Day 226: The Invasion Episode 7

The inevitable happens and the Cybermen turn on Tobias Vaughn, proclaiming that he is not required for the invasion and that they will proceed without him. This is positioned at the end of the episode, forming the cliffhanger as we deal with the fallout of this plot development. What's important in this plot development is how little it affects our heroes. We already expect the Doctor to save the day, with or without Vaughn in his way. Jamie's gone off sick (read gone on holidays) and Zoe is busy defeating the Cyber-fleet with the Brigadier. The major person who this affects is Vaughn himself, which indicates that the audience is now expected to care for him and his motives. And despite the fact that he's the villain, we overwhelmingly do. He's charismatic and interesting enough such that when he's on screen, we pay attention. Compare him to the villains for The Dominators, for instance. For a start, I can't actually name them, so that's an indication of how much they've stuck in my mind. When they fight, we instead find it an annoyance, whereas when Vaughn fights with his lackeys, we can sympathise with the lackeys easily because we know that Vaughn is the stronger man. And when we see terrible things happen to the Dominators, we feel glad because the bad guys have been defeated. But with Vaughn, we feel the same sympathy as we have grown to respect him as a character and so we want to see him succeed, despite the fact that he is evil. In short, we are invested enough in the character of Tobias Vaughn that when the cliffhanger rests on him, we overwhelmingly want to discover what will happen to him.