9: Planet of Giants

Before Watching

Remember how I told you that I used to read about Doctor Who in Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly and various books? Well, somewhere along the line I once read that “Planet of Giants” was allegedly one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made.

Well, I’m taking that with a pinch of salt. “The Sensorites” has the reputation of being a story which puts most people off their attempts to watch the whole of classic Doctor Who before they’ve even finished the first season, yet I found no trouble watching it, and found bits that I even quite liked. Anyway, there’s a special reason for watching it. This is the last story where the original TARDIS crew both arrive at the start and leave together. Next up is the Dalek Invasion of Earth, and that’s when Susan’s off.

After Watching

Sometimes I have difficulty understanding why other people formed the opinions that they did about some of these stories. I felt that Planet of Giants was absolutely fine, and enjoyed it a lot.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the show at this early stage of its development is how willing the team are to experiment and try something different. This is something different again, a story in which the travellers essentially have no interaction with the inhabitants of the place where they’ve landed.

Once again, a TARDIS malfunction is the catalyst for a lot of what happens in this story. An alarm goes off as the TARDIS is landing. The fault locator tells the crew that there’s nothing wrong – but hey, it did that in Edge of Destruction as well, so it’s not the kind of thing I’d be happy to stake my pension on. They leave the TARDIS, and find that they’re in a world where they are only slightly bigger than ants. The title suggest that this is an alien planet, but when the crew find a huge seed packet with the word Norwich on it, they realise its Earth, and they have shrunk, caused by the TARDIS malfunction.

It is a feature of these early stories that the crew have to get split up, and one of them (at least one) has to get her or himself into a pickle. For a change the pickle in this one is Ian’s – who becomes trapped in a matchbox and taken into the house. This is where the other strand of the plot starts to become obvious. The matchbox has been picked up by a governmental official, Farrow, who has come to tell a corrupt industrialist called Forester that he is recommending that the government do not license his insecticide DN6. Forester takes issue with this, and shoots him for it.

So you’ve got two strands of the plot gradually coming together. Firstly there’s the crew’s attempts to come back together, complicated by the fact that Barbara has come into contact with the insecticide. Then there’s the other strand, with the scientist Smithers,(no, really, that’s his name)  who created the insecticide, gradually coming to realise how dangerous it is, and Forester’s crimes eventually being revealed. Now although the travellers do attempt to warn authorities about the insecticide, they are totally powerless to do so, and so once again they don’t really influence events. Well, this is Earth after all.

This story scored for me on several levels.

It turns out that this was originally made as 4 episodes, but fearing that the pace was too slow, Verity Lambert insisted that it was edited down to 3. They did a hell of a job with the edit, because I had no idea that it was originally a 4 parter. You can’t see where there are plot elements or possible action scenes missing. Speaking of which –

I think that the Special Effects are amazing. The giant sink set is superb, and the model fly which sits on a pile of grain, which incidentally infects Barbara with the insecticide is possibly the most convincing giant insect that ever appeared in the classic series. It’s far more convincing than the sorry flying creature in The Green Death, and beats my own personal favourite, the Wirrn from the Ark in Space. It’s just terrific. During the first series, while I was watching the special features on one of the discs I was sure that it mentioned that this idea was one of the first to be discussed as a plot idea for the series, and I have to say, it worked very well. You wouldn’t necessarily think that having two such disparate plot strands would work, yet it does. The whole Farrow – Forester – Smithers thing works, maybe because the presence of Alan Tilvern as Forester firmly puts it within the familiar milieu of 1960s crime drama. If you’ve watched as many old films as I have, you’d recognise his face. Here’s a thing. I did an internet check just before I started writing the After Watching part of this review, and found out that Alan Tilvern actually played R.K.Maroon in Who Framed Roger Rabbit!

All in all, this is an enjoyable start to the second season. No single episode is quite as good as the first episode of An Unearthly Child, but then you only ever get one first ever episode of a show. The three episodes of Planet of Giants are far, far more enjoyable than episodes 2 to 4 of An Unearthly Child.

What Have We Learned?

It maybe suggests that it is not that the inside of the TARDIS is so much bigger than the outside – but that you shrink when you go inside it. Or maybe it’s just something whereby if you open the TARDIS doors too early, you get shrunk.

If Barbara starts rubbing her hands, ask her where she’d been putting them