Spearhead From Space

Smith. Doctor John Smith.

I'd been holding off on this one for a while, not because of any misperception regarding this story, but because it is the last Liz Shaw story to review. Taking things as a whole, Liz Shaw might be my favorite companion in how she is a strong, intelligent woman who works with the Doctor very much as an equal, which is something you just don't get in any other companion. But this her introduction as well as the introduction of UNIT as regular set piece and not just the one off force as shown in The Invasion.

Plot Summary

On Earth, UNIT tracks a group of meteorites that crash down in Essex in a tight formation. A poacher, Sam Seeley, spies one of the orbs that crashes and is surprised to see it pulsating and giving off a signal. He pops it into his poacher's bag.

Nearby, the TARDIS appears and a freshly regenerated Third Doctor falls out. He is discovered by UNIT soldiers sent to find the meteorites and taken the local hospital. The UNIT second-in-command, Captain Munro, alerts Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who is in the process of recruiting a scientist named Liz Shaw to assist them. The two head over upon hearing that the man was discovered near a police box.

At the hospital, the doctors are confused by the patient's physiology. This causes the janitor to alert the media, hoping for a payment for the story. The Brigadier arrives and blows off the media, making them only more suspicious. He is disappointed when he doesn't recognize the Doctor although the Doctor recognizes him. He asks for a mirror and takes himself in for the first time. He also manages to get the TARDIS key out of his shoe and slips it into his palm.

After the Brigadier leaves, two men enter the hospital and knock out Dr. Henderson, the attending physician, and kidnap the Doctor. The Doctor manages to break loose and roll away on his wheelchair, away from the ambulance that was going to take him away. The Doctor ditches the wheelchair and runs toward the TARDIS where he is shot by a UNIT patrol guarding it. The bullet only grazes him but he places himself in a coma to protect himself. The UNIT soldiers carry him back to the hospital.

Shortly afterwards, the Doctor pulls himself out of his coma and sneaks out of bed. He steals the clothes of one of the Doctor's and the traveling out fit of another who had come to examine him. He then steals the car of the consultant and races towards UNIT headquarters.

UNIT personnel recover another one of the meteorites, just as Sam had. Sam now has his in a trunk in his tool shed and is hiding it from his wife. The transfer did alert an Auton, which was in the woods trying to find the missing spheres. It changes course to go after the UNIT men who recovered the second sphere. It is placed in a truck for transport but it runs off the road when the Auton steps in it's path. The Auton takes the sphere out of the truck and heads back to it's headquarters.

The headquarters is a plastic factory making toy dolls. The disgruntled co-creator of the toy line, Ransome, comes in to complain about being pushed out. The director, Hibbert, is sympathetic and tries to warn him off until the same man who organized the attempted kidnapping of the Doctor, Channing, enters. Hibbert then becomes passive and Ransome leaves, although suspicious.

Hibbert and Channing are visited shortly afterwards by General Scobie, the liaison between UNIT and the regular British Army. He stopped by after visiting with the Brigadier about the meteors. Scobie is shown a semi-completed plastic replica of him that the plastic company is doing, claiming that they are modeling current important British figures for an exhibition and required a few more measurements from him to ensure it looks right.

The Doctor arrives at UNIT headquarters, drawn by a homing device on his watch to the TARDIS. The Brigadier begins to accept that this is in fact the Doctor but refuses to return the TARDIS key, recovered after being shot, until he helps out with the meteorites. The Doctor meets Liz and the two work together in examining the plastic casing that held the sphere that was stolen.

Ransome returns to the plastic factory to investigate what happened to his office and what is going on. He breaks into a room with a lot of scientific equipment and a row of plastic mannequins. One of the mannequins begins to walk towards him. It tries to kill him with a gun built into its hand but Ransome is able to get away. He escapes into the woods where he is picked up by UNIT forces and treated for shock.

Ransome is then brought to UNIT HQ to talk to the Brigadier. Liz enters and while the Brigadier is distracted, she steals the TARDIS key from off his desk. The Doctor claimed to have equipment they can use in the TARDIS and Liz had intended just to ask the Brigadier for it. The Doctor takes the key and tries to leave in the TARDIS but it has been disabled by the Time Lords. Both Liz and the Brigadier are annoyed with his deception but with no means of escape, the Doctor comes with them to talk with the other soldiers in the woods.

UNIT brings in Sam Seeley for questioning and while he is away, his wife breaks open the trunk where the sphere is being hidden. Exposed, Channing and Hibbert pick up it's signal again and dispatch an Auton to the house. The Auton searches the premises but can't find it. Mrs. Seeley discovers the Auton and shoots it with the shotgun but with no effect. The Auton knocks her out and begins to search the shed.

Informed about the sphere by Seeley, the Brigadier, Capt. Munro, the Doctor and Liz head to the house to find the Auton searching it. The Brigadier and Munro attack it and Channing orders it to retreat as he doesn't want to engage in full combat yet. The Doctor discovers the sphere and they take it back to the lab while Mrs. Seeley is taken to the hospital.

The retreating Auton enters the UNIT camp and finds Ransome. It kills him and vaporizes the body before disappearing back into the woods. The Brigadier arrives and finds Ransome gone with the Doctor pointing out that something cut its way into the tent to attack Ransome. The Doctor suggests investigating the plastics factory while he and Liz investigate the sphere. Agreeing, the Brigadier calls General Scobie who authorizes an investigation. However, as he hangs up the phone, a plastic duplicate of himself appears at the door and attacks him.

The fake Scobie calls the Brigadier back and orders him to call off any investigation. The Brigadier leaves to go directly to the Ministry to get permission while the Doctor and Liz travel to Madame Tussauds to examine the replicas there. They find one of General Scobie but the Doctor determines that it is actually General Scobie, suspended in a hypnotizing, plastic mold.

The Doctor and Liz hide until the museum closes and then examine the figures in detail. The Doctor determines that Scobie is the only real person but that the aliens behind this plan to replace the government officials with replicas to allow quicker takeover. They hide when Channing and Hibbert enter to examine the figures and take them away. The Doctor confronts Hibbert while alone and plants an idea to fight the control of the aliens.

While everyone is out, the fake General Scobie goes to UNIT headquarters and takes the sphere the Doctor and Liz were working on. They had determined that it was a part of a higher consciousness that when combined with the others would create a central intelligence. When it is taken to the plastic factory, Channing does that and orders that the attack begin at dawn. Hibbert, fighting the control of the aliens, tries to sabotage the machine where the consciousness, called the Nestene, is housed. He is discovered and killed by Channing.

Finding the sphere gone, the Doctor and Liz work through the night and build a machine that will attack the wavelength the intelligence works on. As they finish, the Brigadier receives word of shop window dummies coming to life all over Britain, attacking and killing patrons. With the machine ready, the Brigadier organizes his headquarters staff and the group attacks the plastic factory.

Before they attack, they meet a squad of regular army led by General Scobie who orders the Brigadier to stand down. The Doctor intervenes and test his weapon on Scobie, who drops as an inanimate plastic dummy. The Brigadier takes command and attacks while the Doctor and Liz slip inside. Channing orders Autons to attack and the UNIT and army forces try to hold them off.

The Doctor enters the control room and tries to activate his machine but it malfunctions. Channing ups the power and flees, allowing the Nestene brain to reach out with tentacles and attack the Doctor. From behind cover, Liz repairs the machine and activates it. The Doctor directs it at the Nestene brain and it effectively kills it. Once dead, all Autons, including Channing himself, collapse.

The group returns to UNIT headquarters where the Doctor, as he is trapped on Earth, agrees to help UNIT in exchange for a laboratory, a place to work on the TARDIS and the use of Liz as his assistant. He also strongly hints that he would like his own car in the 1920's roadster model.

Analysis

Spearhead From Space is an excellent way to kick off a new Doctor as it is a visual treat. It's not perfect, but it is very good and an easy and enjoyable watch. The funny thing is that it came about mostly due to a strike which forced Barry Letts to take the whole thing on the road and film it on location, which admittedly was probably a pain, but gave it a real sense of depth that is lost in studio shooting.

This might my favorite portrayal of the Third Doctor. Because he's coming off regeneration crisis, he's not fully into the pomposity that could make him unlikeable at times. He also immediately develops a nice rapport with both the Brigadier and Liz, seeing them as friends and allies. His relationship with Liz would stay that way but his interactions with the Brigadier would become more hostile as the era wore on. Here they are clearly on the same side the whole way. The Doctor also throws in some humor here and there and that is something that gets steadily left behind over as the era wears on. Perhaps the humor and even the style of speech are similar to the Second Doctor, which would be normal given that he is still in regeneration crisis, and that is one of the things that I find a bit more endearing. In fact in many ways, Spearhead From Space plays a lot like a later Second Doctor story and the roots from The Invasion are fairly visible.

Liz is of course, Liz. She is introduced simply and is a mix of intellectual curiosity, bemusement, and annoyed cynicism. She is skeptical of the Doctor but grows to appreciate him quickly, to the point of having him try to take advantage of that trust. But what works best for both of them is that there is an almost instant mutual respect. The Doctor sizes her up and acknowledges her intelligence quickly. She does the same and you can see both friendship and a solid partnership forming very rapidly. While I like Jo, the disdain and mistreatment the Doctor gives her in his paternalistic style can get tiresome. Nothing ever really matches the relationship the Doctor has with Liz and it sets itself up so easily almost instantly.

This is a good story for the Brigadier as well. As his third story, he doesn't really need to properly introduced but you still get the feeling that he will be playing a more prominent role right off the bat. He is immediately affable with a dry sense of humor. More importantly, he is shown to be quite intelligent which is sometimes lost in later stories. The Brigadier can be shown to be a shoot first buffoon at times but here he is thoughtful, hard working and smart enough to be well worthy of both his position and the Doctor's trust. He also is not shown to be trigger happy in this story. One of his men is but the Brigadier himself doesn't engage until after being fired upon by the Autons. Nor does he ever provoke the Doctor's ire by immediately suggesting the area be "cleansed." This version of the Brigadier is not afraid to use force but also not one to assume that force is the obvious solution and that is another sign of his intelligence showing through.

I also like the Autons (or Nestene if you prefer) as the villains. To be honest, I like the Nestene as villains in all three stories they appear in. It's usually some other aspect of the story that lets it down. Here they are quite good. The Autons themselves are quite scary, especially in their infiltration tactics and emerging from the shop windows. Only a slightly different framing and a slightly different style of music and it could have easily been something that John Carpenter put out. My only niggle on the Nestene and the Autons was the retreat from Sam's house before capturing the remaining sphere. That Auton could easily have overpowered or outgunned the Brigadier and Captain Munro but retreating preserved the important actors and gave the Doctor his clues in how to beat the Nestene so it was a writer's out to a plot hole.

The visuals were quite excellent with the shooting on location and on film. Unfortunately, the same emergency that forced this type of shooting did not allow for the needed set up with the audio. There are a number of scenes where it sounds like everyone is speaking in a large, echo-y room (because they are) and that is a bit distracting. It gets bad enough at a couple of points that it becomes very hard to hear what people are saying. Not impossible but it is probably the largest single flaw of the story.

One other flaw that I would be remiss to point out is that there are a few points of overacting and a bit of silliness. The close ups of Ransome's face are a bit much with him doing his look of horror directly into the camera. I also can't help but snigger at the tentacles that are attacking the Doctor at the end of Episode Four. Jon Pertwee is trying his best but it's so obvious that he is holding the tentacle against himself and trying to make it look like he's being strangled. It's a bit silly looking no matter how hard he tries.

Despite these little set backs, I enjoy this story immensely. It's a great story to introduce someone to the Third Doctor to, especially since it's only four episodes and zips along with minimal padding. Obviously the filmed on location stuff wasn't going to stick around but I think I would enjoy the Third Doctor era more if the stories were this tightly paced more often. Definitely worth a watch any time the opportunity arises.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5