255 Spearhead from Space: Episode Two

EPISODE: Spearhead from Space: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 255
STORY NUMBER: 051
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 10 January 1970
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Derek Martinus
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Derrick Sherwin
RATINGS: 8.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space/Terror of the Autons
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm colour film

"The answer to your question's obvious, isn't it? By the time your search party arrived, the rest of these things had been collected. Collected and taken somewhere. The question is, where?"

The Doctor is returned to the hospital where the doctors find he is in a self induced coma. The Brigadier takes Tardis key and has the Tardis taken to UNIT HQ along with some meteorite fragments that UNIT has found. At the nearby Auto Plastics factory Ransome sees his former boss Hibbert demanding to know why he was sacked when he returned from a business trip to the USA. He is sent away, but observed by Hibbert's new partner Channing, who we saw at the hospital in the previous episode. Examining the meteorite fragment, Liz thinks it's been manufactured. Seeley hides the meteorite he has found in a box at home. A figure with a featureless face, an Auton, is tracking the signal from the sphere but looses the signal when it's put in the metal box. General Scobie comes to see the Brigadier. In the woods UNIT find a whole meteorite. Back at the hospital the Doctor is awake, steals clothes and a car belonging to the visiting doctor and escapes the hospital. The Brigadier tries to unlock the Tardis but can't. A soldier leaves to take the meteor/Nestene energy sphere to UNIT HQ in a jeep but is ambushed by the Auton and crashes killing him. The Doctor tracks the Tardis to UNIT HQ where he tries to convince the Brigadier of his identity. The Doctor examines the meteorite fragments and wonders what was inside and where the other meteorites were collected and taken to. General Scobie visits the Auto Plastics factory to have a plastic"wax" model of him made for Madame Tussauds. While he is there Ransome breaks in, returning to his old workshop which he finds full of advanced equipment and shop window dummys. As he examines the equipment one of the dummys comes to life and advances towards him....

Another cracking episode that puts the Doctor and UNIT together and introduces us to Channing, the villain of the story. The ending of the episode is overshadowed by the Autons activating sequence in part 4 but the sight of one of the dummys coming to life here is rather scary and even though you know it's coming you're never sure which of them is going to start moving!

As well as scary there's a slightly horrific element as we see the aftermath of the jeep crash as my wife Liz observed:

Liz: that was bloody!

Though I so wonder why the Auton carried the sphere away in the box UNIT were transporting it in?

Some nice exchanges between Liz Shaw and her new employers:

BRIGADIER: Still sceptical?
LIZ: Of course. I deal with facts, not science fiction ideas.
BRIGADIER: Miss Shaw, I'm not a fool. I don't chase shadows. What you don't understand is that there might, there is a remote possibility that outside your cosy little world other things could exist.
LIZ: No need to get tetchy.
BRIGADIER: Well, sometimes you can be very aggravating.
LIZ: Me? What about you? You really believe in a man who's helped to save the world twice? With the power to transform his physical appearance?
BRIGADIER: I'm not sure yet. It may not be the same man.
LIZ: An alien who travels through time and space in a police box?

Then later, when she meets one of the Brigadier's superiors:

SOLDIER: Major General Scobie to see you, sir.
BRIGADIER: Scobie? Well, what on Earth? All right, show him up. He's our liaison with the regular army. Got to keep in with him.
LIZ: You don't expect me to salute him, I hope?
BRIGADIER: You could bring yourself to be a little less astringent, Miss Shaw.
LIZ: I didn't ask to come here, remember?
SCOBIE: Ah, thank you, thank you. Sorry to interrupt, Stewart.
BRIGADIER: Worry not, sir. It's always a pleasure to see you.
SCOBIE: This meteorite operation. Any further?
BRIGADIER: Not much, I'm afraid. We found the fragments of one though, sir. Miss Shaw is studying them.
SCOBIE: Ah.
BRIGADIER: Oh, Miss Shaw, General Scobie.
LIZ: How do you do.
SCOBIE: Ah, how do you do. Lucky fellow, Stewart, having a pretty face around the place.
BRIGADIER: She's not just a pretty face, sir.
SCOBIE: Oh, no, no. Newspapers seem to have gone wild over this business. Dear chap, what are you doing with a police box?
BRIGADIER: Well, sir
LIZ: Camouflage, General. It's not really a police box. It's a spaceship.

This episode has proved to be a bit of a nightmare whenever it's been released as it features a section of the Fleetwood Mac song Oh Well playing in the factory over a sequence of plastic toys being assembled, which Liz found very sinister! The first video version, a compilation of all four episodes, has the track removed but it was mistakenly included on the 1995 episodic release, removed again for the original DVD release and then, following a change in rights agreements, included on the Special edition version in the Mannequin Mania Box Set.

The production line sequence was recorded on location inside Favourite Doll's Factory.

You might recognise the exterior of the plastics factory, TCC Condensors, from it's recent appearance in The Invasion as the location where the Doctor & UNIT battled the Cybermen.

Playing lead villain Channing is Hugh Burden a well known actor who for many years served the Actor's union Equity. Despite his long career the only other thing I've seen which he's been in is One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, which also features Jon Pertwee, where he plays Haines.

John Woodnutt makes his first Doctor Who appearance as Hibbert, the factory boss. He'll be back as the Draconian Emperor in Frontier in Space, in the twin roles of Broton and His Grace, the Duke of Forgill in Terror of the Zygons and finally as Seron in The Keeper of Traken. He was in Paul of Tarsus, alongside Patrick Troughton's Paul, as a Traveller in The Road to Damascus & The Feast of Pentecost. He'd recently appeared in the third season Out of the Unknown episode The Little Black Bag as Kelland: a large portion of this episode was found as a low grade print on a BBC video tape and was restored for the Out of the Unknown DVD Set. Children of my generation may remember him from the Look and Read story The Boy From Space where he played the Thin Space-Man: This too is available on DVD. He appeared in one of ITV's Doctor Who competitors The Tomorrow People as Spidron in The Vanishing Earth, The Sweeney as Dr. Clare in Stay Lucky Eh? and Children of the Stones as Link. Towards the end of his career he had a recurring roll in Jeeves and Wooster as Sir Watkyn Bassett.

Oddly Henry McCarthy, playing Dr. Beavis, looks the spitting image of Roderick Spode, played by John Turner in Jeeves & Wooster!

Dr. Henderson, who's had quite a prominent role in the first two episodes, is played by Antony Webb. I can't recognise anything else he'd been in on his CV.

I can't find this episode's nurse Christine Bradley on IMDB.

Ransome is played by Derek Smee who I will have seen in Agatha Christie's Poirot as the Auctioneer in Dead Man's Mirror.

The slightly odd looking Auto Plastics Secretary that Ransome encounters is played by Constance Carling.

Liz: What a frock!
Philip: Did you spot she's an Auton? The plastic looking face is the giveaway!

Constance Carling She returns in the next story, the Silurians, as a Plague Victim in The Silurians and as a Technician in The Armageddon Factor. In Monty Python's Flying Circus she's a Theatregoer in It's the Arts while in Doomwatch she's a Bar Customer in Tomorrow, the Rat which can be found on The Doomwatch DVD,

The same Doomwatch episode is a first appearance in that show for the version of The Minister played by Hamilton Dyce's, who plays Major General Scobie here. His Doomwatch character also returns in the episode Survival Code, which is missing. He'd also recently appeared in the third season of Out of the Unknown playing Dr. Lanning in Liar! which is likewise sadly missing. He was in the Adam Adamant Lives! episode The Terribly Happy Embalmers as George.

Two members of the production team crop up on screen in this story, and both can be seen in this episode. The original actor playing the UNIT Commissionaire proved to be inadequate and was thrown off set with producer Derrick Sherwin, then still an Equity Card holder, taking his place!

The lead Auton is played by the suspiciously sounding Ivor Orton..... who was in fact non equity card holder Assistant Script Editor Robin Squire. Initially pressed into service as an emergency stand in Squire was so good that he was used for all the main Auton appearances. He returns as the BBC3 TV Cameraman in The Dæmons, a Starliner Dweller in Full Circle and the Pharos Project Boffin in Logopolis.

During the lengthy "escape from the hospital" sequence, while the Doctor's in the shower Liz asks "Why does the Doctor have a tattoo?" when we see Pertwee's Dragon Tattoo, gained after a night out while he was in the Navy. I tell her that the generally accepted explanation is it's a Time Lord criminal brand.