Target: The Android Invasion

I first read this book on a hot afternoon with a headache, and ever since then Devesham has felt like a hot, thirsty place where you'd want a ginger pop.

The doomed UNIT corporal is handsome and young. True, the man we see on screen is no minger, but he's no spring chicken either. He gets his face ripped by a bramble, but doesn't flinch.

Sarah doesn't roll down a slope towards the cliff, she just steps over it, not knowing it's there, but fortunately the Doctor catches her hand.

When Sarah sees the 'mechanic' with his visor up, there aren't circuits inside, just a dark space. There's a completely new scene just after this, before she gets back to the TARDIS, in which Grierson (an android presumably) reports a strange pinging signal to Crayford.

Sarah finds a middle-aged woman in the pod by the TARDIS, not a man in a leather jacket.

At the Space Research Centre, the Doctor points out the Brigadier's cap (on top of a filing cabinet) to Crayford to illustrate his point about whose office it is. Crayford is just Senior Astronaut, not Senior Defence Astronaut.

The Doctor throws the darts all at once - from the 'aiming point' rather than the more usual oche.

The android Sarah is a mirror image - and so is the android Harry, the Doctor says, with his medals on the wrong side, though we aren't given any indication of this when we meet him for the first time. (He isn't even wearing medals on screen). It's her jacket that gives her away, not her scarf.

As the Doctor runs from the dogs, he thinks grimly that anyone who thinks foxes enjoy being hunted should try being chased by dogs themselves. He uses the old hollow reed trick to hide underwater in the lake. Luckily, his Time Lord constitution makes him resistant to colds.

Styggron's anti-android pistol sprays a solvent mist rather than emitting flashes. The Doctor is extremely rude to him:

The Kraal began dragging the Doctor towards the village green. 'Come. There is no time for pleasantries.'
'How about unpleasantries, pig face?’ said the Doctor rudely.'

(He's rude about him again in his absence when they're captured by the androids in the access tunnel.)

The Doctor is tied to the war memorial with plastic rope, not plastic ivy. There's no business with the knife or the sonic screwdriver - Sarah just manages to undo the rope.

The Brigadier was at the Space Research Centre (along with Harry and Benton) as a temporary assignment.

Once Sarah and the Doctor are on board the rocket, the climax of the story is very much the same, except that it's easier to tell who's an android and who isn't. (Or should that be 'Who's an android and Who isn't'?) Benton's taking his sister to the village dance, not the Palais (did the UNIT future have dance halls as well as music halls?)

However, once Styggron's dead the story ends almost immediately, with no more than an assurance that Chedaki waited in vain for the invasion signal. Not so keen on this change I have to say, I much prefer to see the Doctor and companion 'on their way to their next adventure'.