Synopsis:
Vaughn studies the circuits which the Doctor gave him, then activates a control on his desk. A panel in the wall behind it slides open to reveal a strange machine...
The Doctor and Jamie are walking away from the IE building when they become aware of a car slowly following behind them. Another then blocks the end of the street.
They decide it would be useless to run and so sit down on the kerb, where the Doctor produces a pack of playing cards.
Back at her studio, Isobel is trying to find out more about her new friends. Zoe is worried that the Doctor and Jamie are still not back yet - knowing how easily they get into trouble.
Vaughn has summoned his head of scientific research - Gregory - to his office, to show him the TARDIS circuits. He gives him a deadline to work out their function and method of manufacture, then orders Packer to provide him photographs of the two recent visitors.
Zoe and Isobel decide to go and find the others at the IE building.
Benton and Tracy have driven the Doctor and Jamie to an RAF base, and they approach a large transporter aircraft which is sitting on the tarmac. Within is a mobile headquarters, and they are pleasantly surprised to find that in charge here is their old acquaintance Lethbridge-Stewart. He is a Brigadier now, and leads a force called the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT for short. He states that their encounter with the Yeti in the Underground was some four years ago.
UNIT was set up as an investigative, intelligence gathering organisation, and at the moment they are particularly interested in International Electromatics and its CEO Tobias Vaughn. This is why they were monitoring the building and noting everyone who visited. The Brigadier recognised them from photographs sent to him by Benton and Tracy.
He states that whilst they observe people entering, not everyone comes out again...
At that moment, Zoe and Isobel have arrived at the reception area of the IE building and encountered its automated receptionist.
With his photographs of the Doctor and Jamie, Vaughn is consulting with the machine behind the secret panel. It tells him that the pair are known to it from Planet 14 and are regarded as hostile.
Vaughn is intrigued to know how they could be known from an alien planet, and is concerned that the plan for an imminent invasion might be threatened.
He is interrupted by the security feed from the reception area.
Frustrated by its failure to tell them anything about Professor Watkins or the Doctor and Jamie, Zoe gives the computer an unsolvable mathematical problem. It blows a fuse.
Vaughn watches, bemused, from his office - then sends Packer to fetch the two young women.
They are captured by uniformed security guards.
The Brigadier is showing the Doctor and Jamie images of the people entering the IE building whom he is concerned about. Some are top computer scientists and one is of Major General Rutlidge from the Ministry of Defence, who is UNIT's liaison with the government. Not all the people have vanished. Some have emerged but with changed personalities. Rutlidge, for instance, was in favour of his investigation into IE, but is now opposed to it.
The Doctor and Jamie then recognise another image as that of the lorry driver who gave them a lift at the IE compound. He is a UNIT agent, and has failed to report in.
The Brigadier informs them that IE have cornered the market in computer technology, thanks to the invention of a micro-monolithic circuit which features in all their products. He explains that Vaughn has powerful friends and his options for investigating him are limited, so the Doctor agrees that he and his companions will have to find their own methods of finding Watkins.
The Brigadier gives the Doctor a communications device before they leave, then arranges a lift back to London.
They find Zoe and Isobel absent when they get back to the house, and the Doctor begins to examine the radio which Vaughn had given to Jamie, intrigued by one particular circuit. They then read a message Zoe has left to say they have gone to the IE building to look for them. They hurriedly depart.
Vaughn is explaining to his latest visitors that he can now use Isobel to make her uncle more co-operative.
Arriving outside the IE building, the Doctor contacts the Brigadier and learns that Zoe and Isobel were seen to enter but haven't come out yet. The Doctor decides to bypass the main entrance and use another at the rear by some railway sidings.
They find themselves in a warehouse area filled with large metal cylinders. They observe a workman carrying one of these effortlessly - but when Jamie tries to lift it he finds it impossibly heavy.
Their arrival has been spotted on security cameras and Vaughn alerts Packer. He must use the girls to trap the Doctor and Jamie.
In the warehouse, they hear the girls cry out. When they rush towards the sound they see Zoe's feather boa sticking out from inside one of the cylinders, which Packer is ordering be loaded onto a freight train.
Jamie attacks him, but more guards appear and they are forced to run - only to find their exit blocked.
Packer approaches them, his pistol drawn...
Data:Written by Derrick Sherwin (from an idea by Kit Pedler)
Recorded: Friday 27th September 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 9th November 1968
Ratings: 7.1 million / AI 53
VFX: Bill King & Trading Post
Designer: Richard Hunt
Director: Douglas Camfield
Additional Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Robert Sidaway (Captain Turner), James Thornhill (Sergeant Walters), Ian Fairbairn (Gregory)
Critique:If you read the novelisations, or certain early reference materials, UNIT was set up at the Brigadier's personal instigation because of the incident with the Yeti in the Underground. His proposal for a taskforce designed to deal with future events of this sort was accepted, and he was placed in charge of the British division of UNIT. This may well be the case, but it is never specifically set out that way on screen.
Though described as a military / scientific organisation in Sherwin's notes, there is no evidence of the Brigadier actually employing any scientific staff in this story. There are uniformed troops, such as Captain Jimmy Turner and Sergeant Walters, but he also employs plain clothes agents for undercover work, such as the lorry driver in Episode One. Corporal Benton and Tracy are also seen to be wearing civvies as they mount surveillance on the IE building.
Douglas Camfield was involved in the design of the UNIT uniforms, which were of a mushroom colour. Berets were used as their headgear, which bore the UNIT emblem - the initials printed above a circular grid pattern.
Barry Letts hated these uniforms and changed them to conventional British Army dress at the first opportunity - something which Camfield was unhappy about when he returned to the programme to direct Terror of the Zygons.
Camfield did not agree with Lethbridge-Stewart being promoted to Brigadier as this looked wrong on screen, but was purely down to budgetary constraints. A Colonel, he argued in an interview with the DWAS, would have some 900 men to command, and a Brigadier three times that number - yet all the Brigadier ever seemed to have was about half a dozen or so.
The Ministry of Defence were approached to provide help with this production, which was granted when it was seen that the script showed the military in good light.
Filming for this episode began on Tuesday 3rd September at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. An RAF Hercules transporter 'plane was provided to act as UNIT's mobile HQ, and RAF personnel acted as UNIT groundcrew for the sequence where the Doctor and Jamie are brought to the site in a Jaguar motorcar.
Geoffrey Cheshire, playing Tracy, actually drove the vehicle onto the plane, even though you can't really see the driver on screen.
On Saturday 7th September, Millbank Tower in Pimlico was used for scenes of the Doctor and Jamie returning to the IE building. These scenes were filmed at the same time as those for Episode One.
Wednesday 11th then saw Troughton and Hines on Heathfield Street and nearby Walmer Road, Notting Hill, for the sequence where the Doctor and Jamie are pursued and trapped by the cars, then sit down to play cards - a visual ad lib as the pair were always playing card games during breaks in rehearsals. Troughton also suggested the idea that they begin walking slowly in unison then quickly gain speed.
The Production Assistant on this story, who would work frequently on the programme up until The Talons of Weng-Chiang, was Chris D'Oyly John. He lived in Acton and identified the nearby Guinness Factory on Western Avenue as a suitable location for many of the scenes requiring IE's industrial premises, both in London and at their rural compound. Part of the factory was no longer in use.
Cast and crew moved there after the Notting Hill filming, and scenes shot included the Doctor and Jamie breaking into the IE building via railway sidings to its rear.
We'll talk about the filming here, and what went on after a (very) liquid lunch, when the location features more prominently in the next episode...
Work on the story for Ian Fairbairn was supposed to have included location filming - a sequence where Professor Watkins is rescued - but this had been dropped, so his first involvement was in this episode.
Also joining the cast was Nicholas Courtney, who got back into the swing of rehearsals with Troughton and Hines by participating in their games during the breaks. One popular game was liar dice, where each person takes a turn to roll 5 dice which are hidden from the others. They make a claim as to how many dice of the same score are present. The others then have to bid against the claim, which may be true or false.
One aspect of rehearsals which Courtney did not like was the "fun runs" which Camfield employed to get rid of any nerves or silliness from his actors - playing out the episodes with silly accents, for instance.
Edward Burnham, playing Professor Watkins, was originally supposed to be introduced in this episode, and the actor was initially contracted to also provide the voice of the Cyber-Director. When the scripts were rewritten to have him not appear until later, this role went instead to Peter Halliday.
A number of photographs were taken near Millbank Tower - high angle shots of a number of people which the Brigadier shows to the Doctor and Jamie. Three of these we get a good look at - a scientist named Gordon Jones, Major General Rutlidge and the lorry driver. There are more on the desk, and these are actually photos of the production team: Sherwin, Camfield, Terrance Dicks and Peter Bryant.
The reception computer prop was rigged with smoke charges for when Zoe confounds it with an ALGOL problem.
The Doctor's request for a pat-a-cake biscuit with his tea was another ad lib from Troughton.
Recording breaks were mainly to allow cast members to move from set to set, though one was used to place stage weights in one of the cylinders so that it would look genuinely heavy when Frazer Hines attempted to lift it.
The warehouseman seen carrying the large cylinder is Gordon St Clair who, as Gordon Stothard, had played a Yeti in The Web of Fear and is better known for playing Grun, the King's Champion, in The Curse of Peladon. Another warehouseman is played by John Lord, who had also been a Yeti.
Wendy Padbury and Sally Faulkner had pre-recorded their screams earlier that day.
Neither would be required to work on the following week's episode, meaning a holiday for Padbury.
The earliest surviving episode from this story, it lets us have some idea of what the missing Episode One looked like - but that's pretty much all it gives us beyond the introduction of the Brigadier and UNIT. Not a lot happens otherwise.
We learn that Vaughn is planning an invasion with some unknown power - but then the story is called The Invasion...
Not only does he have a fairly incompetent henchman in Packer, it also appears that his head scientist isn't terribly good at his job either. Presumably all of IE's innovations have come from the Cybermen - but surely they must have been a major global business already for the Cybermen to have agreed to collaborate with Vaughn.
There is some humour in the episode - such as the scene where Zoe wrecks the computer, which even Vaughn finds amusing. Then there are the little bits of business from Troughton such as the card playing on the street; his rather shocked reaction to the Brigadier giving him a TM-45: "Is that a tank?"; and his child-like request for a pat-a-cake biscuit.
Last week we mentioned that paperwork suggested a date of 1976 for this story, whist both Radio Times and the continuity announcer stated that it was set in 1975. Here, the Brigadier says of the business with the Yeti in the Underground: "Must be four years ago now". This would place the events of The Web of Fear around 1971 - whereas Travers had claimed about 40 years had passed since his first encounter with the Doctor, which was dated to 1935. If we went by that dating, then The Invasion should be taking place around 1979.
Discussion of when this story takes place is important, as it will affect the whole chronology of the Cybermen. Remember, they are only supposed to first be encountered by the human race in December 1986 when Mondas returns in The Tenth Planet. We'll look at this later, once they've made their appearance.
The other issue to consider is this mention of "Planet 14".
Wherever this is, it has been visited by the Doctor, in his second incarnation, and Jamie. It may well refer to some unseen story, but if it's one we've seen then there can only really be one contender - Telos.
The Cybermen, being creatures of pure logic, would never give fancy names to planets they have invaded and taken over. They are much more likely to simply code them with a number - i.e. Planet 14 is the fourteenth planet they have taken over. They only used the name Telos as that is what it was called by its original inhabitants, in the same way they continued to call Mondas by the old name it was known by before they became the Cybermen.
One issue with Planet 14 being Telos is, of course, the dating again. The Tomb of the Cybermen definitely takes place in Earth's future, perhaps 500 years after the events of The Moonbase if Viner is to be believed. Up until Attack of the Cybermen, they certainly do not have time travel capabilities, as in that story the time-ship they do have is stolen from someone else - then blown up before they can really exploit it.
Going back to that missile strike in Episode One, it seems that the Cyber-Director only becomes aware of the Doctor's involvement once it has been shown the photographs of himself and Jamie - so that attack was most likely just some automated defence, probably to prevent some conventional Earth satellite from observing the dark side of the Moon.
Trivia:- The ratings remain comparatively steady from the previous week, with only slight dips for both figures.
- Robert Sidaway had previously played Avon in The Savages.
- Turner is the first of the Brigadier's "Jimmy's" - a succession of different captains prior to the arrival of Mike Yates.
- Ian Fairbairn is another of Camfield's repertory of actors, though his first appearance in the series was as Questa in The Macra Terror. He will return to the series as technician Bromley in Inferno, and as Dr Chester in The Seeds of Doom.
- Isobel plays The Teddy Bears Picnic on an old gramophone she says she picked up on London's Portobello Road, famous still for its street market. This song was written and performed by Henry Hall and his Orchestra in 1932. The melody predates the song, being written by American composer John Walter Bratton in 1907.
- Pat-a-cake biscuits were manufactured by Peek Freans in the first half of the 20th Century. They lent their name to a popular children's nursery rhyme which begins: "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, bake me a cake as fast as you can...".
- It was during the making of this story that Frazer Hines made his stab at pop stardom, with the song Who's Doctor Who. He had met songwriters Barry Mason and Les Reed through his charity football playing. Their hit songs included Who Knows (Where My Rosemary Grows) for Edison Lighthouse, The Last Waltz for Engelbert Humperdink and Delilah for Tom Jones.
- Heathfield Street no longer exists, having been turned into car parking and garden spaces for the residents of Portland Road, W11, in the 1970's. The website theundergroundmap.com actually mentions the filming of The Invasion there. The same website claims that Walmer Road is the oldest street in the area, once a footpath known as Greene's Lane.
- Jon Pertwee was a friend of Chris D'Oyly John's parents, and in an interview once said he dreaded the actor telling them about what went on during location shoots - as it was usually his hotel room which was used for parties. His first work on the series had been as an AFM on The Ark.
