Doctor Who: Planet of Giants
(3 episodes, s02e01-e03, 1964)
The companions finally made it home… sort of. Welcome to the obligatory exercise in a science fiction series for the trope of shrinking the cast. I can’t grumble too much because there are some unique elements in this version that keep the idea from being boring repetition (even though it predates many of the modern sci-fi examples I can come up with).
The TARDIS model is back! I also thought it was refreshing for the Doctor to change his wardrobe a bit by exchanging his coat for a cloak. We also find out that bad things apparently happen when the TARDIS doors open during transition.
This one’s essentially an industrial thriller story, and even though it’s not particularly deep one, I still had a lot of fun with it. The effects are the highlight, and you can tell that the cast had fun as well. So did the set designers. But all that plus the character ingenuity can’t overcome a really shallow story.
Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”
UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Dalek Invasion of Earth
The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.
Creative Criticality 
It’s the first time that Doctor Who does something overtly topical with DN6 being DDT. The other interesting thing is that it’s the first time that the Doctor really becomes a crusading hero. As soon as he sees all the dead stuff outside the TARDIS he wants to stay to figure out what is causing it and stop it. It’s such a change from the Doctor of the past who wanted to leave if anything was remotely dangerous.
Sadly to me to much of the show seems built around the effects, which are certainly good for their time but we’ve seen so much that is better now that it’s not enough to prop up a pretty slow story. Originally this was a four-parter and was recorded as such but they edited episodes three and four together into a single episode just to keep the pace up. That says a lot right there.
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