YMMV / Doctor Who S13 E4 "The Android Invasion"

• Better on DVD: A major plot point concerns a throwaway exchange about thirty seconds into the first episode (the Doctor casually offering Sarah a sip of his drink and Sarah turning it down). It's easy enough to remember that Sarah doesn't like ginger pop if you watched the whole thing in one sitting, but most viewers who weren't anorak-level Sarah fans would have been lost after waiting a week between episodes.
• Ham and Cheese: Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen hated everything they had to say and so rewrote all of their dialogue together. Both of them are clearly having a lot of fun.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The rocket-launch Stock Footage used for the takeoff of Styggron's ship is the same clip that MTV used for its hourly station-identification in its early years.
  • After the Android Doctor is destroyed, fooling Sarah Jane into thinking the Doctor was dead for a moment, she tells him not to do anything like that ever again.
• Narm:
  • Sarah nearly falls down a fairly nonthreatening embankment. Not as bad as what she'd have to deal with later, but it didn't come across as life threatening. Probably the best the location could offer and they made do.
  • Styggron: "Commence the analysis of the braaaaaaaain! "
• Narm Charm: The story is technically crap with an alien plot that makes no sense and weak monsters, but it is still a watchable episode because of The Doctor and Sarah's interaction, the funny moments where the Doctor is Impersonating the Evil Twin and the genuinely creepy moments with the androids in general.
• Padding: All of the scenes developing the relationship between Crayford and Styggron were added to fill the serial's running time by Robert Holmes (and, since they're in a totally different writing style to Terry Nation, it shows). It has the side effect of making Crayford and Styggron's relationship come off as a bit weirdly sadomasochistic.
• Signature Scene: The face falling off Sarah-Jane's android duplicate, to reveal the wiring underneath.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Both Ian Marter and John Levene were both unhappy making this serial because they felt that there was no reason for Harry and Benton to be there at all. Indeed, they play their android duplicates for most of the story and even then, they play a minimal role. And this was their last appearance in the series proper to boot; Levene would reprise Benton for a DVD movie and some audios, but Marter would sadly pass away before he could return as Harry.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The face falling off the android Sarah Jane. Not only is the effect one of the all-time behind the sofa moments, some very clever construction is used to make the servos look like they go right to the back of the head, and the eyeballs are mounted on stiff springs that twitch in a way frighteningly like natural eyeball flicker movement, making it seem like the android is still thinking and studying the Doctor as it turns its head towards him.

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