Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space
(4 episodes, s07e01-e04, 1970)
It’s Doctor Who, now in color!
There’s a nice new opening to take advantage of that fact, although the projector sheet is pretty obvious. They also spoil the surprise of the Doctor’s new face in the opening credits, which is odd because they tease it for a good portion of the first episode. The budget has also obviously skyrocketed and the pace is a whole lot faster for what is looking more and more like a soft reboot of the series.
It’s really nice to see the Brigadier and UNIT again. He reminds the audience that we’ve met him twice before, and this is obviously his playground. He’s also dismayed because he doesn’t recognize the Doctor’s new face. We also get a new companion with Doctor Elizabeth Shaw. She’s really gruff with everyone except the Doctor, with whom she seems quite enamored. She’s quite an empowered woman, and certainly less of a damsel in distress than previous companions. She also demands respect by not putting up with the Doctor’s subterfuge when the Time Lord tricks her into retrieving the TARDIS key. Of course, he subsequently pulls a Millennium Falcon with the blue box. (No, it wouldn’t help if Liz got out and pushed.)
This story also cleanly brings Doctor Who into the era of the 1970s, which was the modern era for the production. You have civilians like the porter and the poacher acting exactly as they would in the time, which makes the show a fun little time capsule.
This Doctor kicks things off with a lot of heart – two, actually, as we establish that part of the mythos – and comedy. He acts crazy about his shoes as a ruse to get the TARDIS key he secreted away, and then he escapes in a wheelchair after almost being kidnapped, makes a break for the TARDIS, and gets shot. He should be more careful with this new body. I also laughed a lot about the clever sight gag with the doctor’s locker room sign (“Doctors Only”) and his escape from the hospital, during which he steals a rich doctor’s clothes and figures out how to steal a car. He really is a doctor of “pretty much everything.”
The plot isn’t half bad either. Meteorites crash to Earth, but they’re made of blinking and ringing plastic and draw Autons like ants. They’re impervious to gunfire (but the UNIT soldiers just keep slinging lead because that’s what they’re scripted to do) and are replacing key members of local leadership to (what else?) take over the world.
Channing, a character played to apathetic creepy perfection by Hugh Burden, is the avatar of the Nestene Consciousness, a force that has colonized planets like a virus across the universe and has now focused on Earth. The Doctor and crew stop them with a jury-rigged device, and after a brief technical difficulty and a battle with tentacles, the Doctor fries the Consciousness. Anyone for calamari?
The Doctor agrees to stay on with UNIT in exchange for facilities, technology to repair the TARDIS, Liz’s help with all of it, and a car. He also starts going by the pseudonym John Smith.
This serial hit the ground running, introduced a new Doctor, and made me like him right away. According to the rules of the Timestamps Project, regeneration episodes get an automatic +1 handicap, but this story certainly doesn’t need it.
Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”
UP NEXT – Doctor Who and the Silurians
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 
Spearhead is great and Liz is a perennially underrated companion. I love that the Doctor has to get used to his new self and Pertwee is able to draw on his comic background to do a sort of quasi Troughton at the beginning. I also like the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier. There’s some friction but mutual respect as you’ll see develop at this era continues to grow.
The one thing that annoys me is that UNIT seemed to have all kinds of resources in The Invasion and now all they can do is have half a dozen guys show up to shoot at Autons with regular bullets. Where are the rocket launchers and grenade launchers? If they had enough artillery to take down the odd Cyberman I don’t doubt for an instant that they could have taken out a few Autons. The real world reason is that the actual army helped out on the Invasion for the publicity but with UNIT becoming a regular feature on Doctor Who that help went away. Still, it seems jarring when you watch it in order like this.
I’m going to be very interested in seeing your writeups as this era evolves.
[…] series started so well. Between Spearhead From Space and Doctor Who and the Silurians, I was really enjoying this new era of the show. Like I mentioned […]
[…] Nestene and Autons are back. The normal title sequences are back. Liz Shaw is… […]
[…] is okay with this because she’s seen it before. This talent got me thinking: The Third Doctor started his adventures in another healing trance, but he stayed at his normal temperature and cardiac rhythms. Is a […]
[…] of everything. I adored Liz Shaw for the strength she brought to the franchise as the Third Doctor started his exile, and I consider Jo’s time while the Doctor is still chained to Earth to be much weaker than […]
[…] Patrick Troughton as anchors for the audience? I think it still holds here. Jon Pertwee’s introduction ushered in a lot of changes for the franchise, and it meant that the Doctor had to change a bit […]
[…] but the Doctor forces the infection to recede before inducing a healing coma (just like he did three times […]
[…] absence, the TARDIS materializes. The Doctor falls out of the TARDIS, just as he did when he first arrived, after being lost in the time vortex. He has received a fatal dose of radiation and is dying. He […]
[…] Robert Holmes has been the writer behind some of the highest ratings in the Timestamps Project – Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, The Time Warrior, The Ark in Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Talons of […]
[…] memory as he flashes back to the Second Doctor and a Cyberman, the Third Doctor’s awakening and regeneration, his brief encounter with the First Doctor, the Yeti, an Axon, a Dalek, and his […]
[…] beginning of the Third Doctor’s era in 1970 was a major turning point for the franchise, signaling a shift in production (black and […]
[…] surface as the spacecraft departs in a hurry. They celebrate as the Doctor warns Harriet that the planet is being noticed. They should expect more visitors. The Prime Minister receives word that Torchwood is ready, and […]
[…] Fire, and Millennial Rites. Previous televised elements like The Great Intelligence, the Nestene Consciousness, the Gomagog, Fenric, the Celestial Toymaker, and the Black and White Guardians were […]
[…] Fire, and Millennial Rites. Previous televised elements like The Great Intelligence, the Nestene Consciousness, the Gomagog, Fenric, the Celestial Toymaker, and the Black and White Guardians were […]
[…] for humanity. The Silo is also home to Yana’s lab, and he is excited to learn that a doctor (of everything) has arrived. As the humans in the Silo offer aid, the Doctor asks them to bring his […]
[…] he wore. Spellman’s robot clown army echoes the Nestene Consciousness (which we know from Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, and Rose), and the clown aspect provide a similar level of unease as The […]
[…] violated the Shadow Proclamation by threatening to burn a Level Five planet. He changes clothes, stealing them from the hospital like two of his predecessors, then heads to the […]
[…] violated the Shadow Proclamation by threatening to burn a Level Five planet. He changes clothes, stealing them from the hospital like two of his predecessors, then heads to the […]
[…] episode does make a few callbacks, from the Van Gogh nods to the previous adventure to singing in the shower, Verdi’s La donna è mobile, The Oncoming Storm (a purely revival era construct seen thus far […]
[…] and the Second and Third Doctor’s adventures with UNIT (for reference, The Invasion, Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians, and The Ambassadors of Death). Neil Armstrong’s historic […]
[…] both An Unearthly Child and Rose. To a lesser degree, I’d also include The Eleventh Hour, Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, and Remembrance of the […]