Spearhead from Space

A swarm of meteorites slams down into the English countryside at the same time as the TARDIS makes its landing. The regenerated Doctor staggers out of the ship and collapses and is taken to hospital. As UNIT is already on the scene investigating the meteors, the Brigadier believes help is at hand when he hears of the police box found in the woods, but he does not recognize the Doctor after his regeneration. While the Doctor is recovering, an alien presence called the Nestenes is at work, insinuating itself into killer plastic dummies called Autons. The Nestenes have their sights set on Earth as a target for conquest, but by the time the Doctor and UNIT can act it may be too late.

Spearhead from Space is a marked departure for the series; when it hit the screens in January 1970 everything was new - opening sequence, colour picture, and a new Doctor all in one go. And to go with the new Doctor, of course, a new companion, physicist Liz Shaw who was resentfully drafted into UNIT to act as scientific adviser just before the Doctor's return. The episode also had the distinction of having been recorded entirely on film as an outside broadcast production, which makes it the only classic serial able to be transcribed onto blu-ray.

So a new Doctor... taller. A little more elegant than Troughton's Doctor was but Jon Pertwee retains a certainly playfulness that his predecessor honed to a fine point. He strikes an immediate rapport with Liz, speaking to her in scientific terms that she can relate to, even if a lot of the science she knows is child's play to him. And with the Brigadier there is a definite bond forged from their previous encounters with the Yeti and Cybermen (neither are referenced this time) although the Doctor isn't exactly keen on military methods of dealing with problems. Still, they do need each other; the Doctor has had a great chunk of his memory blocked and the TARDIS is grounded on Earth by the Time Lords as his sentence of exile begins, although he does not dwell on it too much; yes he is stranded and yes it is going to be frustrating. And the Brigadier needs someone on hand who can advise on the unknown, even if the Doctor is going to try his patience a great deal.

The first time I came across this story was in print, a Target novelization with illustrations of all things, and I read it cover to cover one summer day at my grandmother's house by the lake. At the time I was still coming to the realization that there we big holes in the available material (although I had no idea exactly how big those holes were as far as missing episodes went) but I had seen the third Doctor on TV already so to get a glimpse of his debut story was a treat. I didn't know who Liz was though as she is only a single season companion and was not featured in the episodes I had seen on TV.  I had, however, read the novelization of The War Games and realized that this was indeed the next episode I needed to experience, but actually seeing the episode was something that had to wait until autumn of 1985 on a special WNED17 broadcast of a pretty bad print. I didn't care, though; this was new Doctor Who and I lapped it up eagerly. The same poor quality print was a VHS release which of course I bought and managed to enjoy, followed by a DVD release and then this wonderful blu-ray. To see Spearhead presented in such sharp detail is just like seeing it for the first time; the muddy film prints I had previously seen lost so much detail - I hadn't noticed how waxy the humanoid Autons' faces like Channing, Scobie and especially the creepy receptionist at the plastics factory were made up to be. The iconic moment in the serial, though, with the Autons coming to life in shop windows one morning and going on a killing rampage is perfect in such sharpness; I thought the relatively gloomier film and VHS release would have made that a bit more horrific but no.

The Auton massacre of the unsuspecting general public deserves extra special mention - this took the series into a new place with the acknowledgement that the children who started watching Doctor Who at the beginning were now 6 years older and could handle more. The Pertwee era is known for its monsters and an increase in on screen action and violence, with Pertwee himself being a far more physical Doctor than Hartnell or Troughton, and it starts here with the aforementioned shop dummy attack, and carries through with brazen gun battles between the Autons and the UNIT troops, with the UNIT bodycount rising faster than the Autons'. With the Doctor now pinned to Earth the monsters and threats would all be coming to him, making the world seem a scarier place.

So now we move ahead with the new TARDIS team... even if they do not have the TARDIS to use.

NEXT EPISODE: DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS