Thursday 19 January 2012

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Android Invasion Part Three

Where were we? Scary face! No, wait... Robot face!






















The story continues with the Doctor running away as fake-Sarah shoots at him.

Styggron has decided to destroy the village in nine minutes, because it has served its purpose of occupying the first two episodes of this story, and he is confident that this will kill the Doctor as well. The real Sarah hears this and then gets away from him because he is useless at guarding prisoners.

White robots come and take all the android-mannys away from the village. The Doctor sees this and then... surprise!

















Styggron grabs the Doctor from behind. He must have been hiding behind the camera. The Doctor recovers from his surprise quickly and says "Oh, hello."
"Resistance is inadvisable," quips Styggron.
But you can't out-quip the Doctor, because he replies "Oh dear. We haven't been introduced, have we?"

White robots help Styggron win the fight and they tie the Doctor to a stone. Styggron places a bomb there and tells the Doctor that it will destroy him and the village in "exactly three minutes." The bomb makes more and more scary noises as it gets closer to exploding.

Sarah arrives and tries to cut the Doctor free but she can't cut the plastic ivy holding him there. The tension mounts as Sarah uses the sonic screwdriver to cut the plastic. They run off as the bomb counts down the last few seconds. I love countdowns, they always make a story very exciting. Terry Nation obviously loves countdowns too, because he uses them in his stories all the time.

They get inside the alien base in the nick of time, and then the whole village disappears in a pretty good special effect. The Doctor and Sarah are then captured by Crayford and his fake-UNIT mannys. Crayford doesn't want to kill the Doctor so he persuades Styggron to keep them as prisoners. But Styggron secretly tells his friend that he will kill the Doctor really, so they are still in danger.

Now that the Doctor and Sarah have both been captured together the story slows down so we can get a lot of exposition about what is going on. In a prison cell the Doctor tells Sarah about the fake-mannys and the fake-village. Then Crayford comes in and tells them about how he will soon return to Earth in his XK5 spaceship.

Crayford is working with the Kraals because they rescued him and made him all better except for his eyepatch. He thinks the Kraals are friendly but the Doctor thinks he has been hypno-eyesed.

Styggron sends noms for Sarah but they have been poisoned. But Sarah does not eat the poison because she is going to use it to escape (somehow). The Doctor is taken away to have his BRAIN analysed by Styggron.

The Doctor finds out from Styggron that the Kraals do intend to kill all the mannys on Earth, and not be friends with them as Crayford thinks. The Kraals are going to use a virus to kill all the mannys, which may mean that Terry Nation's Survivors is an alt-history of The Android Invasion.





















The Doctor gets his BRAIN analysed by flashing lights and colours, just like Sarah did last episode.

Sarah escapes by electricing an android and then she rescues the Doctor from the flashing lights and colours after Styggron leaves him alone. See what I mean when I say he is useless at guarding prisoners?

They get to Crayford's XK5 rocket and hide inside. The rocket blasts-off and we see a NASA rocket take off.























Sarah is horrified at this appalling use of stock footage and she makes a face. This confusing moment is the end of the episode.

This episode is not as good as the first two parts of this story. It starts very well, but after they escape from Styggron's bomb it slows down and is not as interesting, and then the confusing cliffhanger ending is not as good as the first two because there is no shock dramatic moment.
But I am confident it will get better next time, because the next episode is the final part of the story, and I am sure it will have an exciting conclusion.

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