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Spearhead from Space Format Reviewed: DVD Review The third incarnation of The Doctor begins with the introduction of one os the most iconic adversaries in this era of the show, the Autons with the Nestene consciousness as the mastermind. As with all regerations, there is always a great deal of uncetainty and speculation about whether or not the next era of the show would be successful. Making this a slightly different transition than the last one was the fact that Spearhead from Space marks the shows transition into being shot and shown in colour. The move into the 1970's can definitely be seen with this story. After being exiled to Earth and forced into regeneration by the Time Lords, The Doctor stumbles out of the TARDIS into a clearing in a wood and collapses. Meteorites have been landing in the area and UNIT are marshalling the site and they take the Doctor to the hospital. There he eventually recovers and makes for the TARDIS and is shot by a UNIT soldier, and the TARDIS key is given to Brigadeer Lethbridge-Stewart. He is sent back to the hospital, but then comes round and escapes in an antique car wearing a doctors clothes. Meanwhile, there are mysterious goings on at a local plasics factory and an employee goes to UNIT with a tale of a new person at the factory, Channing. The company are making plastic faximilies of people for Madame Tussauds amongst other things, and bizarrely are doing ones of government and military officials, including Lethbridge-Stewarts superior in the army. These people are replaced by Auton faximilies, doing the bidding of the Nestene consciousness. Finally agreeing to work with UNIT, and realising that the plastics factory is the key, the Doctor goes there and defeats the Nestene swarm leader with a machine that interrupts the mental energy transmission. The remaining Autons then collapse, the replaced people regain consciousness and the invasion is halted. As is only to be expected, the production team generally want to get a new era off to a rousing start, and to go with this story here was a good decision. One real bonus with this story is that we don't have the interminable choosing of clothes that seems to be such a feature in post-regeneration stories. He does mention it later on that he needs some, but not the going through a wardrobe scenes that we see in other stories. What this story also skilfully does is introduce the context for the era to come. Establishing the context for the Earthbound era with UNIT was essential here, and it was done in such a way that it was integral to the story, but not so that you come away thinking that it was the only reason to have the story. The regular cast is now massive, with very few guest actors to consider. Jon Pertwee starts to put his stamp on the character of The Doctor, and he is joined directly by Caroline John as Liz Shaw, the direct companion to the Doctor. Both make encouraging starts in their roles and they do seem to have a good rapport between them. The other main character here is Brigadeer Lethbridge-Stewart played by Nicholas Courtney. Despite a bad fake moustache, Courtney alwqays gives a committed performance and does the blusterfull army officer role very well. The guest cast is largely unremarkable, but Hugh Burden as Channing really stands out as he gives a great haunting performance. I think a lot of the success of this story can be attributed to the Autons. They are a fantastic adversary for The Doctor, and I think in Earthbound stories the ones where ordinary objects are taken and given the Who twist, such as shop menequins here, it gives the story a real edge. There are however some less successful elements in the story. The old couple who discovered the Nestene 'meteor' didn't really work at all, and the special effects for the swarm leader both in the tentacles that assault The Doctor and the containment unit look wrong to me. Disbelief over these less successful elements can be achieved fairly easily though due to the success of the better elements of the story. Overall, Spearhead from Space is a very good start to the third incarnation of The Doctor. The move into colour was an important one for the show, and the establishment of an Earthbound era was achieved well. There were some shortcomings with some effects, but the success of the adversaries in the Autons was such that some little details can be overlooked. Rating:  |