kkhohoho
Since: May, 2011
10/01/2016 00:00:00
No offense, but I just hated this serial. Or at least I think I did. The problem with watching something bad is that unless it\'s momentously bad, you don\'t always remember it all that well. I\'ll tell you what I do remember though. When I was watching it, I thought that the plot was insipid, uninspired, padded, and almost idiotic, without much to really redeem it. Leela suddenly getting hitched with a random Timelord and an abandoned hospital being used as the TARDIS interior didn\'t do it any favors. Also, \'quite a lot of action\' is the last thing I want to see in Doctor Who, thank you very much, which I guess was part of the reason I just didn\'t really care for this ep. But to each their own.
ThompsonHaddock9991
Since: Oct, 2016
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The third Sontaran serial
A review of "The Invasion of Time" This serial saw the Fourth Doctor, K9 and Leela travel to Gallifrey and get into a high-stakes adventure involving treacherous Time Lords, shimmering Vardans, towering Sontarans and savage Gallifreyan outcasts. To the surprise of everyone on Gallifrey, the Doctor decided to become the Lord President of Gallifrey in this episode for the first of many times in the show's history. Similar to the previous Doctor Who serial to be set primarily on Gallifrey, this story expanded upon the Time Lords' culture and also saw the 4th Doctor seemingly become even more insane and morally ambiguous than he already was.
Throughout the serial, the viewer is introduced or reintroduced to numerous memorable characters. Borusa, the Doctor's mentor who first appeared in "The Deadly Assassin", appeared for the second time in the show in this serial in a different incarnation to the one seen previously. Borusa got some noticeable character development in "The Invasion of Time", as he went from being a stuffy old stick-in-the-mud similar to most Time Lords and visibly disapproving of the Doctor's antics throughout space and time, to becoming far less obtuse as he learned a thing or two from his former pupil during their adventure. For whatever reason, Borusa's character development from this serial seemed to be slowly erased in later episodes and he eventually became an outright villainous figure.
Other new characters are Rodan (no relation to the kaiju) - a Time Lady who joined the heroes' cause after learning that Gallifrey isn't the centre of the universe, Andred - a Time Lord soldier, Nesbin - a Gallifreyan outcast who lived with his tribe in the outskirts of the Time Lord Citadel, and Stor - the leader of the Sontaran squadron. Some believe that Rodan was a prototype of the 4th Doctor's later companion, Romana, and in all honesty, she's nowhere near as good a character as either of Romana's incarnations. Stor, however, stole the show as soon as he appeared. On top of being far more physically intimidating than any other individual Sontaran seen on the show, he and the Sontarans really proved to be a massive threat in this episode. I mean, they successfully infiltrated Gallifrey and nearly managed to take it over. His odd, repetitive speech patterns and snake-like lisp may make him hard to take too seriously, though.
Overall, the story is very intriguing without being too difficult to follow, and there is quite a lot of action in the later episodes of the serial. There were a few boring scenes that shouldn't have lasted as long as they did, like a series of scenes of the Doctor and company running around the same TARDIS room over and over again. Also, the conclusion to Leela's story is infamously underwhelming. She ended up leaving the Doctor to run off with Andred, a character she had barely any interactions with, and the Doctor didn't really question it. It's laughable how rushed and nonsensical the ending scene was.