- You may be looking for the TV story or the story as mentioned in The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who.
Doctor Who and the Android Invasion was a novelisation based on the 1975 television serial The Android Invasion.
Publisher's summary[]
The Doctor and Sarah arrive safely back on Earth – or do they?
Why does the mysterious soldier march straight over a cliff – and then reappear unharmed?
Why are they attacked by the sinister mechanics with built-in guns for hands?
Why is a picturesque country village at first deserted – then filled with mindless zombies?
And why are their best friends suddenly trying to kill them?
The Doctor has stumbled on a cunning alien plan to take over the Earth. Will he be in time to defeat the deadly Kraals and their terrifying android invasion?
Chapter titles[]
- Strange Arrival
- Village of Terror
- The Watcher
- Hunted
- Captured
- The Test
- The Countdown
- Braindrain
- Blastoff
- Hero's Return
- Takeover
- Death of a Doctor
Deviations from televised story[]
- An army truck transports the android villagers to and from the village simulation of Devesham, instead of the large tradesman's pickup truck used in the televised version.
- When Sarah encounters one of the service mechanics with its visor raised, standing near the truck outside the pub, there is just empty space beneath its helmet instead of a mass of circuitry as in the televised version.
- A scene recorded for part one, but edited out for timing reasons, where Guy Crayford is summoned by Grierson to the Space Defence Station's scanner room to investigate an energy trace that could be a spaceship, is reinstated.
- The occupant of the android shell Sarah finds near the TARDIS's landing site, after the TARDIS has apparently dematerialized of its own accord, and whose occupant then grabs her by the throat, is not a man clad in black as in the televised version, but a woman in her fifties wearing a tweed outfit.
- The android replicas are revealed to be 'mirror images' of the originals, which was a idea considered for the televised version but eventually dropped.
- There is an additional scene before the Doctor enters the telephone box: he hides behind the nearby bus shelter as an army ambulance, driven by Corporal Adams, drives down the street.
- The calendar in the pub shows the month of September, but there is no page for October underneath it. (In the televised version, the calendar gives the date every day as Friday 6 July.)
- When Styggron and Chedaki test their weapon on a newly created android of a UNIT soldier in the Kraal base's testing area, the weapon sprays a fine mist instead of firing a red beam as in the televised version.
- The Doctor is tied to the war memorial by Styggron and the service mechanics with a coil of plastic rope instead of vines from a nearby bush; and Sarah frees the Doctor by hand, and not by using the sonic screwdriver.
- The android Doctor's peering out from inside an android shell to observe the Doctor and Sarah in the XK5's cargo hold is omitted.
- Sarah's encounter with the android Doctor outside the TARDIS on Earth, as well as her seeing an replica of herself emerging from a nearby android shell, is omitted.
- The closing scene of the Doctor and Sarah departing in the TARDIS, with Sarah saying she is going to take a taxi home, and the Doctor offering to take her home instead, is omitted. The novelisation ends after Sarah discovers that the Doctor used the reprogrammed android version of himself against Styggron, as well as mentioning that Chedaki would be left waiting in vain for Styggron's signal to bring the Kraal invasion fleet to Earth.
Writing and publishing notes[]
- When the first seventy-three Target novelisations were retroactively numbered in 1983, this book was assigned #2; however, no edition bearing the number was ever printed.
Additional cover images[]
British publication history[]
First publication:
- Hardback
- W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd. UK
- Paperback
- Target
Editions published outside Britain[]
- Published in the USA by Pinnacle Books in 1980 as a paperback edition, it was one of ten American novelisations; an introduction by Harlan Ellison features in all the editions.
- Published again in the USA by Aeonian Press in 1984 as a hardback edition; it was one of seven novelisations published in the mid-1980's.
Cover by David Mann
Audiobook[]
This Target Book was released as an audiobook on 4 August 2022 complete and unabridged by BBC Audio and read by Geoffrey Beevers.
The cover blurb and thumbnail illustrations were retained in the accompanying booklet with sleevenotes by David J. Howe. Music and sound effects by Simon Power.
