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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 264: Spearhead From Space, Episode Four

Dear diary,

For the longest time, I couldn't tell the difference between the Great Intelligence and the Nestene Consciousness. I always thought that it came down to a mixture of having not seen the Yeti stories and not paying attention to this one, but actually… they're the same thing, aren't they? When the Doctor is musing about what kind of alien they're dealing with, Liz offers up several suggestions before the Doctor confirms that it's 'more like an intelligence'. He then goes on to comment that the creature probably doesn't have physical form, but it can create 'shells' for itself to inhabit. It's even transported in a set of alien spheres! With tensions between the Doctor Who production office and the writers of the Yeti stories at breaking point last season, I'm surprised that tempers didn't flare at this point. Heck, I'm even a little surprised that they allowed the Brigadier to turn up as a regular character (maybe that's why the Doctor name checks the Quarks first at his trial - it was all part of the negotiations…)

This episode is home to another one of those really famous scenes from Doctor Who history. The Autons smashing their way out of the shop windows on Ealing Broadway is perhaps the best remembered of all the iconic scenes. I have to confess that I don't think I've ever actually seen it before, so can only assume that on my first viewing of the story, when that strange mixture of co-codemol and milk was making me feel so unwell, that I'd given up by this point and gone for a lie down. It's actually quite an under-stated affair, and you never actually see the glass in the windows smash. Twice we know that the Autons have burst out from the windows, but twice we cut away to a reaction shot to avoid the expense of replacing the glass.

That doesn't take away from it, though. Partly because I know how iconic this scene is supposed to be, it's effective the second we switch to the panning shot of the street. Watching the plastic creatures suddenly jerk into life - and not all in perfect sequence - is suitably creepy, and those blank faces really do help to sell the horror. I also found myself enjoying the shot of the facsimiles at Madame Tussaud's coming to life and filing out of the room. One of the downsides to the quality of image in the blu-ray master for the story is that you can see every hint of movement from these supporting artists throughout the episode, so it's clear from the outset where this is going. That doesn't stop it from working very well, so I can't really complain.

We also finally get the epic UNIT battle at the International Electromatics compound that I was hoping to see! There's several similarities between the onslaught of the Autons and that of the Cybermen last season, and there's things I love about both invasions. The effects of the smoke explosions here is particularly effective, both when it's coming from a recently shot soldier (or passer-by for that matter!) and when it's being used to blow up the surroundings. Tinting the smoke a fairly lurid orange seems to be taking full advantage of the new colour cameras, too!

And then we've got Jon Pertwee, in the closing moments finally recovered fully from his regeneration and ready to kick into action. I love that he draws attention to the fact that he'll be needing a whole new wardrobe, and that he even specifically asks the Brigadier to take him shopping for a vintage car. These are things that I've spent years simply taking for granted as part of the Third Doctor's tenure, so I'm glad to see them being given a proper introduction.

Overall, I've ben really surprised by Spearhead From Space. I'm so pleased, considering my not entirely happy past with the story. As you well know, I've not been hugely looking forward to reaching the Third Doctor's era in this marathon, but they've started with a real belter to get us going. I know that they can't all be like this, and I'm really going to miss the HD sequences that I've been treated to over the last four days, but it's set me off on the right foot for the next few months.

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 263: Spearhead From Space, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I've never particularly rated the look of the Autons in this story. They've always struck me as being just that little bit rubbish. Actually, though, they're scary! The first time we see one properly, in Episode Two, I genuinely found myself a little uncomfortable. I think it's partly down to the fact that the face isn't quite even - one eye sits lower than the other - it gives the creature something of a rough, unfinished look.

Scary enough when thrashing around in the woods, it's even more unnerving when one starts to move from a line up of them against the wall in the plastics factory. Suddenly, I can completely understand why people have always found them so effective. The way it moves when chasing after Mrs Seely, slow and lumbering, just adds to the illusion. At the factory, there's a point where one runs after Ransome, and it just looks a bit clumsy - they're much better when they don't need to hurry after you, because they'll catch you in the end.

The one thing that doesn't really work for me is the idea that they can use their guns to totally disintegrate Ransome in the UNIT tent. It's partly down to the story's setting - everything is very much embedded in the real world, even when you start to add in spheres falling from the skies and moving plastic dummies. The fact that it's all shot on film simply makes it look like any of the other action serials on TV at around this time, which only helps to enhance the idea that we're dealing with a real situation. So when the perfectly normal guns embedded in the plastic (another great idea, and one which is executed very effectively) turn out to be capable of such a complete disposal of their victim… it's the one thing that pushes my belief just that bit too far.

The Doctor is finally given a bit more to do today, and the time is spent brilliantly. I mused yesterday that I was finding myself surprisingly drawn to Pertwee's performance, and I'm pleased to say that it's continuing here. You really cheer for Liz when she takes it upon herself to steal the TARDIS key to let the Doctor into his ship, but then you do a full 180 degree turn and side with the Brigadier when it turns out that the Doctor has tricked her, and uses this as a chance to escape.

It's almost as though we're seeing a glimpse of the very early, selfish Doctor from the start of the programme when he decides that he simply cannot bear the thought of being trapped on Earth in one time period. The fact that he's willing to leave the Brigadier (a character he was so pleased to meet up with again during the vents of The Invasion) right when he's needed the most says an awful lot, but it only helps to make the character stinger.

While I'm on the subject - just how great is the sound effect of the TARDIS failing to take off? In some ways, it feels like they've simply thrown everything at it, but it really works. It's a shame we've not heard anything similar ever again when the TARDIS breaks down. We get plenty of new information about the ship here, too, which is perhaps ironic given that we're about to enter a phase where we'll not be using it all that much! It's the first mention of the ship being 'Dimensionally Transcendental' and talk of the 'Dematerialisation Code'. The Doctor also confirms that he's the only one who can open the lock, though this picks up on a suggestion made by Susan right back in The Sensorites.

I thought that the switchover to colour, and the introduction of a new team of regulars and a new format for the show was going to be a massive culture shock, and that I'd struggle to adapt to the new way. As it is, everything feels perfectly in keeping with what's gone before, while still managing to feel completely fresh and new. I've always thought of the UNIT era coming from nowhere and changing the show massively, but watching through in this 'one episode a day' format, you can see the ancestors of Spearhead From Space littered throughout the last few years of the programme. As much as I loved Troughton, and as much as I was dreading this point of the experiment, I'm really finding it to be just the right breath of fresh air…

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 262: Spearhead From Space, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There is a downside to watching this story in such lovely high definition - there's a few points throughout this episode where I've found myself more fascinated by the level of detail in the picture than actually watching the story itself. The best example comes following the Doctor's shower scene, when he heads into the cloakroom to choose a new outfit and you can see every droplet of water on his shoulders. It seems like such a silly thing to notice, but I'm fascinated by the fact that you can. There's something about the idea that this story was filmed over forty years ago, but can look this good after a bit of restoration work that really appeals to me.

(It's not just Spearhead From Space that I've found this with. Although I bought an external blu-ray drive for the specific purpose of watching this story, I also went out the day it arrived and picked up my two favourite films in this format, too. Frankenstein was filmed in 1931, and The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, and yet they're stunningly crisp, too. It was a similar situation - drops of water on the skin - that caught my attention there, too. I can't believe I've gone this long without such crisp quality!)

I do get to see one of my recent wishes (partially) fulfilled today, though. Back in The Invasion, I commented that I'd love to see those fight scenes between UNIT and the Cybermen in High Definition, and today we make a return to the same location, used as the outside of the plastics factory when Ransome breaks in to his old workshop. It's not quite the same as seeing that battle in this quality, but it does give me an idea of what the location really looks like, and it's more colourful than I'd imagined! I'm sure the dates don't match up for it to work, but in my head now, the Auto Plastics company moved in once International Electromatics were forcibly ejected from the premises.

Yesterday, I made a note about the similarities between this story and the launch of the new series in 2005, drawing parallels with both Rose and The Christmas Invasion. I thought at the time that it was a strange decision to keep the newly regenerated Tenth Doctor mostly out of the action for a long time, but it's almost identical to what we've got here. Yesterday, the Doctor managed a few garbled sentences, and a brief conversation with the Brigadier, before making an escape and being shot by a soldier. Today, we see him unconscious for a bit, but he doesn't really turn up in the episode until just over twelve minutes in.

What's notable is that you don't feel his absence at all. Maybe it's because he's still a new Doctor, so I'm in the process of getting used to him, or maybe it's because we've got the familiar Brigadier to tide us over, but it's only when the Doctor starts sneaking around the hospital corridors that I realised how long we'd just gone without him. We also get some nice connections to other big starts in the show, if not complete reboots - the Doctor here steals his clots from the changing room in a hospital, and he'll go on to do the same thing to pick outfits for both his Eighth and Eleventh incarnations. Maybe it's something about the food they serve in hospitals, but they seem to turn the Doctor into a bit of a kleptomaniac.

I'm pleased to find that I'm warming to Pertwee's Doctor already, though. Having never been all that keen on him, I think I've been expecting the absolute worst, so anything more than that is going to keep me happy. I absolutely love the way that he greets the guard at the UNIT gate (and do my eyes deceive me, or is that guard actually stand-in producer Derrick Sherwin?), by simply talking him into submission. There's shades of both Hartnell and Troughton in this performance, while also keeping it fresh and new. I can't imagine either of the first two Doctors stealing a car and driving it off to the UNIT HQ, but it feels perfectly in keeping for the Third to be doing so. Maybe it's because I know he'll go on to have his own vintage roadster?

He doesn't get to spend much time with Liz in this episode (another thing that's striking me as odd - we're halfway into his first story and he's only just been introduced to his new companion), but the brief scene they do share is lovely. I'm glad that she laughs at his Delphon joke, and it really breaks the ice nicely between the pair. I have to admit that I've never really been a fan of Liz. Don't know if it's simply because she's a part of this era, but I've simply never taken to her. Actually, though, Caroline John is giving a fantastic performance, and I'm finding myself warming to her more and more. Here's hoping this marathon will help me revise my opinion of her!

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 261: Spearhead From Space, Episode One

Dear diary,

Spearhead From Space makes me sick. You know how sometimes you can associate certain episodes of Doctor Who with certain memories? I've got a friend who assumes he must have cut his knee at some point while The Stones of Blood was being shown, because he always associates the Ogri with the smell of disinfectant, for example. Well for me, Spearhead From Space is the Doctor Who story that brings back the strongest of feelings.

The very first time I ever saw this story, I'd just had an operation. Nothing major, but it required me to be dosed up on pretty strong painkillers for a week or two afterwards. I can recall sitting in the hospital just after the operation, and asking mum to pick me up a copy of this story on DVD when she was in the city. At that point, I was still picking and choosing which Who stories to buy, rather than being all caught up and just buying them as they hit the shelves. A few days later I was sat home alone and decided that the time had come to watch the Third Doctor's very first story.

I cued the DVD up in the player, made lunch, and prepared my paracetamol. Thing is, I was pretty stupid when it came to anything medical (I'm not a fan of medication. Even now, I don't have a doctor), so I didn't realise that you weren't supposed to mix co-codemol with milk. For some reason, at the time, I was drinking a lot of milk. Anyway, tablets crushed and mixed into the milk (they were huge round 'discs', so there was no way I'd swallow them normally!), I settled down to watch the story.

And I was sick as a pig for the entire time. Spearhead, being the only story of Doctor Who's 'original' run to be shot entirely on film has a very distinctive look to it. Ever since that day, just the sight of footage from this story makes me feel a little queazy. The second DVD version was a little better because things had been sharpened up, but still there was something about it all that made my stomach twist. Even typing about it is having the same effect!

Then they announced that Spearhead From Space was to be remastered and released on Blu Ray in full HD. To be honest, I had absolutely zero interest in it. A story that made me sick on a format that I didn't own. When things came to the HD revolution, I switched over to iTunes downloads. Often cheaper, pretty immediate when I wanted to pick them up, and the Mac couldn't read blu ray discs anyway. It was the 'Coming Soon…' article about the release in Doctor Who Magazine that swayed me. It spoke of giving the release a very individual look, and went into a bit of detail on the way that they had changed the grading of the piece to look 'more like a one-off filmed drama' with more of a darkened tone. Could it be that this new format might rid me of the 'curse' of Spearhead?

I picked up a cheap external blu-ray drive, bought the blu-ray and it's been sat on the shelf waiting for me top reach this point for about a month. I'm pleased to say that having sat through the first twenty-five minutes, I'm still feeling fine. Hooray! It's meant that a story I've never been able to particularly enjoy suddenly has a shot at being fairly evaluated.

I'll talk more about the quality of the HD remaster in a later episode (but suffice to say, 'oh my God. Stunning'), because today I want to focus on the story itself. It's rather good, isn't it? I've never noticed just how much the 2005 relaunch borrows from this one. The opening shot, in which we pan from a starry sky into the Earth is fab, and I have to say that I think I prefer this one! It just looks more impressive than the CGI version that kick-starts Rose. There's the Autons, of course, but they haven't really arrived on the scene yet. The Doctor spends most of the episode tucked up in bed having promptly collapsed upon leaving the TARDIS, just as David Tennant does in The Christmas Invasion. We've even got a familiar face in the form of Lethbridge-Stewart on hand to help the change-over.

It's fair enough that you'd use this story as a template when reintroducing the series after a lengthy hiatus. At the time, Spearhead followed the longest gap in broadcast that Doctor Who had ever experienced. It returned in the first week of the 1970s with a brand new Doctor, a brand new assistant, and in colour! Forget replacing the original Doctor with Patrick Troughton - there you've got Ben, Polly, and the Daleks to tide you over. Forget about Tom Baker leaving the role after a record run. Even forget the sweet (effete!) Fifth Doctor giving way to one who strangles his companion! This is the biggest shake up that the programme experiences in the 'classic era.

I've made no secret of the fact that I've never been all that fond of Jon Pertwee's incarnation of the Doctor, but he's actually off to a pretty good start here. Despite spending much of the episode drifting in and out of consciousness, the times he spends awake are spot on, and I love the way he draws out his simple line: 'shoooeeeesssss…'. His conversation with the Brigadier, in which he reacts to his new appearance for the very first time is also great fun. When I think of the Doctor's checking out their new appearances, I often go right to either of the Bakers or Davison looking into the mirror, but this one is just as brilliant, and quite clearly the template for all those to follow.

We're off to a good start, and I'm hoping that this new release will help me to appreciate the story all the more. I'd desperately love to start this new era on a real high…

2|Entertain have sent DWO the cover and details for the 9th May Doctor Who DVD Box-set release of Mannequin Mania.

Spearhead from Space

The Doctor is exiled to Earth in the late 20th Century by his own people - the Time Lords. The newly regenerated Doctor finds himself in Oxley Woods alongside a shower of mysterious meteorites.

Investigating these unusual occurrences is the newly-formed United Nations Intelligence Taskfoce led by Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT are soon called into action when people and meteorites start going missing but puzzling of all is the attempted kidnapping of a strange hospital patient - a man with two hearts, who insists that he knows the Brigadier... The new Doctor soon joins forces with his old friends, UNIT and the recently recruited Dr Liz Shaw, but time is running out.

Special Features:

•  Two Commentaries – One with actors Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney and another with producer Derrick Sherwin and script editor Terrance Dicks.

•  Down to Earth – Cast and crew look back at the making of this story and how a strike at the BBC studios inadvertently created the only classic series story to be made entirely on film. With actor Jon Pertwee, producers Derrick Sherwin and Barry Letts, script editor Terrance Dicks, costume designer Christine Rawlins and assistant script editor (and inadvertent Auton actor) Robin Squire. Narrated by Carl Kennedy.

•  Regenerations - From Black and White to Colour – ‘Spearhead from Space’ marked not only the arrival of a new Doctor but also the transition from black and white to colour. This documentary looks at the challenges faced by programme makers during this period. With actors Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, producer Derrick Sherwin, script editor Terrance Dicks, directors Timothy Combe, Christopher Barry and Michael Ferguson, designer Roger Cheveley and graphic designer Bernard Lodge.

•  UNIT Recruitment Film (dur. 4’ 48”) – a spoof army recruitment film put together for BBC transmission during Doctor Who’s 30th anniversary celebrations in 1993.

•  Trailers – two trailers for the 1999 BBC2 transmission of the story and for ‘Doctor Who Night’from the same year.•  Photo Gallery - production, design and publicity photos from the story.

•  Coming Soon - a trailer for a forthcoming DVD release.

•  Radio Times Listings in Adobe PDF format.

Terror of the Autons

Earth is in terrible danger. The Master has arrived with an evil scheme to destroy humanity and silence the Doctor forever by awakening the awesome power of the Nestene - a ruthlessly aggressive alien life form. With their control over all types of plastic, they form into faceless automatons, a willing army of destruction easily controlled by the evil Time Lord himself.

Aided by the Brigadier and his enthusiastic new assistant, Jo Grant, only the Doctor can combat their evil power, but this is easier said than done when every plastic doll, phone flex, or chair can be turned against him. First, however, he must defeat the Master.

Special Features:

•  Commentary - With actors Katy Manning and Nicolas Courtney, producer Barry Letts.

•  Life on Earth – In this documentary, cast and crew look back at the making of the story and the differences in the way Doctor Who was made in the seventies compared to now. With actors Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and Richard Franklin, producer Barry Letts, script editor Terrance Dicks and new series producer Phil Collinson.

•  The Doctor’s Moriarty– with the introduction of the Master, the Doctor now had his very own Moriarty, who would be the dark figure behind every story in season eight, and many more beyond that. This featurette discusses the enduring appeal of the character. With actor Katy Manning, producer Barry Letts, script editors Terrance Dicks and Christopher H Bidmead and writers Robert Shearman and Joe Lidster.

•  Plastic Fantastic – how did the writers of Doctor Who and other programmes take something as everyday as plastic and turn it against us? With writers Francesca Gavin, Robert Shearman and new series designer Matthew Savage.

•  Photo Gallery - production, design and publicity photos from the story.

•  Coming Soon - a trailer for a forthcoming DVD release.

•  Radio Times Listings and promotional material for Sugar Smacks and Nestle products in Adobe PDF format.

+  Mannequin Mania is released on 9th May 2011, priced £30.63.

+  Compare Prices for this product on CompareTheDalek.com.

[Source: 2|Entertain]