Trivia / Doctor Who S6 E3 "The Invasion"

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• Acting for Two: Peter Halliday (Packer) also provided, uncredited, the voices of the Cybermen in Episodes Six to Eight and of the Cyber Director — hidden in a concealed compartment in Vaughn's office — in Episodes Two and Five to Eight.
• Backed by the Pentagon: Both the army and the RAF co-operated with the production on scenes that required military equipment.
• First Appearance: Of UNIT and Sergeant Benton (though here, he's a corporal).
• Missing Episode:
  • Episodes 1 and 4 are currently missing from the archives (and are amongst the very few missing Troughton episodes not to have any telesnaps, so there is no visual record of them at all). Notably, these were the very first missing Doctor Who episodes to be officially reconstructed with animation, a method which has since become standard practice. Prior to that, there had been a VHS release in 1993 which featured newly shot clips with Nicholas Courtney providing plot summaries of the missing episodes.
• The Other Marty: An unknown actor was Corporal Benton before being fired. He was replaced by John Levene, who got along better with the main cast after playing several costumed creatures.
• Recycled Set: Vaughn has a factory/headquarters in London, and a factory in the countryside which looks identical on the inside. Jamie himself points this out, with Vaughn saying efficiency and uniformity are important.
• Spared by the Cut: In a scene later in the novelization, Routledge attempts to shoot Vaughn, but Vaughn convinces Routledge to shoot himself. This scene was filmed, but was cut before transmission.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The story predicts a future where everyone has videophones, but everyone still has to go through an operator to collect their calls. This is briefly relevant to the plot when a mid-Villainous Breakdown Tobias Vaughn is forced to affect a smooth and flirtatious manner while making a phone call so the operator doesn't suspect anything's amiss.
  • Despite the later UNIT Dating Controversy, this story is firmly stuck in 1969. Steam engines can be seen stuck in some shots, the use of which was withdrawn by British rail in late '69.
• Throw It In!: Frazer Hines took credit for the "Kilroy Was Here" graffiti.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The story was going to be just another four-parter before being expanded after the following serial, "The Dreamspinners", didn’t go through due to budgetary issues.
  • This story was originally going to feature Professor Travers and Anne from "The Web of Fear", heightening this story's status as a sequel to that one. However, Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln refused to give permission to use the characters thanks to the writers falling out with the BBC in the wake of the extensive rewrites for and Creator Backlash toward "The Dominators". As a result, the characters were replaced with suspiciously similar substitutes in the form of Professor Watkins and Isobel.
  • Several changes were made to make the story less dark or cut for time, such as Watkins' being recaptured and Rutlidge being forced to commit suicide.
• Working Title: Return of the Cybermen, which was ditched to avoid spoiling the Cybermen's return. Incidentally, the title would later be reused for the sole Cyberman story of the '70s, only to be rejected again in favor of calling it "Revenge of the Cybermen".
• You Look Familiar: Kevin Stoney had previously played Big Bad Mavic Chen.

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