This episode no longer exists in the archive, and nor are there any telesnaps. Representative images have been used.
Synopsis:
The Doctor and Jamie are being hunted by Packer and his men. They conceal themselves in a railway freight car, Jamie climbing inside one of the metal cylinders they saw at IE's London warehouse.
He discovers that he is not alone, as something cocooned within begins to stir...
Once the searchers have moved off, he tells the Doctor of what he experienced but they do not have time to go investigate as they overhear a guard state that Zoe and Isobel have arrived and are to be taken to the main administration block.
Packer reports back to Vaughn in his office. The security chief argues that he ought to have been allowed to dispose of the Doctor and Jamie sooner, but Vaughn argues that sometimes it is best to keep people alive if they can be made to serve his purpose. He has allowed Watkins to live only because of the Cerebratron Mentor, after noticing that their allies are troubled by it. It is his intention, once the planned invasion has been a success, to then discard them. The alternative would be conversion into inhuman creatures like them. Vaughn wants the Doctor's travel machine as a contingency plan should they fail.
The girls will be used to flush him out.
In the UNIT helicopter, Captain Turner reports all the increased activity at the compound to the Brigadier, who orders Sergeant Walters to put his troops in the area on standby.
Vaughn does not seem too concerned by it hovering so near his factory. He then makes a public address announcement, giving the Doctor ten minutes to surrender.
Zoe and Isobel are locked in a room on the tenth floor of the office block. They can see the Doctor and Jamie below, motioning them to keep back from the window. Zoe has also spotted an electronic eye in the room, spying on them.
The Doctor uses his UNIT radio to contact the Brigadier, to check if the helicopter has a rope ladder on board and to have it position itself immediately above the building. He and Jamie are going to make for its roof via a fire escape ladder.
They are picked up by the helicopter, and Jamie is then sent down the rope ladder to the window of the room where the girls are being held. They have jammed the door to prevent Packer and his men from entering. All three must then ascend the ladder to the helicopter, with IE guards opening fire on them.
The guards reach the roof just as the helicopter moves away, with Jamie - last to leave - still clinging to the ladder.
Vaughn is initially furious that Packer has failed yet again, but then announces that they will be returning to London with the professor and his machine. He intends to bring the invasion forward - to begin in 24 hours. He also assures Packer that there will be no official reaction to what has just happened, having his secretary contact Major General Rutlidge at the Ministry of Defence...
Rutlidge is informed that UNIT have been causing him trouble, and he is instructed to ensure there will be no further interference from them. Rutlidge agrees to arrange this, though is oddly hesitant in his response.
The Doctor and his companions are now all safely back at UNIT's transporter aircraft HQ. He tells the Brigadier about the spaceship on the dark side of the Moon which fired on the TARDIS, and of the deep space radio transmitter they saw at the IE compound.
From Captain Turner he then hears about UFO sightings near to the compound, one of which was photographed.
Watkins is notified that he is to be moved back to London - and given an ultimatum of 24 hours to complete work on his machine. Vaughn and Packer lead him to believe that Isobel is still in their power.
The Doctor examines the photographs and finds the craft depicted strangely familiar.
He deduces that these spacecraft are delivering something to the compound, which are then transported up to the London IE premises. He recalls Jamie talking about something within his metal cylinder moving, and asks the Brigadier for a detailed map which covers the area around the building.
Noting something interesting, he then enquires if the Brigadier can get him a canoe...
A short time later he and Jamie are paddling the canoe along a canal and into a tunnel which provides an access point into the IE warehouse, managing to evade the guards.
Once inside, they witness Gregory, Vaughn's head of research, and some technicians employing a strange electronic device. Cables run from it to one of the cocoons, standing within an upright cylinder.
The power quickly builds, and a Cyberman bursts out...
Data:
Written by Derrick Sherwin (from a story by Kit Pedler)
Recorded: Friday 11th October 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 23rd November 1968
Ratings: 6.4 million / AI 51
VFX: Bill King & Trading Post
Designer: Richard Hunt
Director: Douglas Camfield
Additional cast: Edward Dentith (Rutlidge), Sheila Dunn (MoD Phone Operator)
Critique:
During the making of An Unearthly Child, Eileen Way, playing the Old Woman, told William Hartnell that she didn't think Doctor Who would last more than a few months at best. He always said it would last 5 years. The pair decided to bet on it, but never met again - so Hartnell never did get his money. Of course, when he made the bet he would have assumed that he would still be in the title role but, sadly, that was not to be. Doctor Who celebrated its fifth anniversary, with no fanfare and with a different star, with this episode.
It's just a pity that this episode no longer exists in the archives, as this is the one where the story really picks up a gear. UNIT get involved in the action and Vaughn's allies make themselves known - and it's the return of a popular monster.
Rutlidge was described in the script as "about forty, greying, and with a nervous disposition which he covers up in normal circumstances with false bonhomie".
The UFO photographed by UNIT was described as being of an elongated hexagonal shape. Sherwin may have intended use of the same model seen in The Wheel in Space.
It was originally intended that the Cyberman would be reanimated using a bio-projector, as seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen.
In August, script amendments were made to the scene of the Doctor and Jamie overhearing the mention of the girls being taken to the admin block; the rooftop rescue sequence; and the Doctor and Jamie using a canoe to get into the IE building.
The filming for this episode centred on the dramatic helicopter rescue by UNIT. This had been due to be filmed at RAF Fairford on Tuesday 3rd September, but had to be postponed when insurance problems prevented the arrival of the helicopter.
The filming then got underway on Thursday 5th at Denham Airfield. Close-ups of the cast in the aircraft, including Robert Sidaway playing Captain Turner, were filmed with it on the ground. Concerned about being filmed from below climbing up the rope ladder, Frazer Hines had lead weights sewn into the hem of his kilt to stop it showing the football shorts he usually wore. As a good Highlander, Jamie would have been expected to wear nothing under the kilt. Hines had read that the Queen used this lead weight technique on her skirts. Unfortunately, Sally Faulkner hadn't read the same article and so her underwear did make an appearance - spotted, like her dress, it would appear from photographs taken on location...
The pilot was Mike Hughes of Gregory Air Services. He took Hines and Sidaway up on a short flight and alarmed them by jokingly claiming that, as it was an Alouette, all the controls were labelled in French and he couldn't understand them.
It was on this day that Hines announced to the press his imminent departure from the series.
The following day, cast and crew moved to Wallingford, Oxfordshire, to film all the ground level action for the recue sequence at the premises of Associated British Maltsters.
The final filming for this episode took place on the Regent's Canal on Friday 13th September, when work was underway at Ealing Studios - Troughton and Hines being filmed paddling the canoe.
Having been seen only in a photograph in the second episode, the cast was now joined by Edward Dentith, playing Major General Rutlidge. He had appeared alongside Nicholas Courtney in the thriller Watch The Birdies, directed by Douglas Camfield.
And having previously voiced the IE reception computer, the director's wife Sheila Dunn now featured as the video phone operator.
A sizeable amount of the running time for this episode had been pre-filmed, so the studio session ran relatively smoothly. The only new sets this week were small offices - the one where Zoe and Isobel were kept, and Rutlidge's. The Cyberman was reanimated in part of the IE warehouse set.
The first recording break allowed Hines to move from the cylinder with the cutaway section into a complete one, to be seen climbing out of it.
Other breaks were for cast movement between sets.
One of the new Cyberman spaceship models, filmed at Ealing on Friday 30th August, was photographed against a neutral background and slightly blurred, to be shown to the Doctor by Captain Turner.
The Cyberman which emerges from the cocoon at the episode's conclusion was played, uncredited on this instalment, by Pat Gorman. He had been a background artist and monster performer on the programme ever since the second episode of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Terrance Dicks used to joke that it was in the BBC Charter that he had to be cast in everything.
We'll discuss the new-look Cybermen next time, when they feature more prominently.
Vaughn's allies are revealed to be the Cybermen. Even if Radio Times hadn't spoiled their return - or if they had stuck with the working title of "The Return of the Cybermen" - then I think the audience in 1968 might have guessed their involvement. We've had a few clues, such as the Doctor thinking that the threat on the dark side of the Moon might already know who he is, the look and sound of the Cyber-Director, and the talk earlier in this episode about conversion and the significance of emotion. Watkins' machine delivers emotional impulses, and the allies don't want it developed.
There's also the fact that the Cybermen were appearing on the programme frequently during this period. They featured twice in Season 4, and topped and tailed Season 5, so it was pretty inevitable that they would be showing up again soon.
Invasions of Earth are a bit of a cliché in the programme, especially since it returned in 2005. Whilst the planet has been threatened quite a few times, actual alien invasions have been relatively rare in Doctor Who up until this point. Only The Dalek Invasion of Earth comes really close, and then the TARDIS arrived after the invasion had already been accomplished and the Daleks were now the rulers of Earth, with only a small band of ill-equipped rebels to trouble them.
In this story, we get to see the build-up to the attack, as a human collaborator schemes to pave the way.
Vaughn isn't only interested in taking power once the Cybermen have conquered the Earth. His ambitions - like those of his future look-a-like Mavic Chen - are much greater than that. Both have a secondary plan in which they will get rid of the alien allies once their work is done, in order to rule single-handedly. Not for them ruling under a foreign power. Chen could easily have kept his initial involvement with the Daleks a secret from the rest of the Solar System, attacking them with his fleet based on Venus and coming across as some sort of avenging saviour. Vaughn isn't interested in what the people of Earth might think of him. He plans to rule them, and that's all there is to it as far as he is concerned.
Trivia:
- The ratings see a sharp fall this week, of over half a million viewers. The appreciation figure also drops some three points.
- This was the second time "The Return of the Cybermen" had been used as a working title for a story, the previous time being for The Moonbase.
- The image of a Cyberman bursting out of a cocoon was so striking Eric Saward reused it in Earthshock, which also borrowed elements of Revenge of the Cybermen. The Invasion will also inspire one aspect of Attack of the Cybermen - namely Cybermen exploiting London's sewer network and having a spaceship hidden on the dark side of the Moon.
- Isobel asks Zoe why they were kidnapped, and not just handed over to the police. She seems to think they're in trouble purely for sabotaging the IE reception computer - forgetting entirely that she was told back in Episode 2 that she was going to be used to force her uncle into cooperating with Vaughn...
- The filming at Denham Airfield was covered by the local press:
- This week's Radio Times published a photograph of Isobel climbing up to the UNIT helicopter, to accompany the day's programme listings...
- And it also ran a feature on Kit Pedler, though not in all regions. On Tuesday 12th November he participated in a Radio 3 discussion titled Of Ombudsmen and Cybermats, which considered the ethics of science and looked forward to his new series Doomwatch, co-written with Gerry Davis. This would focus on the potential dangers to people and the environment of unregulated science. The discussion wasn't broadcast until June 1969, and would be his final link with Doctor Who. There was an article in The Listener, dated 10th July 1969, to accompany the broadcast...
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