunting tales, The Android Invasion marks a nice change of pace, being slightly more lighthearted. There's more variation to this season than to seasons 6 and 8, others that utilize a certain template.
Impact: 4
The Android Invasion isn't fondly remembered, mostly due to it being placed between two classic stories and because it doesn't do anything interesting with its premise. The Kraals became another forgotten alien species.
Replay Value: 7
While not the worst story ever, it's just isn't as good as it should be and consequently I won't be rewatching it any time soon.
Random Observations:
It feels weird watching a story written by Terry Nation not to feature the Daleks. The last time he contributed such a story was The Keys of Marinus in 1964.
This is another story with similarities to Westworld, just like The War Games and Carnival of Monsters before this one.
I get the feeling Terry Nation has gone from copying himself to copying others. The guards chasing the Doctor and Sarah around look like the aliens in The Ambassadors of Death and have guns inside their hands like the Autons in Spearhead from Space. This kind of clockwork droids shows up again in the revived series, in The Girl in the Fireplace (2006) and Deep Breath (2014). That being said, Nation also clearly still loves his humanity killing viruses!
This story marks the final appearances of John Levene's Benton and Ian Marter's Harry Sullivan in Doctor Who. It's sad to see them leave the show on such a slow note.
Doctor (upon being captured): "Is that finger loaded?"
The classic cliffhanger ending of Episode Two (featuring a Sarah Jane Smith literally losing her face) is another very iconic Doctor Who moment and a pretty shocking one at that.
The concept of the Doctor meeting a copy of himself is of course not a new thing for the show. It's the first of several times for the Fourth Doctor, but previous incarnations have met copies of themselves in The Space Museum (1965), The Massacre (1966) and The Enemy of the World (1968).
From the file marked "Things That Make No Sense": If the Doctor had a robot detector with him all this time, why did he not use it in the first place? And why was there no copy of the Brigadier, when there were copies of other UNIT personnel?
Score: 65/120