FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Spearhead From Space, The Androids of Tara, Full Circle and Logopolis

This second volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers the Third and Fourth Doctors. (See here for more on this project.)

Spearhead From Space (120 Words)

(Main article.)

Spearhead From Space is the definition of an archetypal Doctor Who story, and it defines the Tom Pertwee era almost as much as Inferno and Planet of the Spiders simply through a combination of luck, skill and what really feels like hard work. The story’s greatest blessing comes directly from the initial strike which prevented them from using video, and while it does start the Colour Era off very grainily, it also makes sure that the beginning of Pertwee’s time on the program looks and feels epic. Adding to that is the absolute wunderkind that is Robert Holmes, whose script mixes humour, scares and interesting concepts to provide not only a great opener, but also a monster that would be remembered by children around the country for the rest of their lives. 

The Androids of Tara

(Main article.)

So often these days, The Doctor is off saving the Universe time and time again. I remember the good old days. When The Doctor wasn’t saving a galaxy, or even a planet, but a small feudal kingdom on a planet of humanlike aliens far away from everything we know. The Androids of Tara, a barefaced if loving adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda, takes Doctor Who the furthest it has ever been into the realm of fantasy, facing us with Princes, Princesses, Counts and Peasants, as well as the odd robot dog. What I love most about Androids is simply that the story not only adapts the fantasy setting to a more Doctor Who world, but that the transition is completely seamless. Only Doctor Who could take entire scenes from another work word for word and mess around with it enough for it to feel like a bona-fide Who classic.

     The story’s most memorable feature is by far the erstwhile Count Grendel, a villain whose villainy extends to such epic proportion that by the end he’s given up all pretence and is simply telling the officials around him to abide by his evil plans for the sake of common decency. His goatee, his incredibly potent voice – Grendel is, after maybe Count Scarlioni, one of the Classic Series’ most fun standalone villains simply for how much he gets away with. My favourites of his scenes are the scene in which he casually tells the Archimandrite that he needs a Wedding, a Funeral and another Wedding in quick succession, and his final words – “Next time, I will not be so lenient!”

     The story also allows us some fun with doppelgangers, allowing Mary Tamm a whopping four credits as Romana, Princess Strella and the android duplicates of both. Luckily, the story avoids playing this device for comedy, and thus it’s an actual shock when The Doctor appears to strike Romana down at the end of part Two. On that. This story’s cliffhangers are great too. First our heroes randomly start to fall unconscious, then The Doctor bludgeons Romana in the back of the head, and then Grendel manages to steal Romana from under The Doctor’s nose. It all ties together to produce a story that, while derivative in the extreme, is fun from start to finish in all of the good ways. 

Full Circle

(Main article.)

My first encounter with this story came due to the wondrous popularity of my name, which informed me as a child that this was the story that apparently I had written. That had always made me excited to see it, even when I learnt about (and experienced) Adric’s bad turns. For me, this was a sign that surely this JNT guy was great – hey, he allowed fans to write for the series. I think I secretly hoped that one day I’d be able to write for the revived series, and while that hasn’t quite come true I do spend a lot of my free time writing articles, like this, about my favourite TV show.

     What, then, of the story? What Full Circle does exceedingly well is to take a sci-fi idea and make it work in lots of different directions. The story’s main boasting point (and its biggest spoiler, don’t say I didn’t warn you) is the reveal near the end, where it’s discovered that the suspiciously-human-looking Alzarians are not the descendants of settlers from Terradon, but instead the hyper-evolved descendants of the planets’ native Marshmen, who had rushed to fill in the void when the crew of the Terradonian ship had died. There are subtle hints as to this throughout the story, presenting the idea of hyper-evolution and, unlike a lot of its bedfellows in Season 18, executing it properly.

     The story’s biggest contribution to the series is probably Adric, named after influential particle-physicist Paul Dirac (who predicted the existence of Antimatter) and possibly one of the least-liked companions in the show’s history. Of course most people will tell you that he’s not as bad as the stereotype says, and I’m one of those people. Despite how whiney and annoying he can be sometimes, at heart Adric is just a perfect representation of a troubled teenage boy trying to fit in. He’s flawed, sure, but those flaws fluctuated with his writers and in his initial story he’s actually one of the highlights.

     Narratively, Full Circle presents a strange turn for Classic Who, at least in this stage of its life. Two seasons prior had seen a big arc in the form of The Key To Time, but this was the first time that a narrative arc (or, more commonly for the JNT Era, a trilogy) had been dropped in the middle of a season. I’m strange, really, in that I think that Full Circle is perhaps the most entertaining story of the three in the E-Space Trilogy. It has cool monsters, an interesting and well-executed sci-fi idea, and proof of sorts that fans can actually write good Doctor Who. Which is always a nice thing to hear.

Logopolis
(Main article.)

It was the end of an era that had lasted seven years. The Tom Baker years are often heralded as the show’s Golden Age, featuring classics like Genesis of the Daleks, The Pyramids of Mars, The Hand of Fear and The City of Death. It’s strange then, that Baker’s final story in the role doesn’t hearken back to those halcyon days but instead chooses to look forward to the style that would be prevalent in the rest of the JNT era.
     The first outing of the Ainley Master shows off both sides of his character – the cackling, scheming madman and the clueless panto villain. One gets the feeling that this Master has bitten off more than he can chew, but he always manages to adapt his schemes to cause the most pain and suffering as is possible. In fact, going by death count, this accidental scheme is the Master’s most profitable, managing to destroy one quarter of the entire Universe. It’s amazing how his first serial manages to be so representative of his tenure – bumbling and incompetent most of the time, but dangerous when he manages to succeed.

     Logopolis is rather unique, in a way. There’s no setup, no normal, “The Doctor lands on planet X, meets villain Y, defeats villain Y and pops on his way.” No, the story (for the most part) feels a lot more fluid and refreshing. And while in some parts this manifests as Tegan trying to blow up a spare tyre, elsewhere it provides insights into The Doctor and Adric’s characterisations. This structure provides the story with that unique feeling that Tom’s swan-song needs, as well as facilitating the wonderful sense of forboding that the character of The Watcher creates.
     Important to note is that Logopolis not only ends the Tom Baker era, but also the wonderful Season 18. I like the storyline running through the season, but I tend to get bogged down when it comes to the individual story. Bidmead’s vast supply of technobabble doesn’t make this story any different, but what it does do is tie together the season’s themes of entropy and loss together into a single thesis.
     And so the era of Tom Baker is over. But don’t worry. For the moment has been prepared for, especially by JNT. At the end of this story, the TARDIS is stuffed with three companions, two of which have arrived somewhat traditionally and one which doesn’t really need to be here. Together, they advance into Doctor Who’s uncertain future – the true beginning of Eighties Who. It may be the end of one era. But there’s another still to come.

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Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season Seven

The Brigadier, Three and Liz form a fascinating trio.
From doctorwhotv

Written 24/8/13.

In the past I've often separated my enjoyment of seasons into stories that I enjoy and stories that I, in some badly guided objective sense, think are actually good. Season Seven falls into that latter category, and against a big great heaping set of odds that in later years would have us all ringing the doom bells and foreseeing a complete and utter disaster. The line of Doctor Who "firsts" reads like the Prince of Bavaria's Christmas list - first serial in colour, first to be radically shortened, first to feature the Third Doctor, first to take place entirely on Earth. There are probably some more too, but I'll get to that. Season Seven was produced at a time when the show had decided to take budgetary concerns very seriously, but despite the constriction that being stuck on Earth should give the season, it instead gives it a platform upon which it bases its four exemplary stories.
     Not having to produce alien environments instead opened the series up to human settings, creating a definite style in which we spend the vast majority of our time in scientific research institutes, each being threatened by aliens/precursors and all of whom treat Jon Pertwee's burgeoning Third Doctor with a healthy degree of skepticism. Helping this along is the appearance of UNIT, the signature of the Pertwee Era, headed by Nicolas Courtney's Brigadier and assisting in the hiring of a new companion in the form of Caroline John's Liz. The use of this regular cast of characters in the same locations sweeps away the idea of "The Doctor and companion(s) in the TARDIS" for at least another four years, and instead presents The Doctor as an eccentric man in a very human working environment.
      This would be difficult to work with, if not for the deceptively long serials that occupy this season. Despite actually being the shortest season since the show's inception at that point in time (25 weekly episodes forming four distinct serials), the serials within are all still very long by modern standards, with all but the first lasting a blistering 2 hours and 55 minutes if viewed at once. The downside and the upside is that there's a lot of room for the serials to develop character, atmosphere, themes etc. with the show's relatively slow pace. On the downside, it means that the ideas and events are split up to the point where by the end a lot of the detail is lost on a modern viewer. (I hate to generalise, but my only sample is myself.) On the upside, this development does allow the season to create four very solid sci-fi ideas in a way which is both narratively bold and fundamentally entertaining.

Pertwee's Doctor is a dashing humanitarian hero.
From grufainia

      And those are my only criticisms. It's a personal thing that I think I've talked about before - I'm just a heathen when it comes to old TV, no matter how much Classic Who I've watched. I'm used to the pace of the 80s, where The Happiness Patrol manages to combine brash political statements with absurdist fun and have it sorted within the time it takes to commute to work. It's clear to me that Season Seven is immensely well-constructed, with the level of control that's apparent in the writing making it perhaps feel more professional and slick than it ever made out to be. Season Seven wants to be taken seriously, it wants to do this right and it doesn't have that many resources to do it with. But, a few dodgey Dinosaur props notwithstanding, this season has stood the test of time and remains one of the best, if not the best season of the show from an objective viewpoint. And that's no small accolade.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Ambassadors of Death

An iconic cliffhanger. From Wikimedia

Doctor Who - Season 7, Story Three - The Ambassadors of Death
Written 1/9/13

Doctor Who is known to borrow entire plots and premises from other works, then executing them in such a way that despite the remnant elements of the original, it stands out firmly as its own piece of work. This is true in the later years of the Classic Series and it is clear in the earlier ones, even though to modern viewers the premise of this story may be unique in and of itself. Despite this, The Ambassadors of Death is similar in quality to its Season Seven bedfellows, mixing well-executed high-concept science fiction with Doctor Who's trademark messages, reflecting not only Humanity's avarice but also its capacity for compassion when all the facts are available.
     A space probe has launched off from Mars after having lost radio contact for some time. When the recovery capsule returns, a mysterious group of people go out of their way to hide the occupants, who are alien beings hidden in the astronauts' spacesuits and who are forced to kill and steal for their human masters. The Doctor, immediately suspicious, tries to help find them, fighting along the way the continued efforts of those who have kidnapped the aliens. Eventually he takes the recovery capsule up to the ship, and discovers that the three aliens are the races' ambassadors, and that they are willing to trade the original astronauts for their people. The Doctor gets back to Earth in time to help the Ambassadors free themselves and to save the astronauts and Earth.
     The serial takes its premise from The Quatermass Experiment, a popular British science-fiction serial from 1956 in which astronauts return from a mission only to have been possessed by alien spores. The antagonist of the story (spoiler alert, even if this story is from 1970), General Carrington, seems to be a representative of that story's themes, in which the aliens are hostile for the sole reason that they are different and the protagonist is forced to destroy them before they invade earth. Ambassadors displays this as a sort of mania, instead showing us that in this case, the aliens are perfectly peaceful and that it is man's manipulation of them that has led them to their actions. It's a statement against prejudice, a statement about what good mankind can do to each other.

The aliens' culture is not important here - it is their sheer
alienness which drives the story's themes. From Wikia

     Unlike the season's other seven parters, which wouldn't hurt to shed and episode or two, The Ambassadors of Death earns its runtime and uses it to build us a sense of mystery and intrigue. The continual and seemingly omnipresent machinations of the organisation working against The Doctor and UNIT provide some interesting scenes, as well as a series of well-done battle scenes throughout the story that really don't pull their punches. Like The Invasion last season, there's a sense of the epic and the idea that there are going to be world-wide consequences to what happens here, which is something that the similarly epic The Silurians and Inferno never quite manage to do.
    As is custom on this blog, I've gone about this season in entirely the wrong order, but I'm glad that for now I've been able to appreciate what an astounding season this really is. The other serials in Season Seven had a style that took a while for me to get used to, but The Ambassadors of Death is by far my favourite for the sole reason that it's compelling and comprehensive from the outset, with very little padding at all. It takes a well-loved sci-fi idea and then executes it in a way which spins the message 180 degrees, turning it into a message of peaceful resolution of conflict that sums up in everything it does the messages that Doctor Who is known for, and the spirit that it pioneered so brilliantly in this fantastic season.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Having done all of the other stories in Season 7, I move onto the next season, with the rise of The Master in Terror of the Autons.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Silurians

The Doctor tries to reason with these strange reptiles.

Doctor Who - Season 7, Story Two - Doctor Who and The Silurians

Whatever you can say about JNT, there was one decision he had right on. Six and Seven part stories are too long. But I shouldn't let that cloud my judgement of today's story, The Silurians. The second colour serial, The Silurians took on a challenging set of themes concerning environmentalism and race issues by using the titular creatures as a proxy. The seven-parts are irritating for me, at least, but the story is incredibly well performed, written and directed - just as one would expect from a Season 7 story.
     Under the caves on Wenley Moor, workers are attacked, survivors reduced to a primitive state. Workers at the nearly Nuclear Plant suffer headaches. The Doctor and Liz, intent on discovering the source of these issues, discover The Silurians - ancient intelligent reptiles whose civilisation reaches back before the evolution of Man. A Silurian is forced up onto the surface, and The Doctor tries to reason with them. He speaks with the leader of the tribe, who is more than willing to co-exist with Man, but advances by UNIT into the caves incites the Silurian Lieutenant to take over and release a virus upon Humanity. It spreads out onto the Continant as an epidemic, as The Doctor races for time to try and find the antidote. He does so, but is captured by the Silurians. As he saves The Doctor, the Brigadier bombs and completely destroys the Silurians - much to the Doctor's dismay. Ultimately neither side comes out morally sound.
       In opposition to their later portrayal in Warriors of the Deep, the Silurians here have very distinctive characters and it's amazing how articulate these flimsy rubber costumes can be seen to be. Their heavy infantry, the Dinosaur, did give me Myrka flashbacks but at least its paint was dry. Notably, throughout the first two episodes the Silurians are only seen from their point of view, which is a wonderfully atmospheric move by director Timothy Combe which keeps the story's suspense throughout its first hour.

The Silurian on the surface.

     This story benefits from Season 7's stellar guest cast; notable performances include those of Peter Miles, Geoffrey Palmer and Fulton Mackay. Miles, a villain in two later stories (including the perfect Genesis of the Daleks) is the wonderfully anal and later deranged Dr. Lawrence who plays this story's Stahlmann - trying to look after his scientific institution and being beset by disease before dying painfully. Geoffrey Palmer... Geoffrey Palmer is just awesome.
     Compared to the Eighties, I will admit that the direction for this story is just on a different level. Not spending so much time in the Tardis or on alien spaceships, there's creative use of lighting, great cut-shots and an awe-inspiring sense of scale. Back in The Invasion you didn't really believe that London was being invaded by the Cybermen. Here you can understand why this disease has spread to the Continent and you do get the idea that this crisis is national rather than restricted to a field. The seventies' style is well-suited for the Third Doctor's requirement of sticking to Earth, and Season 7 is all the evidence you need to support this.
     If I have any criticisms, it's simply that the story is far too long. The plot can be condensed to four episodes, and you can see where the plot has been extended using extraneous plot lines. Inferno only really managed to avoid the problems of the seven-segment story because of the parallel universe dynamic, and even that comes out of absolutely nowhere. It's also a hell to review, because watching a seven-segment story twice is synonymous with watching the entirety of the Trial of a Timelord season!
     As an interesting note, this story is called Doctor Who and the Silurians because that was the name used on the production of the story. Usually the "Doctor Who and" would be removed, but this once the story ended up keeping its working title - to the consternation of many a fan, as the title implied that "Doctor Who" was the character's name. It doesn't really have any bearing on the quality of the story, but I thought I had to mention this unique mess.

The Doctor is forced to watch genocide - by the Brig's hands.

      At the end of the day, The Silurians is part of Season 7, a season that didn't get its extraordinary reputation for no reason. It's brilliantly directed in a true Seventies style, and its messages are portrayed incredibly well by a set of Silurians with much more fascinating characterisations than its successors. It may be far too long for its own good, but it's worth the watch

Thanks.

NEXT TIME: Two seasons later, we meet The Sea Devils and their Master.

Spearhead From Space Previous ------- Next Inferno

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Inferno (Revisited)

The parallel universe offers up interesting new characters.

See here for my previous look at this story.

Doctor Who - Season 7, Story Four - Inferno (Revisited)

While I'm a big fan of the Eighties, I do recognise that there are clear problems in the show's development team. Season Seven is completely and utterly different. The team, used to working on the Sixties era, took the new tech avaliable in the Seventies, added a new Doctor and ran with it, producing what is oft considered one of the show's finest seasons. Inferno is no exception, and regularly appears at the top of best episode polls.
      My first impressions of the serial when I first saw it back in 2010 were that the opening episode felt too slow. That is the serial's genius, however. The setting may not be exciting but these new characters are incredibly well-written and acted, meaning that our full cast of characters is already established and running by the time the story begins. Crucially, it also contrasts that which we see in the alternative Universe. For example, the jovial relationship between Greg Sutton and Petra Williams in our world becomes one of sharp difference, with Petra as a tool of the state and Greg as the unwilling underling.
      One also has to look at the story's context. In 1970, the worlds of Parallel universes and the like were in the domain of pure science fiction; Inferno took this concept into the living-rooms of a nation and applied it to a set of characters loved by the British people. And, even by today's standards, it's a fairly ggood execution of the plot template. The fact that the Doctor effectively loses for the first time is a big part of the story and makes the otherwise completely irrelevant parallel world storyline one of the story's most important aspects.

The Primords are good for what they are.

      The Primords are a difficult matter because they're a relatively low-scale sci-fi idea trying to co-exist alongside the parallel-world dynamic; the story's original plot, fighting with a more highly skilled immigrant. But despite that, the virus-esque nature of the Primords and their appeal to more savage, early-human tendencies takes the escalating circumstances of the Inferno scenario and sharpens it into something immensely powerful.
      I'll admit now that I'm not really a Pertwee fan. His Doctor always comes across to me as arrogant and snobbish without any of the compassion or charm to make up for it. Despite the violent and erratic nature of the Sixth Doctor, you always knew that he could save the day - something that, as Inferno shows, is not always the case here. However, I get the feeling that Pertwee's excursion to the other world tones his personality down somewhat - so as not to compete with entertaining turns by the rest of the regular cast in their parallel guises.
      And now I'll give you to Josh for his first impressions of the story.

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This is 1970. Ignoring the technical faults that were bound to be a regular occurrence in television on any programme at the time, this is remarkable. I'm not just saying that as a Whovian, but 'Inferno' grapples some interesting sci-fi concepts whilst able to study the human condition and hand us some pretty decent monsters. I'm new to Classic Who and so for me it takes the story a while to get going but after the interesting second part cliffhanger things continually went upwards in my estimation. Even though the Dr Who team faced budget-cuts, they do their best to produce some great-looking aliens and the constant sound of the drill fits the tone nicely, enhancing scenes instead of spoiling them. Considering the fact that Inferno is reaching it's 42nd birthday, the visuals provided for the first in-colour season finale are excellent and I like the idea of the lava opening credits.

Douglas Camfield and Barry Letts direct.

     Down to the story; we've got two different plots running parallel to each other - The Parallel Universe and The Drilling plots. It's clever how the two interweave with one another nicely and make the concept even more innovative. Inferno is the first time Doctor Who does parallel universes and the fascist British regime we're shown seems chillingly realistic. To add to this, the performances from our regulars in that side of the plot are played naturally well. Jon Pertwee is on fine form but Nicholas Courtney's 'Brigade-Leader' steals the limelight with the strongest performance. The soundtrack to the story is unique and genuinely spooky and there's plenty of juicy dialogue and action sequences to thank the writer Don Houghton and the directors; Douglas Camfield and Barry Letts, for. Inferno is one of the staple serials of Classic Who's history and now I can see why; with its superb acting and wonderful direction it delivers a chilling tale that ties up Pertwee's first season nicely. A new Classic favourite of mine.

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I'd like to thank Josh for his perspective there.

     Inferno is a great story on many levels. It takes two scientific ideas not used much on 70s TV and executes them together with the utmost style, not only showcasing the cast but providing the finale for an excellent season of Doctor Who. It's one of the best, and while it isn't my favourite, it showed me just how good Doctor Who can and should be at its heights.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: I'm half-human. On my mother's side. We revisit the TV Movie.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Spearhead from Space

Jon Pertwee makes his entrance.

In the past I've discussed something in Doctor Who that I call, "Spearhead Syndrome". This is a condition by which the protagonist of the story (in this case The Doctor) spends the majority of the episode unconscious. From what I can see, three stories have this condition in Doctor Who, and they're all post-regeneration stories. David Tennant had The Christmas Invasion, Peter Davison had Castrovalva and today we're looking at the namer of the trope, Jon Pertwee's Spearhead From Space.
     There are several things that make this story unique from a production standpoint. It was the first story to be broadcast in colour, and although not all people had a colour television, this was a huge step for the BBC. Also, all of the people working on the show changed at once - the producers, the script editors and every last member of the main cast. Furthermore, the production was affected by a strike, and so the entire 100 minute story was shot using film on location.
     The story, written by Robert Holmes, begins as plastic meteorites collide with Earth. These meteorites are being tracked by UNIT, led by The Brigadier. As the Brig interviews a woman called Liz Shaw, a body is brought in with the description of having fallen out of a police box. Hearing the news, The Brig heads over immediately with an armed guard as the doctors at the Hospital begin to discover this stranger's alien nature. The Brigadier doesn't recognise the unconscious man, but The Doctor happens to wake up and recognises him, expressing disdain at what the Time Lords have done to him. As the Brig leaves, the reporters at the hospital discover a strange, plastic looking man.

The Doctor has been exiled and regenerated.

     The Doctor expresses worry over his shoes - which contain the TARDIS key. The Doctor is kenapped by two plastic-looking wardens, led by the first strange man. The Doctor manages to escape them in which weheelchair, but The Doctor stumbles into the line of fire of the UNIT guards covering the TARDIS, sending him back to hospital with a wound.
     An engineer returns to the company that he left a few years prior, discovering slightly plastic looking stafff. His office has been rendered Out Of Bounds and his followed by the Strange Looking Plastic Man. The head of the factory is being controlled by the SLPM. Back at UNIT, Liz Shaw's experiments discover that the meteorite is manufactured. The SLPM tells the factory boss that the meteorites they haven't recovered yet will find their way to them - and that they are alive. They're seen to be controlling shop window dummies - the Autons.
     The Doctor is up and out of bed once more, and has a shower before stealing clothes. He jumps into a car (later to be christened Bessie) and drives off. UNIT recover another asteroid, but the soldiers are killed by an Auton. The Doctor makes his way to UNIT and everyone is fine and dandy - the story really begins, The man from before sneaks into the room that used to be his laboratory, and discovers a range of plastic shop window dummies - one of which moves to kill him.

An Auton.

      At this halfway point I'd just like to talk about the Autons. They're a decent enough horror idea - shop window dummies are a common enough feature of our lives that making them into aliens can scare a generation of children. I'm biased, of course - I was there when RTD did the same thing with the Autons. I actually think that Spearhead does it better, because they're actually treated like threats instead of jokes.
     SPLM (Channing) notices when the man (called John) escapes from the factory. John runs to UNIT, telling them about the Autons in basic terms. A farmer who had discovered one of the meteorites goes to UNIT as well. Liz steals the TARDIS key from the Brig for The Doctor, who tries to make his getaway. Unfortunately the TARDIS refuses to set off, setting the stage for the Third Doctor's exile on Earth. The Autons find the last meteorite at the house of the farmer, but UNIT arrive at the house, shooting the Auton and making it run away  - and then kill Ransome.
     UNIT arrive at the plastics factory, and are unsettled by Channing. Back at the Lab, The Doctor discovers that the sphere is alive. Army captain General Scobie, in charge of UNIT's army, is found by his Auton replica, who tells the Brig to stay away from the factory. Visiting Madame Tussauds, The Doctor discovers that the "replica" of Scobie is in fact the real General, solidified in plastic.

Channing

     Exploring further, The Doctor and Liz break into the factory, watching as Channing explains to the Factory Boss how the Autons work (they're living things) and they interrogate the factory boss once Channing leaves. Eventually they escape, warning UNIT and preparing for the next day's deployment - having received the last meteorite from General Scobie. The Autons prowl the streets, as The Doctor and Liz invade the factor with one of the Doctor's inventions, destroying the aliens and preventing the invasion.
     One of the best things about Spearhead is its acting roster. The Strange Plastic Looking Man, known as Channing, is played wonderfully by Hugh Burden, who imbues his character with a sense of otherworldlyness that doesn't just come off as wooden acting. I'm glad he's here really, as he provides fluency throughout a story that is slip very clearly into two distinct parts; the first half, in which The Doctor recovers from his regeneration and discovers his exile, and the second half, which focuses more on the Auton storyline. Jon Pertwee definitely gets to stretch his acting muscles, going from amnesiac to debonaire with incredible fluency, and his incarnation is almost instantly likeable. Caroline John is also very good as assistant Liz Shaw, although like a few other companions, her adaptation to this wonderful new concept of alien life isn't covered in the depths I'd like it to be. At the beginning she's an outright skeptic, and yet as these things happen she just seems to... accept it all.

     A big problem that I found stemmed from the production issues - the editing. The shot cuts were very clever - a character mentions Madame Tussauds' and suddenly we're there, cutting out all unnecessary traveltime. The problem as I see it is that in a lot of these transitions, the edit is obvious (a shot of the previous scene flashing for a second) and dialogue is cut off. For example; the cliffhanger to the first episode has a guard shouting, "Who told you to shoot, you stupid...", and the beginning of the next retcons this to, "No one told you to shoot, you fool!". It didn't overshadow the story, but it did distract me and ruined the immersion that the filmic tone of the story was trying to give.

"You really believe in a man that can change his appearance?"

     Overall Spearhead from Space is one of the better Post Regeneration stories. It does suffer from the fact that the two halves of the story keep trying to outdo each other and often distract from the main goal, but a lot of that just adds to its charm and the only real let down for me is shoddy editing. Jon Pertwee's entrance into Doctor Who was a sign of what was to come, and heralded the beginning of the program's golden era.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We say goodbye in The Caves of Androzani

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Inferno

1970. John Pertwee's Third Doctor has been a powerful influence on the show. Season 7 has been one of the best in recent history, with high quality stories boasting powerful messages and top quality acting. The fact that budget constrained the series to Earth had very little effect, and for the first time, the newly colourful Doctor Who is a real ratings-topper.
   Here, as a finale to Season 7, is Inferno, a story about the dangers of ignoring safety guidelines. Well, it's better than it sounds. In short, it is a revolutionary piece of television that makes the most out of the format, including interesting monsters, a parallel universe and great human enemy as well.
   A group of scientists are digging deep into the Earth's crust, attempting to harness an new energy source deep below. UNIT is supervising the operation. Within the operation, Proffessor Stahlman is determined to complete the operation, at the cost of all safety procedures. Sir Keith Gold is the voice of rationality, representative of the Ministry financing the operation. The whole project is disturbed when a strange green substance begins leaking from the coolant towers, brought up from the depths. People who touch the substance turn into heat-loving mosters that have a contagious touch.
   Meanwhile, The Doctor visits the project while using their nuclear power supplies to power his TARDIS, which is now cut down to the console. During one argument with Stahlman, he goes off and attempts to travel away, but Stahlman unknowingly cuts the power half-way through, throwing The Doctor into a parallel universe. In this Universe, Britain is a fascist state, and the drilling project is in a much further stage. Even though he is captured by this universe's version UNIT, he manages to watch on and tries to help as the monsters spread and the planet literally crumbles around them. He escapes the parallel universe, and manages to save our Universe just in time.
   The two main plots, both fighting for attention, are the Parallel Universe Plot and the Drilling Plot. Both are intertwined quite nicely, and white it starts quite slowly, it soon picks up. The acting is superb, and you can tell that the main cast had real fun being their evil counterparts. As a finale it passes with flying colours; as a story is does so even more.
   A quick comment on the Commentary, as usual, and this one is quite splintered, with certain episodes being devoted to the writer, producer and The Brigadier, while others to Sergeant Benton. It's still as informative as usual, though.

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