Planet of Giants

Chapter The 190th, which covers a time when dimensions were relative in space.

Plot:

The original (and maybe best) TARDIS team of the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara finally arrive back in contemporary England, materialising in the garden of a farmhouse. Ian and Barbara cannot return to their homes and lives, though, as - because of a fault where the doors opened before the TARDIS landed - they are only 1-inch high. They don't have much time to dwell on this irony, as they get caught up in a murder and an ecological scandal. The farmhouse is the site of a lab where a scientist Smithers is working on a new insecticide DN6, which he's tested in the garden. Also present are his industrialist backer Forester, and a civil servant Farrow who is writing a report which will be key to the product's approval for use. Alas, DN6 is too destructive; at grass roots level, the TARDIS team find many helpful mini-beasts - ants, worms, a bee - all dead. Later, Barbara comes into contact with the insecticide too, and becomes ill.

Forester has sunk too much money into the project, so when Farrow tells him his report is unfavourable, he threatens and then shoots Farrow to prevent him filing it. Making up a story that Farrow was trying to block the use of DN6 to blackmail his way into getting a cut in the profits, Forester persuades the zealous Smithers to help cover up the murder; but, an attempt to impersonate Farrow on the phone arouses the suspicions of the switchboard operator Hilda, whose husband Bert is the local bobby. She's further intrigued when the TARDIS team, having trekked in from the garden, use all their strength to get the phone in the lab off the hook (this and blowing up a pressurised aerosol can with the lab's gas tap is all they manage to contribute). Bert turns up at the farmhouse to apprehend Forester, and the TARDIS team travel down a drainpipe and back through the garden to the TARDIS. Once the TARDIS has taken off, things from the outside world return to their usual size relative to the Doctor and his companions, so Barbara is safe and well again.

Context:

I did something different this time, and watched all three episodes of Planet of Giants, in one go on my own of an evening, streamed on Britbox (via an Apple Fire TV stick into the telly). The family recently started a subscription to Britbox (which essentially replicates the experience of watching UK Gold in the 1990s, containing as it does lots of archive drama and comedy including all the classic Who stories), and this saved me getting up to get the DVD off a high shelf. Well, for a while anyway, as I later needed to watch the DVD to investigate the missing fourth episode of the serial (see Deeper Thoughts section below for more details). This meant I had the incongruous sight of the original black-and-white beginning credits sequence of Who with a bright pop-up button saying "Skip Intro" (I didn't make use of this button, natch), and also that the end credits disappeared into a small screen within a screen while a countdown ticked before the next episode played. It may be possible to adjust the settings to stop this from happening, but I haven't investigated how - I doubt I'm going to make a habit of watching stories this way.

First Time Round:

Planet of Giants was never repeated on terrestrial TV; in the short time I had UK Gold on cable in the late 1990s, it was not showing black-and-white stories; I also never borrowed any other fan's taped copy. So, I had to wait for the official Doctor Who VHS range to make it available. This wasn't until 14th January 2002, in the end period of the range, when DVD releases of different stories had started up in parallel. I was commuting from Brighton to London for my day job at that time, and would often get Doctor Who releases from the MVC on London Bridge as I walked in to the City, or sometimes on the way back after work if the stock hadn't been put out in the morning. It's a long time ago now, and I may be misremembering, but I seem to think that branch was okay for DVDs, but didn't often have the videos. The Tomb of  the Cybermen DVD came out on the same day, and I would almost certainly have picked it up in London; for Planet of Giants, though, I would have walked down Queen's Road from Brighton Station when my train journey that day was over and picked up the video from the MVC in Brighton. It stayed open reasonably late as I recall, but there would have been worry during the commute home that my train should not be delayed such that I missed the opportunity to buy the video on its first day of release. To a slightly obsessive fan, even though he was old enough to know better, this was important at the time. Once back home, I would have had a glass of wine and watched the story in one big gulp, then moved on to Tomb. I may have rung up my friend Phil (mentioned many times before on this blog) who lived nearby and often watched Doctor Who with me of an evening in those days. I can't remember whether seeing two black-and-white stories would have been enough of an excuse for Phil to join me for Monday evening drinks, but I'm going to say: probably. 

Reaction:

Based on lots of bits and bobs I've learned over the years from reading Doctor Who reference books, I get the impression that early on in Doctor Who's life everyone behind the scenes was obsessed with doing a story where our heroes were miniaturised. The idea was bandied about before the series started, then was planned to be our heroes' first trip (before being replaced with a stone age setting). That would have been The Giants by C.E. Webber, which would have seen the TARDIS team's shrunken exploits in Ian's school laboratory (this probably dates from the development period before Ian was even called Ian, so I should strictly say Cliff's school laboratory). Another attempt was made by a different writer to script an adventure based on this idea a few stories later, but Robert Gould's work also stalled mid-development. Louis Marks's Planet of Giants was the third attempt, made towards the end of Doctor Who's first recording season but held over to be the first story of its second broadcast run. When the idea finally got to screen, it was just a shame that what emerges is a little hum-drum: a low key crime drama, with an ecological theme. Perhaps this was inevitable to an extent, though, as the germ was a visual - worse, really, a visual effect - in search of a story. Some choices made in the narrative box the story in too; because the TARDIS has caused the problem of the Doctor and friends' diminishment, they can't return to full size until they leave. As such, the story couldn't be very wide-ranging or there would no realistic way for a set of 1-inch protagonists to have any part of it. 

Marks does the best he can within the limitations, opening up the story by centering things around an environmental risk that could become a global threat, but where the impact could be seen at the micro level. It's the first time, but would be by no means the last, that real-world environmental concerns have been included in a Doctor Who story; the clear influence is Rachel Carson's seminal green tome Silent Spring, which had been published less than two years before scripting, so was pretty up-to-the-minute stuff. The plot undermines the message, though, because it doesn't stand up to scrutiny - the insecticide DN6 is just too destructive for it to be realistic; no matter how much Smithers is blinded by idealism, you'd still think he'd have realised before now that his invention is killing everything it touches. Even if it got as far as being sold, DN6 wouldn't need to be used for too long before discovery, so the threat would never have got to be global. At this point, questions would no doubt be asked about how such a chemical could get its government approval, and the disappearance of the scientist who wrote the report would arouse suspicion. It's hard to see how Forester could have hoped to get away with things when his plan is already detectable by the most amateurish of sleuths.

This is another way the story is opened up, by including some characters contacted by telephone, with the lifting of the receiver a Herculean task for the tiny time travellers. The nosey Bert and Hilda are fun characters, but can't help but seem a bit disconnected from the rest of the action. Everyone is working in their own separate section of the narrative: we don't see Farrow and Smithers together. Hilda never meets any of the other characters apart from Bert, Bert only arrives at the farmhouse in his final scene. And, of course, the four regulars don't interact with anyone else in the cast. This leaves them to have scenes only between the four of themselves, which is enjoyable, particularly as it's the last chance for it to happen (Susan leaves in the next story, during the course of which the regulars are mostly separated). There's only so many ways for any actor to register surprise at stumbling across an oversized insect / notepad / paperclip, but they all give it their very best. Jacqueline Hill as Barbara is the only one who gets something more to do, but it's not much: as in the well-worn trope of a zombie movie, she's the member of the hero party hiding that they've earlier become infected.

The real stars of this story aren't any actors, however. To a certain extent, it only exists for the set designer to have an opportunity to deliver something special and fun, and the late, great Ray Cusick does just that. Sets and props for the out-of-scale garden and lab are uniformly excellent. The centre piece is the magnificent lab sink set with shiny plughole and long chain down to the plug stopper that characters can climb down. One other point of interest is that this story sees the first incidental music score by Dudley Simpson; he, like Louis Marks and co-director Douglas Camfield (see below) would go on to have long associations with Doctor Who as composer, writer and director respectively. Their involvement, plus sterling work from Cusick, one of Who's behind-the-scenes founding fathers, is great, but feels a little wasted when it's in the service of this somewhat minor tale.

Connectivity: 

Following on from The Unicorn and the Wasp, Planet of Giants is another story featuring giant insects.

Deeper Thoughts:

The first ever missing episode. Doctor Who has many lost episodes. Almost all of them are lost because the original video master tapes were wiped for reuse, and any film copies made for overseas sales (that we know of, at least) were junked. The institutions involved - and the BBC wasn't unique in this at all - just didn't figure that the archive would have any value once a few years had passed since a programme's original transmission. The very first missing episode, though, never even made it to air; a decision about lack of public interest was made before it was shown. For Planet of Giants was originally intended as, indeed was written and shot as, a four episode story. It was the first story of a new season of Doctor Who, being broadcast after a few weeks' break in autumn 1964. Donald Wilson, then BBC Head of serials, did not think the story was enough of a grabber for an opener, and probably would have much preferred to swap and have the season kick off with following story The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But, as that saw Susan leave the show, the order couldn't be changed. To mitigate Wilson's concerns, the decision was made to cut a lot of material from episodes 3 and 4 of the story, and stich them together into one faster-paced third episode to conclude the story. The final episode, which was to have been called The Urge to Live, effectively ceased to exist and the footage excised from what would have been episodes 3 and 4 was consigned to the bin decades ago.

This might have been the right decision to make in 1964, but was a shame regarding the longer-term history of the show as part 4 was Douglas Camfield's first Who directing gig; he'd go on to direct many fan favourite episodes in the 1960s and 70s. The new final part, Crisis, obviously contained quite a bit of material Camfield shot, and the episode was credited to him, but the whole of his first episode for the show no longer exists (and not for the usual reasons). The 2012 DVD of the story goes some way to making up for this by including a special feature which recreates as closely as possible the original versions of episodes 3 and 4. Using the still extant scripts, audio for the excised scenes has been recreated by original companion actors William Russell and Carole Ann Ford (as Ian and Susan), with other actors playing the Doctor and Barbara, and the four guest cast members Forester (performed with relish by Toby Hadoke), Smithers, Hilda and Bert. Unlike other missing episode reconstructions, this audio is matched to illustrative moving footage rather than still images. There's some brief animations, but mostly it is recycled footage from elsewhere in the story (other scenes between Hilda and Bert or Forester and Smithers, say) meaning there's no lip sync. As I remember, at the time of the DVD release there was some fan criticism of this approach, but I think it works fine. In general, I feel this is exactly the kind of DVD extra that DVD was invented for, and it's some of the most interesting work for the range by director Ian Levine and Producer Ed Stradling. Kudos to them, and everyone else involved.

A lot of what was removed does indeed prove to be inessential; more scenes of Forester's scheming or the investigations of the suspicious Hilda and Bert don't enhance what survives of those subplots post-truncation. There are scenes of the full-size cast interactions that explain why objects like the notepad with the DN6 formula and the pressurised canister happen to be in the lab too, but in the final version they're just there and it doesn't seem too out of the ordinary (one would expect such things in a lab, to a certain extent). Other losses are more significant. There are a couple of excised sections where the farmhouse cat - which terrorises our miniature heroes early on - dies after coming into contact with the invidious insecticide. Smithers' discovery of its corpse with traces of DN6 on it is what finally pushes him to turn on Forester. Without the cat, there isn't sufficient reason for his volte face. Also gone is a nice moment for Barbara, where - despite suffering from the effects of the insecticide herself - she insists on risking her life as it's her duty to ensure that the world's environment is not threatened. It's a great character moment, but its removal does avoid a couple of plot problems. In her speech, Barbara comments on how they will never get her down the drainpipe and back to the TARDIS in her current state. But later, they manage to do this (somehow, off camera), so it would have been a bit of a plot hole. Too much focus on the heroes' duty also makes worse an issue with the story that's arguably still there in the three-part version: the TARDIS team leave without any guarantees that they have saved the world. The Doctor sees a policeman arrive in the lab, so can be fairly confident the murder won't go unpunished, but why does he think that will necessarily stop the insecticide's use?

Perhaps the most significant loss is from the original third episode where the Doctor takes a moral stand, saying that they can't all stand by when something terrible might happen (this is what prompts Barbara's similar moment detailed above, which would have happened in the original episode 4). This is significant as it marks the final stage of transformation in the Doctor's character in these very early Doctor Who stories from anti-hero to hero, from unwilling adventurer to righter of wrongs. It's probably more satisfying to have this moment, where the Doctor chooses to stand up against the baddies rather than get back to the TARDIS and escape as soon as possible, in a story where he's pitted against his biggest enemies rather than one unscrupulous bloke with a gun; it does, though, rob this story of rather limited scope (for all the potential global ramifications) of its one trailblazing element.   

In Summary:

A bit small-scale compared to usual.