aWill 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!
