The Doctor finally arrives back on Earth in the 1960s.
But before Ian Chesterton has the chance to say, “London 1964”, there is a small problem that needs to be fixed: themselves!
This is the first three part episode. As usual with early Hartnell serials, each episode has a individual title;
Planet of Giants
Dangerous Journey
Crisis
You can kinda guess the plot from the titles, can’t you?
The TARDIS is vworping merrily along when the Doctor discovers that something seems a bit iffy with the console.
“Hmmmm, how rum.”
The Doctor checks the fault locator but that shows that everything is all ticketty-boo.
It is at this point when the TARDIS doors suddenly open just as the Ship begins to materialise
“Oh, my whiskers!”
Ian, Barbara, and Susan look up from their game of Buckeroo.
“Doctor, what is going on? I very nearly got Susan to make the donkey buck.”
“Don’t you see, my boy? The doors have opened in flight! The pressure between inside and out could cause the TARDIS to buckeroo! Materialising with open doors is a huge no-no!”
In the end, all that happens is a wheelie bin falling over, the donkey’s tossing all the junk off its back, and Barbara chipping a nail. Oh, and the scanner screen cracking.
“I told you not to look at it, Cyberton. Your face could scare a horse. Now, shall we see what is outside? I am sure that is as safe as safe can be. The glass shattered because of stuff.”
Whistling Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman, the Doctor exits. Everyone else, having nothing better to do, follows him.
“Mmmm, I hope that I can find a spare wheel for my cherry-red 1966 Schwinn Sting-Ray here.”
The landscape surround the TARDIS is unusual. Cliffs made out of some odd substance, rough to the touch but placed in an almost precise manner. Are they concrete?
“We should split up. That always goes well for us. First one to get captured by a tentacled nasty, call out and the others will rescue you. Good idea, young people, hmmm?”
The Doctor and Barbara go one way, Ian and Susan the other. The former staying near the TARDIS in case of tentacled nasties, the latter adventuring beyond.
Barbara and the Doctor haven’t gone far when they see what looks like a giant segmented snake hanging over the edge of the concrete cliffs.
“Doctor, is that a grand serpent?”
“No, it looks more like an earthworm. I shall call him ‘Jim’, hmmm. It is dead. Alas poor Jim! I never knew him well.”
Centimetres away (knowing wink from writer to the reader of this unreview), Ian and Susan come across an ant. A giant ant. But one not even as big as the other giant ants that our heroes (spoilers!) will meet next season in The Web Planet. Not Susan though because she will not be there (spoilers!).
This ant is dead. It has ceased to be. They don’t bother to name the ant.
Both the earthworm and the ant are dead. No sign of a struggle. Whatever killed them, killed them immediately. Are we looking for a cockroach with a grudge? A femme fatale ladybird who has been done wrong by the men in her life, so has hired a hitman to rub out her lovers?
Have our heroes arrived on a planet that just so happens to be populated by super-sized creepy-crawlies that bear a remarkable resemblance to the teeny-weeny creepy-crawlies of Earth?
No.
It becomes clear where they are. Especially when Susan and Ian find a pack of cigarettes and a matching matchbox.
“They say that smoking kills, Susan. So mind that none of these ciggies falls on you, it could snap you like a twig.”
Ian gets into the matchbox because why the hell not?
“This must be some part of an exhibition. Y’know of common household items made massive.”
“And placed in the middle of concrete cliffs? I don’t think so. What if we have been shrunk like in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?”
If so, they should count their lucky stars it isn’t more akin to Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.
Susan’s thought becomes reality when they hear the clomping of footsteps somewhere near.
Susan pegs it but Ian just stays still because, again, why the hell not?
The matchbox is picked up. Cue Ian wobbling inside like Oliver Reed on a 1980s chat show, holding onto a matchstick and wondering whether he should have stayed in bed.
Susan is soon found. Not by the owner of the clomping shoes but by her grandfather and Barbara.
The Doctor has also twigged about being shrunk. He didn’t need oversized props to tell him that.
“Someone picked up the matchbox that Ian was in!”
“Hmmmm, Chepperson is so silly. Help me up this rock wossname and I shall see if I can see the man who snatched him.”
The Doctor peers over and sees a ginormous garden path, grass, and Ian’s unaware kidnapper.
(Slight tangent here but am I the only one who thinks the correct spelling of ‘ginormous’ is wrong? I always have to check it in the dictionary when I use it.)
“I see him!”
“The giant?”
“No, a mouse in a bomber jacket, who do you think I mean? Of course the giant!”
The giant isn’t a giant. He is a normal sized man of a normal age with normal looks and a normal voice. How unusual.
To be slightly less vague, the man is Arnold Farrow, a government scientist. He has come to meet with a man called Forester. Why? Why not?
“Hullo, Mr Forester!”
“Hello, Mr Farrow! Have you come with good news?”
“Not for you, no. I feel that I should deny your application for DN6. The pesticide is simply too strong and indiscriminate in what it kills. We tested it in the lab and lost half a dozen research scientists before we gave them gloves and masks to wear. Not all of God’s creatures are bad for plants, some are good and helpful for plants.”
“So it won’t be licensed?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t suppose a bribe would help? Would you like hard cold cash in a brown envelope or my own severed ears served to you on a silver platter?”
“I’d plump for the money if I were dishonest; I have ears of my own. But I am not, so your bribery will also go in my report to the government.”
“In that case, I had better shoot you.”
Forester shoots Farrow. Bang!
Farrow crumbles onto the ground. By which I mean he falls down. He isn’t an OXO cube.
Mere metres away, the Doctor and his female companions are scared out of their wits by what must sound like armageddon.
“That doesn’t sound good, grandfather! We should see if Ian is alright!”
So they do. A journey of metres must be miles to them. Think of The Hobbit but have that set on a garden path and you’d get the gist. No fire-breathing dragon but there is a cat spitting fury.
They walk slowly, stepping over dead insects, avoiding dead bees that plummet out of the sky, without stopping except for toilet breaks (“Damn my bladder, mmm!”).
Seeing all these dead insects, the Doctor cautions Susan and Barbara not to eat anything until they are back safely in the TARDIS.
What exactly are the girls going to eat? Grass? Earwigs on toast? Centipede ravioli? Butterfly kebabs? Perhaps the Doctor is warning them not to eat at any miniature Wimpy Bars that they might encounter on the way?
More realistically his warning is to foreshadow what is coming up later on in the story.
Now, how about Ian? Our male teacher chum is in the matchbox which is next to the corpse of Farrow. Not for long though.
Ian is gazing at Farrow when the Doctor,. Barbara, and Susan joins him.
“This is a kerfuffle, Doctor.”
“Quite, quite, my boy!”
“Shall I find a giant piece of chalk and draw an outline around the body, grandfather?”
“No, that would be tampering with a crime scene. Also, it is a silly suggestion.”
“If only we still had Columbo’s phone number…”
“Columbo?”
“Yes, Miss Wright, the man in the dirty mac who discovered America.”
Uncharacteristically, the Doctor decides that they should just go back to the TARDIS. One snag.
The giant cat!
This was the cliffhanger to the first episode. How do you think our heroes escaped? Bribery with a wheelbarrow full of creamy milk for the moggy? Maybe they pumped the poor pussycat full of mayonnaise? Did the Doctor throw some Dreamies over the fence?
No. They just stood still until the cat got bored.
When the cat has been distracted by billions of tiny warlocks in a nearby hedge, our heroes sigh in relief. A relief that is ended by the return of Forester.
The Doctor and Susan jump into the grass (Snoop Dogg would be so proud), while Ian and Barbara hide in Farrow’s leather briefcase.
Forester isn’t by himself. He has a colleague called Smithers.
“This man is dead!”
“No, he is just asleep. Shut up and get in the house!”
“No, no, he is dead, Forester!”
“I might have shot him a little. Only in self-defence. He came at me with pliers and a ruler. Um.”
“No, it was murder. You can tell from the angle of the bullet hole and the blood spray and the smoking gun in your hand.”
“Really?”
“Of course not, twerp, but I know you well enough to realise that a bullet is always what you fall back on to solve problems.”
“Not always…”
“Remember the traffic warden? He only warned you that a tail light was cracked and you shot him in the sternum!”
“Fine! It was murder! But you have to help me cover it up! If you don’t, the pesticide (to be referred to as DN6 throughout this review) will never be made and sold. You’ll never get a trophy wife if you have no cash!”
“Sigh, what can I do to help?”
“I have a boat…”
“But we are twenty miles inland and nowhere near a river or lake…”
“Canal boat. Farrow’s boat. We can make it look like an accident. Perhaps he fell on a marlinspike? Burn the boat with him aboard?”
Smithers and Forester pick up the stiff Farrow’s stuff including the briefcase which is taken indoors and placed in the laboratory.
As soon as Barbara and Ian got in the briefcase, you knew it would be moved. Lesson 1 of being miniaturised: never get in anything that can be moved/squished/mated with.
The Doctor and Susan, having watched this development with horror, decide that they should rescue the other two.
“Shall I MacGyver a rope made out of plaited grass, Susan?”
“No, we should go up the drainpipe.”
Luckily the drainpipe isn’t smooth inside. Maybe acid was poured down the drain causing the plastic to become pitted? Clearly Forester and Smithers weren’t banking on Borrowers sneaking into the lab.
Having been dumped onto a work surface, the briefcase vomits out Ian and Barbara. Or rather they tumble out dizzy and in need of letting the technicolour snake escape their pieholes.
“We need to find our way back to the Doctor and Susan, Babs. Shall we explore?”
So they explore. The work surface is pretty bare for a laboratory. It just has a gas tap, a phone, bowls of seeds that look like peanuts, and rubber bottle stoppers. No bubbling serums and chemical potions? What sort of self-respecting scientist would not have these?
“Don’t touch anything, Babs. Either this place reeks of death or you are wearing a new perfume.”
Barbara touches one of the seed/peanuts. Why? To see what it feels like? Was she a bit peckish and hoped that it might be worth a nibble?
Ian, being the all-round action hero, figures that making a rope, so that they can get to the floor, is their best bet.
“I will have a shufty in the briefcase and see if I can make a rope out of paperclips and packets of condoms. Barbara, you keep an eye out for any giants.”
Ian goes off and leaves Barbara.
She doesn’t quite feel herself. What is making her feel iffy? She hums Beck’s Loser to make herself feel better.
A fly lands near Barbara, causing her to scream. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
Ian comes rushing back, a fifteen-foot condom (feel free to convert this back into centimetres) entangled around one foot. Which is enough to scare the fly who buzzes off and lands on the seeds and instantly pushes up the daisies.
“Do you think those seeds killed the fly? Seems to be something glistening on them. Like I said, don’t touch anything.”
Barbara thinks she might be infected with something but doesn’t tell Ian. Partly because of Susan’s voice interrupting her but mainly because… actually I don’t know why she doesn’t tell Ian. Shame? Not wanting to seem like a burden? Not wanting to make a fuss?
Anyway. Susan. Her voice is coming from a sink. It is also being amplified by the sink which is how Ian and Barbara can hear it. She hasn’t got a voice like a foghorn.
The Doctor and Susan have got up the drain a bit sharpish, haven’t they? Perhaps the Doctor is more spry than he looks. Or the Doctor Who production team didn’t want to waste time with our heroes climbing in real time.
All our heroes have to do now is go down the plughole, try not to plummet to their deaths, and head back to the TARDIS. Simpler said than done because Forester and Smithers have returned with plans to wash the blood off their hands.
Blood off their hands? Farrow was shot, yes? Surely there wouldn’t be that much blood if they were humping him via his arms and legs?. If there was that much blood, how come our teeny weeny heroes didn’t go paddling in the pool of blood? What have Forester and Smithers been doing to the corpse? Cutting it up? Playing basketball with Farrow’s head?
What with the gruesome twosome returning, The Doctor and Susan escape back down the plughole and hide in that overflow bit. Ian and Barbara hide behind each other (don’t ask how they do this).
Smithers sticks the plug in and starts washing his hands as he hums a selection of S Club 7 songs. Once he has stopped murdering music, he pulls the plug out.
And this is the cliffhanger. First a cat looking a bit peevish, and now a man pulling a plug out of a full sink.
Once Smithers has done washing, he goes off somewhere far away from the sink.
Ian and Barbara rush over to the sink. Have the Doctor and Susan drowned? No. They had sheltered in the overflow pipe as any sane person would.
During all this, Forester has been mucking about with Farrow’s damning report on DN6. When it has been mucked about with thoroughly, he wipes away the Tippex and ink blots from his fingers, and allows himself a smug grin.
Now he has to call the ministry to back up the doctored report. but won’t they know it isn’t Farrow?
Forester disguises his voice by pinching his nose and speaking in a Yorkshire accent.
“Aye, by gum, Ministry! I am just calling to let you know that I approve of DN6. Nowt wrong with this pesticide. I will be sending a report, so quit yer mitherin’, boys. Down with Lancashire!”
Overhearing this is the switchboard operator, Hilda Rowse, at the local exchange. For some reason she finds Forester dead suspicious.
“How rum. ‘Ere, Bert, come here, ya lummox!”
Bert is her husband and a policeman.
“Something odd happening at Farrow’s cottage. He doesn’t sound like himself.”
“Probably been at the gin, you know what these lardy-dah scientists are like, Hilda.”
During this, our heroes have come across a notebook. A notebook which is open at the page where the recipe/equation for DN6 is. Convenient.
With them being tiny, and the notebook being big, the Doctor gets Ian and Susan to copy out the equations into his own notebook. When done, the Doctor goggles.
“Hmmm, this is dangerous! Do these humans not know what they have unleashed? This pesticide would kill animals as well as insects. We should alert someone.”
But how? And who? But mainly how?
Apparently the police is the who, and the how is the telephone.
“Hmmm, I would prefer a green telephone but this will just have to do. Susan and Chopsockyton, you go and find some corks with which to lift the receiver up. Barbara, you just keel over and look sickly over there. right? Now get to it!”
Barbara is really starting to feel the whammy from the DN6. But she helps the others to lift the receiver and call the police.
But! Their voices can’t be heard. Because they are so small, their voices sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Luckily everything is not lost for Hilda at the telephone exchange is now certain that something untoward is going on at the cottage.
Hilda and Bert are now thinking hard.
At the cottage, Barbara finally faints from DN6 poisoning. And Ian finally notices that she has been nobbled.
Our heroes catch a whiff of the DN6 niff on Barbara’s hands. What does it smell of? Sea Devil poo?
When Barbara wakes up…
“Barbara, you stupid girl! Why didn’t you tell us that you had touched the DN6?”
“I don’t know, Doctor, I didn’t want to worry you all.”
“Hmmm, well, it is alright. When we return to our normal size, the perfidious pesticide will remain the size it is now. The effects of it in your bloodstream will disappear. And then you can cook our dinner, and I might reward you all with watching Robert Smith and The Cure in concert.”
I am not sure that it would. When the TARDIS was made smaller, everything inside it shrunk as well. So if reversed, wouldn’t the pesticide also increase in size?
In the office of the cottage, when trying to call for a takeaway pizza, Smithers and Forester discover that the phone is engaged. Coming back into the lab, Forester takes away the corks and places the handset back on the phone WITHOUT WONDERING WHO DID IT. Ahem!
No, really, you’ve just committed a murder and then you discover something has been moved in a room you know for a fact that nobody else has been in, and you don’t stop to question it? Fine, whatever!
Handset replaced, Hilda Rowse rings the cottage
“Ooh, ‘ello, this is Hilda at the phone exchange. We just received a call from this number but there was nobody on the line. Is everything alright, dearie, or are you one of those perverts who gets their kicks giving themselves a treat when randomly calling people?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. I haven’t made any such calls and never would.”
“Can I speak to Mister Farrow?”
“Erm, yeah, I’ll just get him. Wait a mo…”
Forester decides to impersonate the dead man.
“Hello! Itsa me, Farrow! What-a can I help you with, bella?”
“Weren’t you from Yorkshire last time?”
“Um…”
Now Hilda knows something is off. She ends the call and calls to her husband.
“Bert! I think you had better investigate the Farrow cottage.”
Having nothing better to do than stop children from paddling in the duck pond, Bert pops off to the cottage thinking, “If I play my cards right, there could be a Big Finish boxset with me and the missus, Rowse & Rowse, yeah…”
A bright idea and a decidedly brighter idea than the one that the Doctor just had…
“We shall start a fire! That way people will come and wonder, and when they come inside they will discover the dastardly DN6!”
Sure, people might be attracted by the flames, and they might come inside if they were fireproof, and they might find the formula for DN6 but would they understand that it is poisonous to more than just pesky insects? And would they care? And why, if they were fireproof, would they waste time going to the cottage when they could be living inside a volcano with Flame Princess?
“Hmm, we shall use this gas tap and this matchstick to ignite a cannister of DN6. What could possibly go wrong?”
Ask Wile E. Coyote. This sounds like a plan he would make.
Elsewhere in the cottage, Smithers has been taking a dekko at Farrow’s notes (the ones that Forester didn’t alter). He is horrified at learning something he already knew.
“Forester! This DN6 is poisonous to animals as well as insects! You cannot possibly allow this to go on the market!”
“Duh. You knew this already though.”
“Did I?”
“Yep. Anyway, put your hands up!”
Forester has resorted to gunplay again.
In case you have been sleeping through this unreview, and who could blame you, this is what Forester has done and what he plans…
He has killed Farrow because this scientist thinks that a pesticide that kills off animals (and possibly humans) is wrong. He has hidden the dead body. He now plans to kill Smithers and will presumably dump his body next to where he dumped Farrow’s stiff. Then he will put DN6 on the market, make a lot of money, and then lose all that money plus his savings when the environmental disaster that occurs from the use of DN6 causes everyone to sue his arse off. Oh, and he will be jailed for the double murders.
Can you see a slight flaw here? Even if Forester succeeds, he will lose.
Anyway…
Forester gets Smithers to go into the laboratory. Having learnt his lesson from shooting Farrow, he plans on killing Smithers is an easy-to-wipe area such as the lab.
The DN6 bomb is on the work surface, our heroes have set it alight and ran away and down the plughole, and Forester decides to postpone capping Smithers so that he can stick his face right up to the aerosol can and open flame.
BOOM!
It goes off in the face of our moronic murderer. And doesn’t start a fire contrary to what the Doctor intended.
Smithers grabs the gun just as Bert Rowse, police constable, enters the cottage and takes the gun away from him.
“‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello! What is all this then? I think I shall have to take you two to the station. You are both arrested. You can explain everything to me down there. I’ll get me Hilda to whip you up a plate of cucumber sandwiches. Come along now.”
Forester’s plans are foiled. The environment is safe. Forester will be arrested for murder. Huzzah! Smithers will be arrested for aiding and abetting in the murder of Farrow. Huzzah?
Having whooshed down the sink, the drain, and along the garden path, our heroes arrive intact at the TARDIS.
The regaining of their normal size? Simples! The Doctor simply presses a button and they are all returned to their usual size and girth and suchlike. But the DN6 remains tiny and thus not remotely fatal.
I am still not buying the fact that the DN6 in Barbara would remain little but… whatever.
“Hmmm, may I suggest that we all need a good wash after that close contact with the pesticide? I wonder where we will land next?”
The scanner reveals, after static interference and a thump from the Doctor, water.
At least there are no more giant insects.
Fin!
This is, arguably, an environmental story. If it had been made now, certain subsections of the fandom would consider it woke, but luckily for us this was shown in the 1960s and those fans hadn’t been whelped yet. The green concerns of this story wouldn’t be approached again until the 1970s with The Green Death or Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
William Hartnell is not so much the lead here as the Doctor. All the adventuring and discovering is mostly down to his younger colleagues. But he does get his fair share of the action, just not action involving daring-do or anything more strenuous than walking. He always steals any scene he is in.
Being paired with Billy, Carole Ann Ford also has less to do but is still a pleasure to watch. Especially in the first episode.
Now, William Russell as Ian; he is pretty much the hero of this mini-serial. He gets to scramble into bags, matchboxes, condoms, and is essentially the all-male action hero. But as good as he is, and the rest of the regular cast. not as good as…
…Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright who is acting her socks off. Not that the other characters notice. She manages to underplay and overplay the poisoning at the same time. If you watch her, her face is doing a lot of acting all by itself.
And the other actors. Um.
They do a good job at playing one-dimensional characters but they are ciphers, motivation instead of being a proper person. Forester and Smithers have less character than the sodding cat but are still watchable. Although I would have rather watched the cat.
None make you want to know more about them although honourable mentions must go to Rosemary Johnson and Fred Ferris as Hilda and Bert Rowse who despite being doing stereotypical country acting, yet still manage to be more engaging than Alan Tilvern as the one-note Forester and Reginald Barratt as Smithers.
Despite my naysaying of some members of the cast, I still enjoyed this story a lot. The shrinking of the main cast may have been nicked from a B movie but it works. If this had been a four-parter as intended, I think it may have been ruined but three episodes just about glides smoothly.
A story that any fan should watch at least once.
Random Shoes 