Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space Episode Four

The Doctor, Liz and the Brigadier are working out what is going on, with the Brigadier asking the questions so that the other two can answer them, for our benefit as well as his. The Doctor thinks at the factory they are building a body to house the "collective intelligence" contained in the energy units.

Now that the dummy General Scobie has taken over, he is on the side of the Autons and orders the Brigadier not to go to the factory. When the Doctor hears that the factory was making a dummy of the general for the Madame Tussauds museum (which wasn't a secret, apparently), he takes Liz straight there to visit (any excuse, eh, lazy Doctor?) and, when he examines the brand new dummy of General Scobie he realises it is actually the real one!

Channing then gets the dummy General Scobie (the dummy one... I know, but I need some way to tell the real dummy from the dummy dummy, don't I? Mew) to go to UNIT and seize the unit.

The Doctor and Liz are still sneaking around the museum when it is closed, dark and empty. Channing and George Hibbert come in and many of the dummys come to life. It's lucky that George was there to ask Channing things about their plan, since it allows the Doctor and Liz to overhear them.

Channing leaves but then George sees the Doctor, who tries to undo the hypno-eyesing.

"Channing is controlling your mind, you must resist him. Channing is your enemy. The enemy of the entire human race!"

Channing comes back and George doesn't give the Doctor and Liz away, so we know he has partly resisted.

Back at the factory, in the control room, Channing has made a big box with lots of dials on it, and he puts the unit near it. At the UNIT laboratory, the Doctor is also making something, but we don't know what it is yet.



There then follows the iconic scene where the Autons in the shop window come to life with a sound effect and break out of the window (off-screen). A policemanny runs to investigate, and gets pewpewpewed, and so do a few other mannys including the manny on a bike wearing a silly hat.

This is the turning point of the story, as the Autons are no longer acting secretly, they are ready to put their full plan into operation. Somebody telephones the Brigadier to tell him what's happening.

"It's started, hasn't it?"

asks the Doctor, portentously. He knows a good dramatic thing when he sees it.

The Doctor knows they can't wait any longer, so he persuades the Brigadier to attack the factory with whatever UNIT mannys he has to paw. Just like the Doctor earlier, the Brigadier doesn't take much persuading.

Thanks to the Doctor, George is overcoming Channing's hypno-eyes, and he attacks the box in the control room with a stick until Channing comes in and catches him. George asks Channing

"Who are you? What are you?"
"We are the Nestene."
"Nestene?"
"We have been colonising other planets for a thousand million years. Now we have come to colonise Earth."

Some great exposition here, and played totally straight by the two actors. George is horrified, then Channing gets an Auton to pewpewpew him.

UNIT arrives at the factory but the dummy General Scobie (the dummy one) is waiting. The Doctor uses the machine he has made to turn off the dummy general.

"You've killed him!"
"I don't think so. You see, he was never really alive."

He takes off the general's face to reveal the Auton underneath.

Insert Scobie-Doo reference here.

In the museum, the dummy General Scobie (the real one) comes back to life and looks confused.

The Brigadier teams up with the soldiers that the dummy General Scobie (the dummy one) was commanding in time for a proper fight scene - guns, stunts, everything the Brigadier could possibly have wished for, while at the same time the Doctor and Liz sneak around the factory using the machine on the Autons, deactivating them one by one until they reach the control room.

 'He's behind me, isn't he?'

Liz hides while the Doctor goes in to confront Channing. Channing responds by turning the big dial on the box up to maximum and then he recalls. The Doctor tries to use his machine but it doesn't work. Liz tries to fix it while the Doctor gets grabbed by some naughty tentacles. This is Cthulhu's favourite bit.

The Doctor tries to fight it with some Venusian Gurning, but it is not until Liz manages to repair the machine that it blows up the box. All the Autons, including Channing, go

Back at the UNIT laboratory, the Doctor and the Brigadier "discuss terms" for if the Doctor is to W-word for UNIT. Oh noes, the Doctor doing the W-word! He's clearly no cat. Not yet.

The Doctor wants a car (not a cat, but such similar words maybe he just got them mixed up and only found out his mistaik later), and in return the Brigadier wants to know his name. The Doctor tells him it is

"Smith. Doctor John Smith."

and he smiles. Not such a big secret after all, eh Steven Moffat?

What's so good about Spearhead from Space?

Spearhead from Space is a great introductory story for Jon Pertwee as the Doctor and the establishment of the UNIT era. Indeed Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is the main Companion - practically the main character - for much of the story, perhaps because we have met him before (during the Patrick Troughton era) while Liz is new.

As a story in its own right, it is well-paced, ever escalating towards an iconic climax in episode four, when we get one of the most famous scenes in all of Doctor Who to pay it off - so good that Russell "The" Davies would later lift it completely for his first episode Rose.

Speaking of lifts, Robert Holmes was blatantly inspired by the 1955 BBC TV series Quatermass ii (he must have thought he could get away with it after 15 years and no DVD release), with several aspects of Spearhead from Space coming from it - most obviously the shape and purpose of the meteorites/energy units, but also in a key location being a factory under the control of the aliens, and the hypno-eyesing of mannys to make them go along with the aliens' plans. But Holmes makes these elements fit as part of a new plot (albeit still in the 'alien-invasion-by-stealth' sub-genre) and why not? He's stealing from the best after all.

There's also something to be said about the way that this story was made entirely on film, which lends it a 'cinematic' quality and an extra level of credibility that many of the studio-bound (or a mix of studio and film) stories lack. This is helped by the fact that the SFX throughout are impressive (by Doctor Who standards) and fit the story perfectly, which would probably have still been true even on videotape.

All in all, we're off to a great start to the season and the era, but I happen to know that the next story will be even better...