Revisiting "The Invasion"

By Craig Owen Jones

One of the finest Doctor Who serials of the 1960s was ‘The Invasion’ (1968), an eight-part story directed by Douglas Camfield in which Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor, together with companions Zoe (Wendy Padbury) and Jamie (Frazer Hines), are confronted with the megalomaniacal schemes of Tobias Vaughn (Kevin Stoney), the president of multinational corporation International Electromatics. As James Chapman and others have pointed out, in many ways the serial prefigured the future narrative direction of the programme. The primary plot point, whereby a multinational conglomerate exerts hegemonic control over an aspect of the world’s market, was to become a staple of Doctor Who; similar tropes have formed key elements in stories such as ‘Partners In Crime’ (2008) among others. Nor was the choice of an electronics company an accident, resonating with contemporary doubts over the speed of technological development in general (and computers in particular) – doubts that manifested themselves in debate over the viability (and wisdom) of embracing what Harold Wilson referred to as the ‘white heat’ of technology.

The Cybermen invade London

‘The Invasion’ does, however, maintain a surprising silence on another, equally topical matter. As the first serial set in contemporary Britain to be screened following the extraordinary tumults of the late spring and summer of 1968, it is extraordinary that the version of England presented in ‘The Invasion’ has nothing whatsoever to say about them. The unrest in America following the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the racial tensions in Britain exemplified by Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech (delivered in April, sandwiched between the first and second readings of the Race Relations Bill in the House of Commons) and the strikes that followed his censure, and the radicalism of the Sorbonne are all firmly eschewed in favour of a not unsuccessful portrayal of swinging London.  For all her feminist bluster - borne witheringly by the males around her - supporting character Isobel (Sally Faulkner) is an aspiring fashion photographer with a penchant for mini-skirts and the quirkiness of the Portobello Road market, and Jamie’s interest in International Electromatics’ new model of portable radio is restricted to the pop music emanating from it.

Swinging Sixties: Companion Zoe and photographer Isobel encounter magnate Tobias Vaughn

It is only fair to point out that Doctor Who was not the only science fiction series to find the depiction of the social unrest and radicalism that encapsulated the end of the 1960s in Europe, America, and elsewhere problematic. The counterculture that formed the backdrop to that unrest was in many ways the most obvious object of comment, and less than three months after the broadcast of ‘The Invasion’, Doctor Who’s contemporary show, Star Trek, made an attempt at a critique. ‘The Way To Eden’ (1969) featured a group of cultish space aliens – thinly-veined depictions of hippies – whose quest for the mythical planet of the episode’s title ultimately brings nothing but death. The cultural politics of this widely-derided episode is painted in broad strokes, but it did at least represent an attempt of sorts to engage with this particular aspect of contemporary cultural affairs. Doctor Who viewers would have to wait until the 1970s, and the appearance of Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor, for similar treatments.