"Planet of Giants" directed by Mervyn Pinfield, 31 October 1964
"Dangerous Journey" directed by Mervyn Pinfield, 7 November 1964
"Crisis" directed by Douglas Camfield, 14 November 1964
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Written by Louis Marks
Script editor: David Whitaker
Produced by Verity Lambert
William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman
As the TARDIS is landing, its doors suddenly open before materialisation has finished. They close again, and whatever the fault was appears to have fixed itself, but the Doctor is nonetheless flustered. Something serious must have gone wrong for the doors to open in mid-flight, and he's worried what sort of further repercussion it might have that hasn't manifested itself yet.
At any rate, the TARDIS has now materialised fully, so the crew head outside. They're at the base of a massive, vertical rock face, but weirdly, the rock sits on a bed of cement as tall as a man. Who could have been so worried about such a massive rock formation being moved that they've wedged it in place with six solid feet of cement?
They split up to explore. The Doctor and Barbara come upon what appears to be a massive earthworm, half a man's height and so long that it stretches out of camera view, but it's dead. Susan and Ian, meanwhile, happen upon a giant ant standing guard over a mound of giant eggs, but the ant, too, is dead. Then they come across a fifteen-foot-high bottle of night scented stock and a mammoth matchbox, lying partially open. Susan has concluded that they've been shrunk to about one inch in height, but Ian scoffs at this, insisting that they must have just materialised in a museum exhibition or something like that.
Evidence seems to fall pretty firmly on Susan's side, though, when the ground quakes at the approaching footsteps of an impossibly huge giant of a man. Susan and Ian both scramble into hiding places, but Ian's chosen hiding place is inside the matchbox. The giant has arrived to collect the matchbox; he closes it, with Ian inside, and carries it away.
The TARDIS has in fact materialised at the bottom of a garden path--in fact, it's a garden path in contemporary England, so the Doctor has in fact succeeded in getting Ian and Barbara back to their own time and place, though not in a form that's useful to them. The giant, whose name is Farrow, heads up to the top of the path, where he sits outside his house, enjoying the warm summer day. Before long, a second man arrives, a businessman named Forester. Forester is developing a new pesticide, named DN6, and Farrow is a government inspector who's been testing DN6 for viability.
Farrow reluctantly informs his visitor that's he going to have to put a stop to development of DN6, as it's too lethal--not only does it kill pests, but it kills everything it comes in contact with, including insects that are necessary to the continued functioning of our ecosystems. And it accumulates, never washing out of the soil, so eventually, people who eat foods that have been treated with DN6 will accumulate enough of it in their bloodstreams that they'll start dying too.
Forester is visibly upset to learn that a project into which he's sunk his entire fortune is about to be killed, but he seems to accept it, and asks Farrow what happens next. The government inspector's answer reveals that he has what is probably the most profound case of genre blindness ever found on British television.
Nothing's going to happen straight away, Farrow says, because his two-week holiday began yesterday. He's already written his report, but he won't be turning it in until after he gets back from a fortnight spent aboard his boat, exploring the coastal waterways of France.
(In other words, he's about to embark on a holiday where he won't be missed for two weeks, and where it's totally reasonable for him to be killed in some sort of accident that will leave no body, just an overturned boat bobbing somewhere in the Bay of Biscay.)
(And considering how upset Forester is at the failure of DN6, why is Farrow boring him with such details of his holiday? I mean, he presumably isn't intentionally pointing out how easy he'd be to murder right now, so why doesn't he just say, "Well, I'm on my holidays for the next fortnight," rather than dangling it in the other man's face how carefree he's going to be for the next two weeks while Forester deals with the fact that his career is over?)
(And, especially considering he's already written his report, isn't "turning in the hugely important report on what could be a revolutionary new tool in feeding the world" the sort of thing one takes care of the day before leaving for two weeks' holiday, rather than the day after returning?)
So, yeah. Forester takes out a gun and shoots Farrow dead.
The Doctor, Susan and Barbara hear the gunshot as a tremendous explosion coming from the top of the path, so they head that way. There they find Ian, unharmed, but along the way they've noted that every piece of wildlife they've come across in the garden is dead.
Forester calls an associate, Smithers, to help him cleaning up Farrow's body. Smithers is the chief scientist behind the development of DN6. Forester tells him that Farrow planned to steal the formula for DN6 and take credit for it himself, that the gun was Farrow's, and that it went off as the two men struggled with each other. Smithers instantly sees through the story about Farrow being killed accidentally, but he's willing to accept the broader theme--that Farrow was planning on stealing DN6--because he's so excited about the possibilities of DN6 ending world hunger. He agrees to help Forester clean up evidence of the murder and hide the body.
As part of their cleanup, one of them picks up Farrow's briefcase and carries it inside, setting it on a countertop in Farrow's lab. This once again separates the TARDIS team, since Ian and Barbara have for some reason disappeared inside the briefcase. (Get your minds out the gutter.)
When Ian and Barbara emerge from the briefcase, they find themselves next to a small (five feet high, to them) pile of corn, coated in some thick, sticky substance. When Barbara, unbeknownst to Ian, touches this filmy covering, she finds she can't get it off her hands. A few moments later, a giant housefly lands on the corn and dies instantly because the sticky substance is, of course, DN6.
Barbara's reaction to this is just as great a display of unjustified stupidity as Farrow's was in episode one--in fact, it's probably a greater display, since Barbara sustains her stupidity for almost two full episodes: she absolutely refuses to tell anyone that she's come into contact with DN6. Even when it's become certain that she's been contaminated with pesticide. Even when during the repeated instances when the team will be discussing how dangerous the pesticide is, and then someone will say, "Yes, but the immediate problem is how to get ourselves back to the TARDIS and returned to normal size," and Barbara will respond with shrill hysteria at the change of subject. Even as Barbara grows sicker and weaker and nearer to death. She refuses to give her friends the most important piece of information they need to help her, and she apparently does so for no other reason than to build dramatic suspense.
Anyway.
The Doctor and Susan gain entry to the lab by climbing up a drainpipe into the sink, and there our four heroes are reunited. As they explore the lab, the Doctor finds Farrow's notes, on which are written the formula for DN6, and he deduces that they've stumbled into the testing stages of an extremely lethal pesticide.
They decide they need to do something about the danger the pesticide poses, so they lift a phone off its receiver by wedging a pair of corks underneath it. This connects them to the village switchboard operator, but they're unable to make themselves understood to her because their shrunken vocal cords mean their voices are pitched too high for normal-sized humans to understand. So instead they turn on a Bunsen burner and position an aerosol can in front of it, hoping that it will explode and set the lab on fire.
Meanwhile, Smithers has come across Farrow's notes in the lab, and he realises the real reason Forester murdered Farrow. Seeing his plan unravel, Forester draws his gun on Smithers, but before he can take action, the aerosol can explodes, blinding him. It's at that moment that the village constable arrives--the village switchboard is also the village constabulary, and when strange calls from Farrow's house arranged the switchboard operator's suspicions, she sent the village constable (her husband) round to check up on Mr. Farrow. The constable arrests both men.
(If the idea of the village switchboard and the village constabulary being in the same room seems too trite and cliche, bear in mind that in the village where my dad grew up, the village post office was my grandparents' living room.)
By now, the team have escaped back down the garden to the TARDIS, though Barbara is near death and finally explains what her problem is. But as soon as they're back inside and dematerialised, the Doctor is able to restore everyone to their normal size. This reduces the contamination in Barbara's bloodstream to a minimal amount, and she recovers instantly.
What Lisa thought: We both really liked this one. The Farrow-Forester-Smithers plot had a very period feel to it--it was more distinctively 1960s than any other black and white Who I can think of; the fact that the guest characters had no interaction with the regular cast gave it a feel like a 60s anthology show--The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. The fact that the guest plot had absolutely no science fiction elements was also a good choice; the whole thing was a very atmospheric change of pace.
The next story is "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"
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