Planet of Giants

Emergency sirens go off in the TARDIS as it is attempting to materialize; part of the console overheats and then the doors open before the ship can make proper planetfall. The crew emerge from the ship apparently unharmed but then make the startling discovery that they have been reduced in size to about an inch in height and are among the flagstones of a walkway to a house. While dodging massive insects and a prowling cat, the Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Susan are unaware that in the house itself is a ruthless businessman intent on selling a lethal pesticide which could not only kill them but eventually everything in the world.

A very ambitious story from a production point of view, requiring some of the sets to be made into massive affairs as to keep the travellers looking tiny. This includes not only the garden pathway but some very detailed giant insects such as a giant ant and a huge animatronic house fly. The design department made a great effort to keep things in proportion and succeeded, right down to the plug chain that the cast have to climb to get in and out of a sink. The only real clunker with the effects is Ian coming face to HUGE face with a dead man in the garden. And the close up of the cat, too, lacks something.

As storytelling goes there are two things going on here; Mr Forrester is trying to get his new pesticide DN6 on the market but his moves are being thwarted by Mr Farrow of the ministry, and the TARDIS crew are trying to survive. Forrester is very much the slimy businessman we all see on TV shows; his ethics are right in the dumper and all he cares about is money. Who cares if DN6 is lethal to all life so long as he gets rich? Down on the ground, though, the Doctor and company are not only at risk from the goings on above them with giant people milling about, but also from the dangers of the pesticide itself. This is where the story is very much Barbara's; exposed to the poison she tries to keep the truth from the rest of the crew out of what - shame for being poisoned in the first place? Or is she just intent on keeping them focussed on escaping without worrying about her? Her sly attempts to get the Doctor and Ian to see if there's a cure for the poison only meet with frustration when they tell her it's not important to them - and why would it be if they don't know that she is quietly dying from it? And Susan loses her shit again. I had forgotten about that while listening to the audios - Big Finish thoughtfully keep the screaming to a minimum when it's audio only.

Thematically this is really the first time Doctor Who goes green, or even slightly political. The story is set in modern times (which must annoy Ian and Barbara to no end as here they may be home and they're too small to actually return to normal lives) and the villain may be Forrester, but his evil doomsday weapon is a chemical substance. We're obviously talking about DDT here in a roundabout way without actually naming it. And as we are in a modern setting there is no historical element to make the tale slightly educational, but science steps in and fills that gap neatly with the reality of the nature of chemical pesticides and the damage they do on ecosystems, as well as some minor league stuff like how acoustics work when shouting in a sink.

Planet of Giants was intended to be a four part story but due to production problems was cut down to a three part tale. There would not be another three part story until 1987. The DVD release of the story contains not only the broadcast version of the story but a bonus re-cut of episode three with the missing scenes that would extend it into a fourth episode. Where the visuals are concerned the episode is cut with recycled closeups and some CGI shots with voice overs provided by Carole Ann Ford and William Russell as the only surviving members of the original cast with voice doubles picking up the other roles. John Guilor does such an excellent job doing a Hartnell voice one might really think it's actually him. Why Big Finish have not snapped him up for their audios I have no idea; William Russell does a good job there but this guy... wow. The voices do not always match with the way the characters' mouths are moving but it was intended as a representation of what might have been, not a full on recreation.

None of this extra material, unfortunately, was available or considered useful when Terrance Dicks put the novelized version of the story together years ago, so it was pretty much a line by line translation of what was seen on screen without much embellishment. This would have been a great way to present the story which might have been, but it was not to be. Terrance Dicks is one of the most prolific authors out there when it comes to the Target range of novels and he has done great things for the series with his own scripts and his work as script editor, but his novels rarely took the televised episodes anywhere beyond what was seen on tv. Oh if only.

NEXT EPISODE: THE TIME TRAVELLERS