We now arrive at the final episode of Doctor Who's fifteenth season, and also say goodbye to a dear friend... What do you think of this story? Twitter: / dalamreviews
My local PBS station used to show a Tom Baker loop for years. Robot through Invasion of Time, one episode M-F. For years this was the newest Who I could watch. Plodding story but great memories.
My PBS station did the same thing, showing nothing but the Tom Baker stories until they finally got around to adding the Jon Pertwee era and then the subsequent stories with the two Romanas. I stopped watching after Tom's last appearance as the Doctor because I didn't like the way the show was going after he left, and Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy just didn't have what Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker had to make the Doctor work. 🤔
TRIVIA: Originally, The Invasion of Time was to end with the death of Leela and that Leela was to die saving The Doctor's life. However it was felt Leela's death would traumatize small children and younger viewers and it was changed to Leela staying on Gallifrey cos she fell in love with Commander Andred.
This is one of my favourite stories. Aside from Leela's exit, I enjoy every part of it. I understand why people dislike it, but those issues don't irritate me.
The script is credited to David Agnew, a pseudonym often used by the BBC for work produced "in house" by contracted production team members. On this occasion it masks the authors Anthony Read (the series' script editor) and Graham Williams (series producer).[1] This story was written as a replacement for another story, The Killers of the Dark by David Weir, which was considered too expensive and complex to shoot. The script was written in just two weeks, with four days for rewrites. Additionally, when asked about the unused script at a convention, Graham Williams, having forgotten the exact title, made up the name "Gin Sengh", as in The Killer Cats of Gin Sengh (or Geng Singh-the spelling being indeterminate), resulting in the fan myth that this was the original title.[2] It was Robert Holmes who suggested to Graham Williams that this story be split into two segments, the first four episodes being based around the Vardans and the final two episodes being based around the Sontarans who come into the story at the end of episode 4. Louise Jameson, who had already announced her departure from the show, reportedly wished for her character, Leela, to be killed at the end of the series, and was disappointed that Leela instead opted to stay behind on Gallifrey with Andred, even though nothing in the script suggests a romance between the two characters. The producers decided that killing off her character would be too traumatic for younger viewers. An industrial strike, which was eventually resolved before production, forced the studio sets to be constructed within St Anne's Hospital in Redhill as the BBC's Christmas holiday specials were given priority in the regular studios.[2] As a result of the industrial strike, Graham Williams was given the option of not producing the final six episodes of the season and have the money rollover into the next season. Williams rejected this because of the additional problem of inflation that year and didn't want the budgeted money to depreciate even further.[2] In addition to St Anne's Hospital, location filming also took place at British Oxygen, Hammersmith and Beachfields quarry in Redhill, Surrey.[3] The Sontaran costumes were cumbersome and limited the field of vision of the actors wearing them, so much so that they are often seen tripping through and over props. At one point, a Sontaran (played by the actor Stuart Fell) nearly takes a fall after missing a short jump and landing on a pool chair. As the aliens originate on a planet of notably high gravity, however, their clumsiness is easily explained. The closing credits of episodes three, four, and six feature the return of the section of Doctor Who theme commonly called the "Middle Eight", this sequence not having been heard since the early Jon Pertwee era. From the serial's Wikipedia page...
In Australia both the Deadly Assassin and Brain of Mobius were not shown within the regular 6:30pm Mon-Thurs time-slot. Both being deemed too scary for the young audience by the ABC. So, when I saw the Invasion of Time - I did not have the preceding view of Gallifrey as a foundation. It was all new.
I was very young when this aired for the first time on the BBC. I thought Leela was fantastic, as she was a very strong female character, and I really hated it when she left. Louise also played a great part of Blanche Simmons in the BBC drama Tenko, which is about British women held in a Japanese POW camp during WW2.. You should take a look, it was very ground breaking for the late 1970s
Despite the issues of this story being written as a last minute replacement for a story thay was considered too expensive to produce under the pseudonym of David Agnew...actuallly written by script editor Anthony Read and producer Graham Williams, on a limited budget and also during an industrial strike that forced the production to use locations for the interior of the TARDIS in the last 2 episodes, I think it ended up being a pretty entertaining story. The byplay between the Doctor and Borusa is alone worth the price of admission. But I concede that there are a lot of issues with the story that we ended up getting. I still like this rare 70s look at Gallifreyian society and getting to see large portions of the TARDIS interior even if many of the corridors look the same...😂😅😊
Louise Jameson has done a ton of audios on Big Finish with Tom Baker so if you love Leela, you should give them a listen. Big Finish has done a great job of developing her character thereby taking the Eliza Dolittle metaphor to its logic conclusion.
I think you were generous on the rating for this one. This was a story that looked good on paper but isn't, for me its one of my least favourite stories
