Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time

After signing a treaty with enemy aliens, the Doctor (Tom Baker) returns to his home planet, Gallifrey, and demands the Presidency of the High Council of Time Lords. His first act as ruler is to banish Leela (Louise Jameson, EastEnders) to the wastelands. Why has the Doctor joined forces with the militaristic Vardans? Is he out for revenge against the Time Lords? Or does he have a hidden agenda? Extras include audio commentary by actors Louise Jameson and John Leeson (K9), several "making-of" featurettes, deleted scenes and much more. Digitally remastered.

After a meeting in space with a group of unseen aliens the Doctor returns to Gallifrey and claims the presidency of the Time Lords. Leela meanwhile tries to work out why he is behaving out of character. At his induction, the Doctor is 'crowned' with a device giving him access to the Matrix. He then arranges for the transduction barriers around Gallifrey to be put out of action by K9. When this is done, his alien 'friends' materialise. They are telepathic invaders called Vardans.

The Doctor links K9 to the Matrix in order to determine their point of origin. His plan is to place a time loop around their home planet, but he must avoid arousing their suspicions - hence his erratic behaviour. He banishes Leela to the wastelands of outer Gallifrey for fear that she might unintentionally jeopardise his plans. There she meets a group of Gallifreyan outsiders, and together they organise an attack on the Capitol to fight off the invaders.

The Doctor finally springs his trap and the Vardans are banished. Then, however, Gallifrey is invaded by Sontarans who, unknown to the Doctor, were using the Vardans to enable them to conquer the Time Lords. The Doctor uses knowledge extracted from the Matrix by K9 to construct a forbidden de-mat gun, activated by the Great Key of Rassilon. He then uses this to kill the Sontarans, although his memory of recent events is wiped in the process.

Leela announces that she wishes to stay behind with Andred, one of the Chancellery guards, with whom she has fallen in love. K9 elects to remain with her.

Director - Gerald Blake
Assistant Floor Manager - Terry Winders
Assistant Floor Manager - Romey Allison
Costumes - Dee Kelly
Designer - Barbara Gosnold
Film Cameraman - Ken Westbury
Film Editor - Chris Wimble
Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
Make-Up - Maureen Winslade
OB Cameraman - David Goutier
OB Cameraman - Alan Hayward
Producer - Graham Williams
Production Assistant - Colin Dudley
Production Unit Manager - John Nathan-Turner
Script Editor - Anthony Read
Special Sounds - Dick Mills
Studio Lighting - Mike Jefferies
Studio Sound - Anthony Philpott Title Music - Ron Grainer and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, arranged by Delia Derbyshire
Visual Effects - Colin Mapson
Visual Effects - Richard Conway
Writer - David Agnew This was a pseudonym for Graham Williams and Anthony Read

Trivia
The TARDIS contains a swimming pool sized bathroom.

Myth
Robert Holmes and Terrance Dicks were involved in the writing of this story. (They weren't, although it was on Holmes's advice that Graham Williams and Anthony Read structured it as a four-part segment followed by an effectively separate two-part segment.)

The story was originally to have ended with a scene in which the Sontarans deferred to the Doctor and knelt before him. (This myth arose when early publicity stills for the story showed the Sontarans apparently kneeling before the Doctor. These were in fact taken from a scene in Part Five in which Chancellor Borusa blasts the Sontarans with sound and they fall to their knees, clutching their helmets.)

Although three Sontarans are seen to enter the TARDIS, only two are killed, meaning that there is still a Sontaran lost in the TARDIS somewhere. (Only two Sontarans, Stor plus a trooper, are seen to enter. The trooper is killed with the de-mat gun, and Stor is also eventually killed with the same weapon, but outside the TARDIS.)

The characters living outside the Time Lords' Citadel are the Shabogans, as mentioned in The Deadly Assassin. (There is nothing to link the two. In The Deadly Assassin, the Shabogans were mentioned by Spandrell as being responsible for vandalism around the Citadel. In this story, the outsiders are clearly described as Time Lords who have left the Citadel for varying reasons, and it seems unlikely that they would have returned to carry out acts of petty damage.)

Technobabble
Silly names paradise. Cyclic burst ratio, encephialographic barrier, a winklegruber and crimps are all mentioned. The Doctor tells Rodan that 'after I feed in the doppler effect and eliminate the red shift then the invasion will succeed.'

Goofs
In episode one, the Doctor is wearing his scarf when he meets the Vardans, but it's on the hat stand when he returns to the TARDIS and he's not wearing it. [He has a superfluity of scarfs and left it behind.]

When the TARDIS lands its exterior light remains shining.

Stor has a cockney accent.

What happens to the rest of the Sontaran fleet once Stor is killed?

Leela and Andred fall in love despite barely having looked at one another before.

Why was Leela allowed to go to Gallifrey (and stay there!) and Sarah wasn't? [A new regime, perhaps?]