Doctor Who:
Spearhead From Space
By Robert Holmes
“You really believe in a
man who has helped to save the world twice, with the power to change his
physical appearance? An alien who travels though time and space, in a police
box!”
The newly regenerated 3rd
Doctor has arrived on earth the worst for wear as he has been traumatize by
being forced to regenerate by the Time Lords after his trial. His exile on earth hasn’t started off all
that well as he is hospitalized and almost kidnapped and then grazed by a
bullet from a UNIT soldier. Not a very
good start in your new body. Over
shadowed by those events was a mysterious asteroid shower with quite a few of
them making their way to earth. But the
problem is these are not your ordinary space debris as The Nestene Intelligence
is was part of that and that act was the first salvo fired in the invasion of
Earth. With the control of plastic and
the plastic creatures the Autons to control its up to The new Doctor and his
new companion Liz Shaw to stop them with the aid of UNIT and the
Brigadier.
Spearhead From Space is
one of my favorite new Doctor story if not my favorite one. Robert Holmes sets himself up as one of the
premier Doctor Who writers with this one after his previous luke warm offerings
of The Krotons and the really bad The Space Pirates. But with Spearhead From Space he hit it out
of the park with a really good alien invasion style story. Robert Holmes also created one of the more
frightening villains in the Autons.
Imagine walking down the High Street and then seeing the mannequin
coming alive and crashing out the store window.
Just a classic and scary scene that makes you remember the story.
Spearhead From Space is a
great start for Jon Pertwee who instantly asserts himself into the character
and gives The Doctor a commanding presence. Yes they tone down the silliness a bit and
make Pertwee’s Doctor more serious and more authoritative. Plus they also incorporated the use of gadgets
as it was evident in his first story that making gadgets would be a central
thing for Jon Pertwee’s character.
Spearhead From Space
started the UNIT years for Doctor Who.
In what would be a staple for this era would be The Doctor working for
the Brigadier and UNIT. Spearhead
started this off with a brilliant introduction to UNIT and some of the soldiers
like Sgt Benton who we’ve meet before in The Invasion but in a minor
capacity. Spearhead also gave us Liz Shaw who was an
equal of The Doctor and who was a Doctor in her own right. She starts off pretty well and her
introduction was to the crazy world is in ways pretty comical.
Spearhead from Space is a
pretty good story and once we get past the introduction and The Doctor loopy
from the regeneration you have a pretty good story with lots going on. You have the Autons and Nestene plotting to
take over the Earth with plastic duplicates and The Doctor investigating how to
stop them. Plus you have a pretty good
battle scene in episode 4 when The Autons start the attack.
Spearhead From Space also
had a big chore of trying to get the viewers to like the new direction of the
show plus the new Doctor debut. A major change and fresh direction with The
Doctor being earthbound was a huge gamble and if Spearhead From Space didn’t
starts things off well then we don’t have a 50th Anniversary to
celebrate this year. Spearhead From
Space is one of those classic stories, by one of the shows classic writers and starts
of a classic era for The Third Doctor in style.
Grade A
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