Fixing The Invasion of Time

Any takers....?

Burn it.

Replace Tom. Sounds extreme but for me Baker's flippant, casual performances were wot was ruining the series for me around this time. And it got worse over the next two years. That said I really enjoyed season 18 and Tom, for me, was back on form that year.
Change the end. Leela shacking up with the Gallifreyan always seemed odd to me, like a last minute after thought once they realised Louise could not be persuaded to stay. In fact remove Leela. She was great under Hinchcliffe and Holmes but the shine faded once their careful, guiding hands left the show. She should have died in battle fighting the Vardans. A warriors death.
Remove K9 from the story. He infantalised every story he was in. What a wanker.
Reduce it to 4 episodes. Its too long and bored the hell out of me when broadcast. I remember how pissed off I was when the sontarans materialised at the end of episode 4 - another two episodes to go! I just wanted it to end. The Sontarans were unnecessary and their appearance was an unwanted twist.
In some ways I preferred Underworld. Yes the SFX were awful and it was an unsophisticated rip-off of a Greek myth but.
No - there isn't a 'but'. That was shit aswell. Sorry.

Include more scenes of Leela in the swimming pool.

stengos wrote:Replace Tom. Sounds extreme but for me Baker's flippant, casual performances were wot was ruining the series for me around this time. And it got worse over the next two years. That said I really enjoyed season  18 and Tom, for me, was back on form that year.
Change the end. Leela shacking up with the Gallifreyan always seemed odd to me, like a last minute after thought once they realised Louise could not be persuaded to stay. In fact remove Leela. She was great under Hinchcliffe and Holmes but the shine faded once their careful, guiding hands left the show. She should have died in battle fighting the Vardans. A warriors death.
Remove K9 from the story. He infantalised every story he was in. What a wanker.
Reduce it to 4 episodes. Its too long and bored the hell out of me when broadcast. I remember how pissed off I was when the sontarans materialised at the end of episode 4 - another two episodes to go! I just wanted it to end. The Sontarans were unnecessary and their appearance was an unwanted twist.
In some ways I preferred Underworld. Yes the SFX were awful and it was an unsophisticated rip-off of a Greek myth but.
No - there isn't a 'but'. That was shit aswell. Sorry.

For me I think Tom Baker only really became a problem in terms of his out of control excesses around Nightmare of Eden (there were little moments in Season 16 but nothing too distracting until this). Still I suppose if he was to really go out at his prime as the Doctor, then Horror of Fang Rock was probably the one.

There were moments where I thought Leela was well-used this season. I think The Sunmakers might be her finest hour infact. But I think you're right that she wasn't as consistently well used, especially in more comical stories like The Invisible Enemy.

I don't know if personally I'd have wanted her to be killed off (though that is what Louise herself wanted), but she did deserve a better exit than being palmed off with Andred at the eleventh hour. If she should've been married off, it probably should've been to Cordo from The Sunmakers, since she did actually seem to harbour a lot of affection to him from quite early on.

I actually largely agree about K9, though in this story I felt the fact that he was being put to more devious use to help the Doctor vandalize the planet was itself quite novel.

I liked everything about the Invasion of Time except for the choice of the Sontarans as the enemy. (I like Sontarans ok, but: 1. It just doesn't seem like their style, and 2. I just don't think they were advanced enough to pull off what they were doing.)

When I first saw it I thought another time lord (not the Master), but maybe Omega or a character like him was behind it. Morbius might be a good choice. The only other option I can think of (other than creating an entirely new enemy), is that Sutekh somehow survived and is now seeking his revenge against the Doctor but for some reason is trying to take over the whole of Gallifrey first.

I do like the idea of Leela having left in the Sunmakers, staying with Cordo on Pluto rather than here. It would have been a more fitting ending for the character. But then, I also like the scenes with Leela and Rodan, and wouldn't want to loose them.

Replace the Sontarans with the Daleks .
Leela dies a heroic noble death as originally planned.
Ditch the lighter tone and make it just as dark, grim and brutal as The Deadly Assassin.

Okay, my 50 cents...

I would possibly have planned more of the season overall around hints that the Doctor was having some kind of secret meetings and dodgy deals with the Vardans, or was showing more contempt and disillusionment than usual at the Time Lords, so that there's a bit more weight behind his sudden treachery to make it more frighteningly plausible.

I would've probably taken out the whole ceremony of having to wear and be approved by the Matrix in order to be inaugurated. That never made sense nor was entirely made lucid, and just becomes another barrier to emotional involvement.

The invasion itself definitely needed to create a lot more of a sense of immediate chaos and urgency. Instead the story spends too long lingering in limp speed. Which is especially damning because it ruins a potentially exciting prospect by revealing it to be nothing of the kind, really.

The Vardans themselves, I would probably have them be a bit more represented like the Eternals in Enlightenment or like the photograph monster of Sapphire and Steel, or like the people trapped in photograph form. Something a bit more haunting and inhuman.

The scene where Leela and the tribe harpoon those two guards outside the president's office was needlessly cavalier, as was the Doctor's lack of reaction. And it wasn't even clear why it had to be done. I'd have probably changed that to the tribe pelting them with rocks and slings until they're overwhelmed into retreat, or rather just wounded them. If this is to be Leela's last story, it should be one where she proves she's learned at least something from the Doctor.

I would cut out the whole business of wandering into the Tardis innards. I always found that part deeply boring and where my investment started to really wane, even when first reading the novelization. (also the Tardis having that much expansive space in it, kind of contradicts how in Planet of the Daleks the Tardis was able to run out of usable oxygen so quickly).

Or if I was going to keep that sequence, I would have to at least make the action around the planet so devastating that it actually was made more pressing why they had to retreat into that sanctuary.

To amend the issue of the Sontarans only landing with the four to five shock troops, I would probably show them actually set up cloning devices on Gallifrey to show that they were preparing a greater army, which would give a welcome ticking clock to events.

Speaking of Sontaran numbers, at the very least, have the Doctor or Leela catch and off the last remaining Sontaran that we never see vanquished and which just gets forgotten about. Definitely what the D-Mat gun does needs to be made more lucid, and how it erases the invasion force itself by erasing Stor.

Leela's reasons for staying I think would've been more appropriate if they were more to do with having found her new tribe in the Outliers. It's plausible enough that a tribeswoman like Leela would pick her life partner based on a few seconds' instinct, but it's not emotionally satisfying and doesn't feel really thought through by the writers.

The K9 Mark II reveal doesn't make sense either. the Doctor was only ever given the one version by Marius. Either keep K9 or remove him altogether, but this business of losing him only to build a suddenly available replacement doesn't make any sense, just to justify a few behind the scenes redesigns.

Anyway that's all I've really got.

Pepsi Maxil wrote:Include more scenes of Leela in the swimming pool.

Oh, and that.