A classic, like the episodes

Another novel that i read long before I saw the episode

I like the sense of mystery at the beginning of this story, although it goes on for longer in the televised serial than this novel. Sarah gets some good journalist-style scenes, and overall this is a pretty good book for her, even though she's not exactly herself for some of it. It's not the best UNIT story, and it feels like Doctor Who has outgrown its UNIT era by this point which is why it's a shame this is the last appearance of characters like Benton and Harry, as it's not the most exciting story for them to go out on. The ending also felt rather rushed, but it's not a terrible story and I do enjoy the plot potential of androids being able to successfully disguise themselves as humans.

This is an ok serial and a pretty good retelling of it. Dicks glosses over a lot of faults in the plot and adds a lot of detail to lull the reader into thinking the story is a lot tighter than it really is.

This was one of a bunch of novelizations of Doctor Who episodes that were first published in America. My brother had the set, back in the day. I think all of them featured the same exact introduction by Harlan Ellison. When Tom Baker was still The Doctor (that's how old I am), I was a knocked-out fan. Was so for years -- until about ten minutes into Colin Baker's first episode. Cured that addiction in a snap.

I discovered some of the American editions online for free, so I thought I'd read about an episode I'd nearly forgotten about, "The Android Invasion." Big mistake.

If you're interested in a classic Doctor Who story, just see if you can find it on YouTube or a streaming service. Don't bother with the books. They're crap -- and that might be insulting to crap. There are almost no descriptions. There are some mildly interesting thoughts from the characters (such as the Doctor being against foxhunting), but that's it. Terrance Dicks assumed that anyone reading this was a fan of the show, so no back stories are given.

I don't think Terrance sticks had hold of the final version of the script when he set out to write this, or just didn't care. My memory of this episode is foggy, but a few scenes came back to me. The dialogue seemed to be wrong in regards to Harry's medals. This would be the last story where Harry appears.

There is some funny dialgue between Sarah and the Doctor. That was the charm of the Tom Baker years -- good script writing, and three-dimensional companions who didn't just look pretty and need to be rescued all of the time.

isbn,original

This was a good action packed story. It was small scale and moved along fast. I thought it ended too quickly but otherwise was good.

"The Android Invasion" has a pretty "meh" reputation amongst Who fans, but I dunno, I've always liked it. I know Terry Nation only had two ideas in his entire career, but I always found the story kitschy and fun (maybe not what Nation was going for).

But the novelization by the Mighty Terrance Dicks is standard Dicks - it's efficient, and fun, and captures the spirit of the episode. No complaints from this Whovian.

3.25 rating. The doctor and Sarah have to save earth from the Kraals. the Kraals have created android replicas of the army base. they want to destroy the world. The Doctor and Sarah have to find a way to stop them.

This is one of my favorite Doctors. I'm still on my way to reading all the Doctor Who books, so... onward!

Bit of a mixed bag, and some of my scoring, to only put it at a 3, is likely more due to my feelings about characters involved in the story, rather than the story itself.
Some really good ideas in the story, and even though to the readers it is clear given the title from the get go what is going on, we do get to see from the Doctor and Sarah's point of view how there is a lot of mystery for them as to what is going on, coming up with lots of explanations that turn out to not be the case, but can see how they are working at it. A good twist near the end as well.
Outside of that though, the antagonists with one exception (Crayford) are somewhat one dimensional, and the one well fleshed out character, while good in of themselves, doesn't make up for the lack.
Sarah has a somewhat egregious moment of twisting her ankle, that really stuck out for me, and while reading all these books shows it doesn't happen too often, and most of the time in understandable circumstances, this one seemed to just be to make her a damsel. To be fair though, at least she eventually gets herself out of the mess.
The Doctor at least is in good form, but shouldn't be at the cost of the companion.
Then we come to UNIT - no brigadier in this story for the first time for a UNIT story, but at the same time, probably well out of it. While we get some good villainous versions of Harry and Benton, their actual characters are poorly served, especially Benton, for their final story in Doctor Who (the TV version at least, happily Audio versions have provided more). Seemed especially silly regarding Harry, given that he had a good farewell in the Loch Ness Monster.
So, not a bad story, but the characters we know well, seemed poorly served for the most part.

This felt exactly like watching the classic episodes from the 70's. I was able to really visualize it the way the show used to be.