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Episode two, 10 January 1970
Episode three, 17 January 1970
Episode four, 24 January 1970
Written by Robert Holmes
Directed by Derek Martinus
Script editor: Terrance Dicks
Produced by Derrick Sherwin
Jon Pertwee as the Doctor (first appearance)
Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Caroline John as Dr Liz Shaw (first appearance)
Doctor Who was coming back to the air after its longest-ever layoff, with a brand new producer, a brand new Doctor and a brand new companion. The show had changed drastically since it was last on the air. Technological standards had advanced, giving the programme a more modern look, but also necessitating a shift in emphasis from dialogue-based storytelling to visual spectacle.
But narratively the show was reorienting itself as well, focusing now solely on Earth and humanity rather than the depths of outer space. To accommodate that, for the first time Doctor Who would have a continuing cast of supporting characters, individuals besides just the Doctor and his companion who would appear from story to story and be regular players in events. This also meant that the model of the Doctor's companions changed, adopting for the first time the idea of an attractive twentysomething companion as the sole companion--throughout the 60s, the model had been two companions: an action-oriented adult male and an intelligent but undeniably childlike adolescent girl. From now on, the Doctor would take over the action scenes himself, making him more of a super hero.
To introduce this brave new day in Doctor Who storytelling, the new production team opened with a creepy tale of an alien intelligence landing on Earth and effecting a takeover of the planet by possessing plastic and bringing it to life, turning shop dummies into walking, murderous zombies ...
Fans of New Who who are unfamiliar with the classic programme know this very well, of course, because that's a perfect description of the programme's resurrection with "Rose" in 2005. But I'm not talking about "Rose"--I'm talking about "Spearhead From Space".
We've talked before about how Doctor Who has done many pilots; Spearhead, its second (and the first Doctor Who story produced in colour), is arguably its most successful, since it led to the longest uninterrupted run the programme has ever had, sixteen consecutive seasons. It has three things to do: it has to introduce us to the new Doctor, introduce us to the UNIT setup, and tell us an example of the sort of story we can expect from the retooled Who.
It opts to concentrate on the new characters first; the plotline of the Nestene invasion takes a back seat throughout part one and much of part two. The story opens with Dr Elizabeth (Liz) Shaw, a brilliant Cambridge polymath, being conscripted against her will into the service of UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, under the command of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT is an international military organisation charged with secretly defending the Earth from alien invasions; they've already defeated a landing by the Cybermen a few years ago.
Meanwhile the Doctor has landed on Earth to begin the sentence imposed upon him by the Time Lords: exile to the twentieth century, and a change of his appearance. He's still unwell from his regeneration, so he spends the first two episodes in a hospital; UNIT get called in when it's discovered he arrived in a police box. By the end of part two, though, he's fully recovered, had a nude shower scene (yes), convinced the Brigadier that he actually is the Doctor despite having a completely different appearance, and is hard at work with Liz trying to figure out exactly what's going on with what turns out to be the Nestene invasion.
The Nestene is an alien consciousness that has landed on Earth and taken over a plastics factory outside London. Their Special Alien Superpower is that they can possess plastic, bringing it to life. They therefore construct themselves a plastic army, divided into two sorts of soldier. The first are the Autons, which are shop window mannequins that come to life and start killing anyone in sight. The second are copies or real humans, which the Nestene use to replace political and military leaders.
(The replicas are well done--the thin sheen of Vaseline applied to the actors' faces and hands effectively conveys the idea of their plasticity while still leaving them looking like convincing human beings.)
One chilly morning, the final Nestene assault begins, with the famous scene of the dummies coming to life, breaking out of their shop windows and trudging inexorably down the street, shooting down terrified pedestrians. This scene is copied directly in "Rose", though considering how proud the 2005 production team are of the improvements they made to it, I've got to say that Lisa actually found the 1970 iteration by far the creepier.
By now the Doctor and Liz have constructed a device that will block the Nestene's control signals to its plastic army, but only if it can get close enough to the Nestene's central consciousness. So while the Brigadier leads a team of UNIT commandos in an attack on the plastic factory, the Doctor and Liz slip round the back, get to the Nestene command centre and render the Nestene's central brain inert. At the story's conclusion, the Doctor agrees to come aboard as UNIT's scientific advisor permanently.
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She took to Jon Pertwee's Doctor instantly. She really liked him. She especially found his shower scene in part two amusing. And she thought the switch to colour made a nice change of pace. She didn't like Liz, though--I'm wondering if she just doesn't like confident, competent adult women.
Part four was a big hit. There was the effectiveness of General Scobie's double, as mentioned above. There was the creepy scene where the shop dummies suddenly come to life and break out of their windows. And there was the Doctor and Liz's confrontation with the Nestene, which is presented as a wonderful sort of pulsing, giant membrane behind a glass wall--though when it grows a tentacle that snakes out and strangles the Doctor, that's decidedly less effectively, since Pertwee clearly has to wrap the tentacle around his own neck while (badly) acting like he's being strangled. But the confrontation scene is heightened by cuts to the UNIT commandos outside, who are being steadily cut down in their firefight with the inexorable Autons.
So a bright start to the new era. She's looking forward to more.
The next story will be "Doctor Who and the Silurians".
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