046 – The Invasion | |||||
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Doctor Who serial | |||||
The Doctor and Tobias Vaughn
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Cast | |||||
Others
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Production | |||||
Directed by | Douglas Camfield | ||||
Written by | Derrick Sherwin, from a story by Kit Pedler | ||||
Script editor | Terrance Dicks | ||||
Produced by | Peter Bryant | ||||
Incidental music composer | Don Harper | ||||
Production code | VV | ||||
Series | Season 6 | ||||
Length | 8 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||||
Episode(s) missing | 2 episodes (1 and 4) | ||||
Date started | 2 November 1968 | ||||
Date ended | 21 December 1968 | ||||
Chronology | |||||
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Author | Ian Marter |
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Cover artist | Andrew Skilleter |
Series |
Doctor Who book: Target novelisations |
Release number
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98 |
Publisher | Target Books |
Publication date
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10 October 1985 |
ISBN |
Cold Worlds | ||||
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Soundtrack album | ||||
Released | 6 June 2014 | |||
Genre | Soundtrack | |||
Label | Dual Planet | |||
Doctor Who soundtrack chronology | ||||
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The Invasion is the partly missing third serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in eight weekly parts from 2 November to 21 December 1968. It marks the first appearance of UNIT and, notably, Corporal Benton, later to become a Sergeant. It is the first now-incomplete Doctor Who serial to be released with full-length animated reconstructions of its two missing episodes.
The TARDIS evades a missile fired by a spaceship on the Moon, landing the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe in late twentieth-century England. The visual stabiliser is damaged and renders the TARDIS invisible, so they try to find Professor Edward Travers (of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear) to seek his assistance. They hitch a lift to London, and the lorry driver talks of International Electromatics, the world's largest electronics manufacturer.
The Doctor discovers that Professor Travers has left for America with his daughter, leaving his London home in the care of Isobel Watkins and her scientist uncle, Professor Watkins, who has mysteriously disappeared while working for the same company, International Electromatics. The Doctor and Jamie go to IE's head office in London, to investigate. When the electronic receptionist refuses them entry, they seek out a back entrance, but are arrested and taken before IE's Managing Director, the sinister Tobias Vaughn, who gives them a cock-and-bull story of Professor Watkins being at a delicate stage of his work and refusing to see anyone. The Doctor is immediately suspicious, noticing that the inhuman Vaughn never blinks once during their meeting.
The Doctor and Jamie are abducted by two strangers, and taken to a military transport aircraft housing a complete operations room, where they are reunited with Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart from The Web of Fear, now promoted to Brigadier, who is in charge of a military taskforce known as UNIT. He explains that he is investigating IE, because whenever people visit the IE offices they are strangely different afterwards. He also reveals that the lorry driver they met is a UNIT operative, and that he has disappeared.