Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3301 in VHS
• Released on: 1995-03-06
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: HiFi Sound, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Synopsis
The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive in an English village to find the villagers absent and the local pub full of robotic strangers.

Customer Reviews

There's something lurking in Devesham Woods...
The Android Invasion - a Fourth Doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith adventure from 1975 - would probably not make most Doctor Who fans' top 10 TV stories but it is possibly my favourite ever made.
The story opens with the time travellers arriving in a beautiful leafy English Wood, but The Doctor senses that something is out of place. When the pair witness a UNIT soldier walking to his death over a cliff they decide to investigate, and uncover an alien conspiracy to gradually replace the Earth with android replicas of humans and infiltrate before taking over.
The aliens in question are the fantastically realised Kraals and they are accompanied by faceless automatons in space suits who fire deadly projectiles from their wrists.

The thing that makes this story so memorable for me is its setting in an archetypal English village; little moments like The Doctor ordering Ginger pop in the local pub and the truck arriving in the village square to unload a host of android locals, who wait immobile until a signal is given, then begin to act as if they were the humans they have replaced. It is both eerie and strangely evocative of an England that never was, and despite later flaws it remains a hugely enjoyable and cosily thrilling story that I can watch over and over again. Milton Johns si particularly good, and puts in a typically twitchy and shifty performance as duped astronaut Guy Crayford.

It's criminal that this story still hasn't been released on DVD, as it's an atmospheric and memorable gem of a serial. Hopefully 2Entertain will remedy this soon.

A rare treat from the Baker era.
The problem with 'The Android Invasion' is that it is too similar to 'Terror of the Zygons' (also available on Amazon) only not quite as good. The Kraals, for example, are not as good as the Zygons had been, neither visually nor vocally. However, there is still plenty to recommend this video. I enjoyed the Tom Baker stories that were set on Earth (or in this case what appeared to be Earth) because his Doctor's unearthliness made an interesting contrast from Pertwee and suited stories that were set on Earth (as so many Pertwee stories had been). Sadly there's no Brigadier to be found in this adventure, with Patrick (The Avengers) Newell not really much of a replacement as Colonel Faraday. Still, Milton Johns is excellent as the slimy Crayford and the villagers with the West Country accents are a joy to behold.

The Android Invasion.
Between 1975-1977, Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and Script Editor Robert Holmes, gave us a collection of some the most memorable stories in the shows history. The Android Invasion,(apart from the title being a dead giveaway), is one of those stories. Devesham, where the story is set, is supposed to be a beautiful English village. But all is not as it appears... An android training ground, an alien race called Kraals, an evil Doctor and Sarah, the final appearances of Sgt Benton and Harry Sullivan and ginger beer are just some of the stories exceedingly tasty ingredients. Unfortunately, the Brigadier is absent here. Overall, I find very little to fault this 4th story from Season 13 and I would strongly recommend this to anybody wanting to build upon their video collection. A 5-Star classic.