 This story is the prologue for a new era for Doctor Who. It was the dawn of UNIT, with the return of Nicholas Courtney as Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, from "The Web of Fear", now promoted to Brigadier. It also featured the debut of John Levene (who had previously been a monster stand-in) as Corporal Benton. Both men would become regular characters during the whole of the Third Doctor’s era.
Originally this story was going to be a six part story called "Return of the Cybermen" and was originally envisioned to be a sequel to "The Web of Fear". It would also have seen the return of Professor Travers, and his daughter Anne, from that story – making this the third story to feature Professor Travers. However, as the role of Travers was reduced to a mere walk-on, it was decided to abandon this idea and to recast these characters as Professor Watkins and his niece Isobel. Professor Travers though is still referenced by name several times. There are also many references to "The Web of Fear" in general.
Wendy Padbury was on holiday during the recording of episode three and so does not appear in this episode; Frazer Hines was also on vacation during episode eight's recording. He does though appear in the final scene - a pre-taped segment which had been filmed on location.
John Levene was due to play a Cyberman as he had done on "The Moonbase". The actor's resume also included several other walk-on parts, including Z Cars, Adam Adamant Lives!, and as a Yeti in "The Web of Fear". For "The Invasion", however, John Levene - whose real surname was Woods - found himself given the opportunity to take on the much larger part of Corporal Benton when the original actor, due to play this part, was dismissed.
John Levene's appearance in episode five was uncredited, as was Peter Halliday as the voices of the Cybermen and the Cyber-Director.
Kevin Stoney, who played Tobias Vaughn, originally played the part of Mavic Chen in the 1965/66 First Doctor story "The Daleks' Master Plan".
Edward Burnham, who plays Professor Watkins, also played Professor Kettlewell in the 1974/75 Fourth Doctor story "Robot".
There is also a cameo appearance by director Douglas Camfield, who plays a car driver in the first episode, and Douglas Camfield's wife Sheila Dunn provides voice-overs as a phone operator.
On the closing credits of Episode Five Ralph Carrigan's surname was misspelt 'Carrigon'. Also episode eight bore an additional credit reading 'The BBC wish to acknowledge the help given to them by the Ministry of Defence in the making of this programme'.
Though this story follows on immediately from "The Mind Robber", with a reprise of the fragmented TARDIS reforming in space, no mention is made of the previous adventure and the Master of the Land of Fiction is mysteriously no longer present.
The TARDIS becomes invisible for the first time after materialising.
For the UNIT troops battle scenes in episode eight members of the 2nd Battalion of Coldstream Guards were used to portray the UNIT troops.
The character of Tobias Vaughn reappears in the Virgin Books' The New Adventures spin off novel "Original Sin" by Andy Lane, meeting the Seventh Doctor. In the book, Vaughn is the Chairman of a powerful company, Interstellar Nanotomic which is an anagram of ‘International Electromatics’. He says instead of dying in Part eight, his consciousness was transmitted via a satellite into one of fourteen identical robot copies of himself that he uses to influence the people of Earth from behind the scenes.
Much later, the Tenth Doctor encounters a similar situation (a powerful electronics company dominating the planet in league with Cybermen) on a parallel Earth in the two-part story "Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel". Also, in the first episode of this latter story, the vans used to collect homeless people for conversion were hired out by a company called Industrial Electromatics.
Dialog places this story four years after "The Web of Fear", which would place "The Invasion" in 1979. Indeed, the story was intended to have a ‘near future’ setting, to serve as a backdrop for the Third Doctor's pending UNIT era. However, since the shows revival in 2005 the production team have suggested that UNIT stories generally occurred in the year they were broadcast. The 2007 story "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords" also refers to UNIT having established procedures for alien contact in 1968 - apparently a reference to the events of "The Invasion". References elsewhere, namely in The Sarah Jane Adventures story "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?" support this chronology.
Unusually for the show, episodes five and eight were recorded largely out of sequence. Director Douglas Camfield opted to record all the scenes on a given set before moving on to the next; the same approach was used to a lesser extent for episode seven. Also due to Director Douglas Camfield's refusal to use regular composer Dudley Simpson, Don Harper was hired to provide the music for this story. "The Invasion" would be Don Harper's only work with Doctor Who.
During the recording of this story, producer Peter Bryant approached Nicholas Courtney about returning to Doctor Who on a regular basis for the following year; the actor agreed without hesitation. Already, Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin Derrick Sherwin were formulating plans for a very different Season Seven - one in which The Brigadier and the UNIT organisation would feature very heavily.
This story was the final Doctor Who story to feature the contributions of Kit Pedler. Kit Pedler went on to develop the ecological thriller Doomwatch with former Doctor Who Script Editor and Cyberman co-creator Gerry Davis.
This story included Kit Pedler's last on-screen credit for Doctor Who for almost 38 years - until the 2006 Tenth Doctor story "Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel".
Episodes one and four are missing; all the other six episodes exist as 16mm telerecordings, though episode six is slightly edited, missing only some material with Vaughn and Watkins. For the 1993 VHS video release Nicholas Courtney provided a narration to cover the missing episodes.
This story was released on DVD, in November 2006, with animated versions of the missing episodes 1 and 4 along with the original soundtrack. This story is the first incomplete Doctor Who story to be released, on DVD, with full-length animated reconstructions of its missing episodes.
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The Firsts:
The introduction of semi-regular companion Sergeant Benton played by John Levene.
The first UNIT story.
The first Doctor Who story to be written by Derrick Sherwin.
Terrance Dicks' first involvement in the show as Script Editor.
Bobi Bartlett's first involvement in the show as Costume Designer.
The first incomplete story to be released, on DVD, with full-length animated reconstructions of its missing episodes.
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(Position = 16 out of 159)
(Position = 31 out of 200)
