Review of The Invasion of Time (#97)

DVD Release Date: 09 Jul 19
Original Air Date: 04 Feb – 11 Mar 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Leela, K9
Stars: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson
Preceding Story: Underworld (Four, Leela, K9)
Succeeding Story: The Ribos Operation (Four, Romana I, K9)

Every time I pick up one of my Classic DVDs and see that I’m in for a six-parter, especially now that I’m down to Everything Else, I cringe a little. Despite the fact that I can easily invest dozens of hours in a K-drama, somehow spending two and a half hours on Classic Who feels like an ordeal.

Usually.

When the sting sounded and the credits rolled on the first episode of The Invasion of Time, I was shocked. “That went so fast!” I thought. Then it happened again for the second episode. Maybe I was just in the right frame of mind this time, but this Invasion didn’t feel like as much of a slog as some have.

Then again, perhaps my poor memory worked in my favor. My pre-viewing notes show that I remembered precious little about the story: a trip through the TARDIS interior (including the swimming pool), Leela staying with Andred, and Sontarans on Gallifrey. I’d say that last point was a spoiler—none of these but the pool actually show up until the last two episodes—except for how prominently displayed the Sontaran is in the cover image.

And all of that is why the first four episodes were more refreshing than I’d anticipated. Although as I was watching, I remembered some (though not all) of the motivations for the Doctor’s seemingly aberrant behavior, the details of how the plot played out were completely opaque to me. For example, I couldn’t remember whether this was an instance in which we are meant to like Borusa or not.

It is thus especially charming to me that the story appears to wrap up at the end of four episodes. Without searching the internet for answers, I have no idea whether this was due to a sudden change on the production side or what, but it’s a fun (and I believe unique?) tease, where the entire story seems to be finished—yay, we’ve won!—when a new twist tacks on two more episodes at the end.

But then we get the nonsense ending for Leela. There’s no good reason for her to stay behind on Gallifrey with Andred, but Louise Jameson—bless her—does her level best with the tiny scraps she’s given. She adds a few tiny interactions that can, with foreknowledge or in retrospect, be interpreted as the first blush of a romance between the two characters. It’s not much, but I’ll take what I can get.

So not knowing what was going on in the first four episodes combined with knowing what would come at the very end actually made The Invasion of Time far more enjoyable than I’d anticipated. I think it’s still not enough to outweigh the overall length if I was choosing something off my shelf in the future, but I don’t feel like this re-watch was an active invasion of my time. I’m calling that a win.