Last update: 30 May 2008

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Jonathan Redwood (narrator) writes:

This release does exactly what it says on the tin - brings the book to stunning life!

The visuals are sumptuous, with some nice nods to the design in the original but greatly increased and augmented. The panning and zooming (and sheer amount of pictures) keeps things ticking along nicely and the extra little animations here and there really bring more life to proceedings. I loved the rotating light effect on the One, and the moving lift capsules.

The audio effects I also enjoyed, with Tristram Cary's music being the perfect underscore, and the sibilant echo on the One's voice being just right for a mad supercomputer.

I must confess that I'd always found this book rather heavy going, and the only time I'd actually manged to read it all through was when I recorded the narration! However, although in places the text occasionally becomes a little wordy, it managed to grab my attention for its amazing hour plus length.

The extra footage with the clean pictures from the book was also welcome, serving as a reminder of the original inspiration.

An excellent release, a real labour of love on your part, Stuart, to marry all those pictures up with the words and tie it up together in such an attractive package and bring life to a neglected, but important piece of Doctor Who history.

Tom Tyrrell writes:

I'd never even heard of this story, despite many years wandering around second-hand bookshops in search of target novelisations, so I was interested to see how it played.

What I found odd was how low budget the story is. You'd think, given the possibilities of the written word, the writer might have created and epic of alien worlds and cultures, but the fact is this story is more claustrophobic and economical than anything in the First Doctors era. The Great Fire of London takes place off screen, there are long conversations with computers in small rooms, cheap Thal-like blond henchmen and the story is rather mystifyingly resolved by a flung bowl of jelly. It's not even antimatter jelly!

The writer does deserve plaudits for astronomical knowledge - in an era where the words 'galaxy' 'solar system' and 'universe' were considered interchangeable (particularly glaring in Edge of Destruction) the writer not only consistently credits Andromeda as a galaxy, but gives us the correct Messier number as well!

The CGI is unchallenging, but nonetheless excellent. There isn't much potential for visuals in the story, but the outer space background was very effective, and the talking computer screen just about held my attention - hard to know what to do with that. It was a wonderful touch when the First Doctor lip synced the last few lines, drawing the story to an effective conclusion.

Jonathan Redwood's First Doctor impersonation is so brilliant he deserves to be up there with Richard Hurndall's attempt, though he does run to vocal stereotypes with the refugees from the Great Fire of London. Even if they are from 1666, they should have picked up some sort of London accent, not some cliched Peasant speak.

All in all another fine and engaging production, particularly considering the limitations of the source material.

Roger Smith (AKA Black Dalek) writes:

What can you say about this wonderful surprise production?

After the brilliant Desert Island Discs on The Curse of the Daleks, which Jonathan excelled himself on, Invasion from Space is a just reward for all his efforts.

What we get is one of the rarest of the 60's books, a copy now will set you back a fair bit on ebay, that's if you can find one.

His impersonation is unreal, close your eyes and you will think Billy's reading you a bed time story and, combined with the images, it is a stunning piece of work and a great addition to my collection.

If we cannot have a comic strip of the first Doctor, then this will do nicely.

Many thanks to all.

Alan McKenzie writes:

Invasion from Space was different again [from both The Dalek Chronicles and The Curse of the Daleks]. This is another work I'd never seen in its original form, though that may be attributable to the fact that as it did not involve the Daleks, I probably wasn't interested.

A new departure for AV, the story-telling style was nonetheless effective and enjoyable. Jonathan Redwood's uncanny vocal resemblance to William Hartnell is amazing and if one closed one's eyes it would be quite easy to believe Hartnell had returned and was reading the story.

The odd bits of animation were enjoyable, as were the graphics. Wish I'd seen the renders of the Aalas earlier - given a bit more facial expression they'd have made perfect models for the Dalek-Humans in my own stories!