009 - Planet Of Giants

Broadcast:

31^sd October - 14^th November 1964

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Ian, Barbara, Susan

Adversary:

Size

Written by:

Louis Marks

Director:

Mervyn Pinfield, Douglas Camfield

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

David Whitaker

Producer:

Verity Lambert

Average Viewers:

8.57m (8.4, 8.4, 8.9)

Summary: When you're only an inch tall, the whole world is against you but when chemicals, murder and corruption are added to the mix is there any way of making everything right?

Because Planet Of Giants was the opening story of Doctor Who's second season it gained the dubious honour of being the first three part story, something that wouldn't happen again until Delta And The Bannermen in 1987 when the show was being crippled out of existence. You could argue that An Unearthly Child was in fact comprised of a single episode story and a three episode story, since there were no story titles applied at this time, only episode titles, but the official records show it as a single four episode story because that is how it was produced. Interestingly though, that opening story was original intended to develop into an adventure featuring the main characters being reduced to a tiny size and experiencing all manner of problem in a class room... The idea was deemed impractical and was shelved in favour of the caveman story but the idea was still something that the production team were keen to use and so here it was almost a year later opening the second season instead (with some detail changes and a new story) Something else that Planet Of Giants has in common with An Unearthly Child is that it too was actually produced as a four episode story. However, it was decided that although it was a good story and would normally have been acceptable, as it was to be the season opener it needed a bit more punch or a bit less flab. Consequently episodes three and four were cut down and edited into one giving it another dubious honour - that of being the longest episode so far (and I dare say it kept that record, though I have yet to prove this). Excluding titles and credits it is already over 25 minutes rather than the average 23. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

After The Reign Of Terror, Doctor Who went off air for six weeks (although production had continued and wouldn't rest for a few more months) and a lot had happened that is worth noting... The Sun newspaper had started publication, Malta and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) obtained independence from the UK, the Warren Commission published the first official investigation into Kennedy's death, and the Shinkansen rail system (otherwise known as the Bullet Train) became the world's first high-seed railway in Japan in readiness for the Tokyo Olympic Games where Great Britain won 4 Gold, 12 Silver, and 2 Bronze (12 of the 18, including all 4 golds were in Athletics). The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, the first multi-person spacecraft and the first without space suits, while Martin Luther King Jr became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Similarly, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin became the first British Woman to win the prize for Chemistry (for determining structures of biochemical substances through the use of X-Rays). Parliamentary elections in the UK saw the Labour Party gain control of the country from the Conservatives after 13 years and Harold Wilson, the new Prime Minister, created the Secretary of State for Wales which would become the Welsh Office and ultimately lead to the National Assembly For Wales the next time Labour came to power in 1997 - I mention this here because the revived Doctor Who is made in Cardiff by BBC Wales. Oh and on the other side of the Atlantic, Canada had a new flag!

In music, Pete Townsend destroyed his first guitar (in the name of auto-destructive art), something that would become a regular occurrence, The Rolling Stones made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Kinks released their first album and Dr. Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype Moog synthesizer - paving the way for much over-use of synthesizer music in the 1980s (Keff McCulloch, I'm looking at you) Topping the Charts were Herman's Hermits "I'm Into Something Good", Roy Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman" and Sandie Shaw's "(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me" (Orbison would return to the top during Planet Of Giants) while in the cinemas were Goldfinger, The Gorgon featuring future Doctors Peter Cushing and Patrick Troughton and The Black Torment also featuring Patrick Troughton. During the stories broadcast, the House Of Commons voted to abolish the death penalty for murder and ITV started daily broadcasts of soap opera "Crossroads" which would run until 1988, so starting a year after Doctor Who and ending two years before (it would also see its own revival in the new millennium running from 2001 to 2003, two years before Doctor Who returned)

With all that going on, viewers may well have forgotten that the Doctor had acquired a new cloak at the end of The Reign Of Terror but he would be wearing it throughout Planet Of Giants and it would come in very handy at the end... Meanwhile, back at the beginning things aren't going too well. Barbara burns her hand on an over-heating TARDIS console, the doors open all on their own and the scanner screen explodes (or at least shows an image of glass blowing out. Following events in The Edge Of Destruction it's not clear whether this is an effect or a message from the TARDIS) The Doctor snaps at Barbara and is quite brash with her but moments later realises and apologises "I forget niceties under pressure". He explains that he tried to sidestep from the 18th century to the 20th (since the location was pretty close already) and it clearly went a bit wrong. The serial's first line fluffs come early in this first scene as William Hartnell seems to flounder around 2 minutes in and William Russell exchanges glances with Jacqueline Hill as if to say "How do we recover this?" but Hartnell picks up again. However, as he ushers them out of the TARDIS he starts to say that it is perfectly safe, but changes to 'quite' half way through. That said, the rest of the story is very solid from both performers and crew with only one set wobble (when the Doctor climes the 'rock face', which is particularly unfortunately but not obvious unless you look for it at the top of the screen) and this is the first serial without even a single camera bump (accepting that we'll probably never know whether or not Marco Polo had any)

The 'cleanness' of this serial could be attributed to two factors that came from it's complex requirements. It had the honour of being the first serial produced entirely at Television Centre (Studio 4 to be precise, and excluding the pre-filming at Ealing) and technical wizard Mervyn Pinfield was in the director's chair. Added to that, Production Assistant from An Unearthly Child and Marco Polo, Douglas 'Dougie' Camfield stepped up to direct episode 4 (although his episode would be cut and combined with one of Pinfield's, he was nobly given full and sole credit for what became episode 3) and would go on to become one of the best loved and respected directors on the show, partly due to his military grade leadership and control. The sets are limited in places, in particular the 'rock face' has unfortunate seems in it and the laboratory background is simply black drapes rather than any attempt at a photo-blowup but over all they are very effective. The 'giant' briefcase is particularly impressive and the use if different levels is highly effective with Barbara, for example, looking up to talk to Ian while they were physically on the same level next to each other in the studio. The cameras in TC4 enabled high and low angles to add to the illusion and the only time I felt let down (whist still acknowledging how good it was) was the long shot that pans up from the miniature TARDIS in the crazy paving to the distant house - if done today a different lens would have been used with a lower angle to accentuate the scaled distance, but then again what we see is correct for a large scale camera, it just doesn't show it from the regular characters' perspective.

One of the reasons the 'minuscules' story was abandoned at the start of the first series, other than technical impossibilities, was a lack substance in the story. That was something that Louis Marks brought to this retry. more than half way through the first episode, at 16 minutes we suddenly find ourselves watching a completely new story as we meet the full size humans. Unfortunately, at this point it gets a bit grown-up and Farrow's delivery feels a bit staid. Marks's main influence was Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" which condemned indiscriminate and untested pesticides two years earlier and would lead the way in banning DDT and the like. In Planet Of Giants, the new substance which effectively kills all creatures is DN-6 and in her reduced size, Barbara is severely at risk when she comes into contact with it. It is rather curious then that she remains silent about touching it for such a long time, even when clear opportunities arises three times. This does, of course, add an extra layer of peril and adds to Barbara's drive to warn people that is more meaningful to younger viewers than the adult take on the story with its corruption and financial motivation

The DVD extras for Planet Of Giants include a reconstruction of the original episodes 3 and 4 with Carole Anne Ford and William Russell reprising their roles nearly 50 years later to record the missing audio. This gives a fascinating look at the scenes that were cut and the serial really is better without them. There is greater depth to the DN-6 corruption, which drags the pace and tone down. There are scenes with a cat ingesting the chemical (most of which would presumably have been described off-screen), rather than just providing a menacing cliffhanger with extreme close-ups in the first episode. Primarily though, there is a whole sub-plot with the switchboard-operator/post-mistress and her policeman husband which I just found to be frustratingly irritating. Originally, Verity Lambert requested that the two original episodes be retained along with the new edited version for alternative over-seas sales but due to standard BBC policy nothing remained in the archives by the end of 1969. With reference to the edited version that survived, there are only two moments that give away its heritage as two. There is a dip to black to indicate a passing of time rather than showing the travellers scaling down the writing on the 'giant' notepad - in itself not unusual but both sides of the fade show the very same location. The other indicator is what feels like, and is a cliffhanger moment half way through when Barbara collapses. Audiences in 1964 would not have been aware of the episode compression and probably wouldn't have noticed.

To be critical for a moment, some of the film inserts look very oblique and there are slight technical issues in the superimposition but for the most part everything holds up. There are two directorial errors though, both involving spacial awareness. On one occasion, Ian is waving the others to get behind a gas tap, only he waves them to his left which would have been towards the front of the tap as he approaches from the right. The second comes right at the end. The Doctor has brought a 'giant' seed into the TARDIS (carried safely in his cloak) at it is seen to shrink to its normal size with some very good camera trickery. He picks it up to show that it is back to normal (actually, it is the TARDIS and everyone else that grows to their normal size, perhaps this whole scene is hocum!) There is then a close-up shot of it in his fingers, unfortunately William Hartnell is seen to look to his left and presents it that way even though we know that Ian is on the other side of the room. These are minor criticisms of an otherwise creative and successful serial. To put in context, Land Of The Giants was an American TV series that aired four years after Planet Of Giants and had a budget of $250,000 per episode. It had a very similar premise but Planet Of Giants was made with a budget of just £2000 per episode! In that context it works very well indeed and I scored it 75%

I will make a few final comments that didn't quite fit into the flow of the main review but are worth a mention. The Doctor makes reference with Susan about air-raids and Zeppelins, hinting at yet another previous adventure before we met them. Almost backtracking on my comments about the animated reconstructions of missing episodes, there are a number of extreme close-ups in Planet Of Giants, not just of the cat but also of Forrester on the phone but they still feel unusually and are almost certainly there to add to the 'giant' effect. Finally in the first episode Farrow is seen to light a cigarette, which I believe was rare even then and might possibly be the only time it happens in Doctor Who, though it is worth noting that it is only to make use of the matchbox that Ian fell into (having said that, the Master smokes a cigar in The Mind Of Evil as an indication of his character). Oh and the TARDIS is referred to as "TARDIS", "The TARDIS" and "The Ship", not unusual at this time but rare to hear all three.