It’s hard to know exactly what to make of season fifteen’s “The Invasion of Time.” On the one hand, it was definite ammo for John Nathan-Turner’s crusade to do away with six-part stories, calling them little more than a two-parter tacked onto a four-parter. On the other hand, you’ve got a story that is like the younger, less talented step-son of the previous year’s superior in every, Robert Holmes written “The Deadly Assassin.”

And then if you examine the story within the entire context of Tom Baker’s run as Doctor, you’ve got one of the last gasps of the show actually stretching Baker as an actor and not having him totally out of control until “The Leisure Hive” to begin season eighteen.

But none of that answers the essential question of whether or not the story is an entertaining one, which is really what all of “Doctor Who” can and should be about.

The answer to that is—yes and no.

The story starts off fairly well with two episodes of the Doctor acting strangely—almost completely out of his mind. In the day and age when we’ve all seen these stories fifteen million times, it’s hard to recall the feeling of disorinetation and confusion that went with the first viewing of this story. I recall seeing it for the first time, wondering through the first two episodes just what was up with the Doctor. Had he finally lost his mind? Was he betraying his people? Why was he acting mad and alienating those around him? Why would he banish Leela from him?

The first two episodes are driven by this tension, this wondering and a strong performance as Tom Baker. Baker seems to relish the chance to truly mess with viewers head, making them wonder if the Doctor has finally gone over the edge and betrayed Gallifrey. Or is it some mad plot to get back at them for the exile, for the years of errands and a myriad of other perceived sins.

By the time we get to the lead-lined office and scene with Borusa, the tension has mounted to a piont that it’d be eas to think the show is going back to the early days of Hartnell with the Doctor clearly the anti-hero. And then, the Doctor reveals he’s setting up the Vardans, trying to figure out their planet of origin and suddenly a lot of that tension is gone. Many of the main characters don’t yet know of the Doctor’s ruse, so there is still some tension (and a cliffhanger) from the misunderstanding created by the Doctor’s own actions. But just as the questions about the Doctor’s motivations are answered, a lot more come up—many of which the script never answers. The biggest is just who exactly are the Vardans and why are they a such a percevied threat? Because the story progresses, they don’t seem quite as powerful or threatening as the Daleks might have been or as the Sontarans are later in the script. Indeed, when the villains of the first three-quarters of the story become a running joke in a later New Adventure you know something has gone horrible wrong.

Of course, it’s at this point the script has kind of gone of the rails a bit. Once we know the Doctor is really betraying the Vardans, the script becomes little more than a whole lot of running about corridors from various alien monsters—first the Vardans, then the Sontarans. But in that running about , there are a few isolated moments that work well. The Doctor’s resignation that he has to use the demat gun as the only way to defeat the Sontarans in nice, though it lacks the sheer power of the “Do I have the right” scene in “Genesis of the Daleks.” Also, the Sontarans themselves are a bit of non-starter. They show up as one of the more surprising cliffhangers in the show’s history, only to do little more than stomp about Gallifrey and the TARDIS shouting platitudes and threatening people. Oh, and dying a lot. Again, the budgetary limits of the show at the time betray the potential epic feel the story wants becuase it’s hard to believe that both the Vardans and Sontarans would send an invasion force of three people.

But that’s the budget limiations of old-school “Doctor Who.” I’m sure if this were made today, we’d have legions of digitally created Sontarans skulking about. Whether or not that’s better, I’m not sure. I suppose with them returning for the upcoming season of “Doctor Who” we may get our chance to find out.

Yet somehow, for a six-part story, the ending of “Invasion of Time” seems rushed. Leela’s departure seems hastily tacked on and is a disservice to the character. Why she’d wish to remain on Gallifrey doesn’t make much sense and there’s just no real sense of attraction between she and Andred. The script tries to insert a few scenes to foreshadow this—or maybe it’s the actors trying to make the best of a bad situation, but it doesn’t exactly come to much.

All in all, what you end up with is a clunky end to an uneven season. And the beginning of a very different era for the show…one from which it would take the show years to fully recover.