Skip to content
TARDIS Guide

Overview

Released

Monday, January 28, 2002

Written by

Mark Gatiss

Runtime

94 minutes

Time Travel

Past

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

Earth Invasion, Halloween

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

Web of Time

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

New Jersey, Earth, New York, USA

Synopsis

Hallowe'en 1938.

A month after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York State, Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to soon-to-be infamous Orson Welles they did. But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary The War of the Worlds broadcast weren't just imagining things?

Attempting to deliver Charley to her rendezvous in Singapore 1930, the Doctor overshoots a little, arriving in Manhattan just in time to find a dead private detective. Indulging his gumshoe fantasies, the Doctor is soon embroiled in the hunt for a missing Russian scientist whilst Charley finds herself at the mercy of a very dubious Fifth Columnist.

With some genuinely out of this world "merchandise" at stake, the TARDIS crew are forced into an alliance with a sultry dame called Glory Bee, Orson Welles himself and a mobster with half a nose known as "the Phantom".

And slowly and surely, something is drawing plans against them. Just not very good ones...

Add Review Edit Review Log a repeat

Edit date completed

Characters

How to listen to Invaders from Mars:

Reviews

Add Review Edit Review

11 reviews

Typical features of a Gatiss script, however, this falls as a weaker one. The setting while unique, and capitalising on interesting historical moments, doesn't realise its potential, and hampered by some awful American accent performances, which make this quite painful to work through. Ultimately, this took much of the focus away, and I have finished the audio struggling to recall much of the features of the plot.


joeymapes21

View profile


a fairly decent story, though i forgot just how long it takes to actually get going. man, mark gatiss should just stick to acting


megaminxwin

View profile


Well, that was interesting. The worst fake American accents I've ever heard, some egregious alien voices, and frankly I can't even tell you what happened or who the characters were.

I'm glad I skipped this in my first listen through, probably would have put me off listening to the rest of the series.


whitestar1993

View profile


This review contains spoilers!

Biiig yawn for this one.

As other reviews say, good ideas here (using the War of the Worlds broadcast to pretend there's already an alien force invading Earth, the Doctor and Charley pretending to be PIs, NYC gangsters in general), but the execution was lackluster. I started writing an outline of the plot here and just deleted it because so many threads just go nowhere and it's confusing, and the end is unsatisfying. Charley is kidnapped and questioned with a truth serum, and just doesn't get to do much else. The Doctor unwittingly helps a Russian spy, and then comes up with the second fake broadcast*, which doesn't quite work. The random Russian scientist guy who we thought died in part 2 saves the day with a... homemade atomic bomb? Alright.

I did like the performances for Welles and Devine. That's pretty much all I can say.

 

*read with Pippin's intonation of "second breakfast"


mndy

View profile


Charming, but I wish I could dig it much more. From other Gatiss entries this one places a bit higher, as always Gatiss gets a pretty cool idea, but the execution feels a bit lackluster. Our leads still have so much chemistry that I can’t really say it’s bad, just kinda lackluster.


RandomJoke

View profile


Open in new window

Statistics

AVG. Rating357 members
3.04 / 5

GoodReads

AVG. Rating963 votes
3.46 / 5

Member Statistics

Listened

623

Favourited

18

Reviewed

11

Saved

7

Skipped

3

Quotes

Add Quote

Submit a Quote