User Reviews

OMG! This is amazing! The autons are great! The doctor is great and pretty funny. The music cues have gotten very repetitive, but that won't lower my rating.

The Autons link up the final unit, beginning their take over of Earth.

I could watch this final episode over and over. It really does have it all, action, drama, humour, and Jon fighting with a monster.

It's been a marvellous first full story for Pertwee, this whole series is golden.

It features one of the best sequences of all time, we get that glorious looking empty High Street, and then the awakening of the shop floor dummies, even now it's a terrific scene, I always remember the first time I watched this, and double glancing at the mannequins in Debenhams windows.

I also love the scenes at Madame Tussauds, Pertwee and John do a terrific job among the mannequins.

If only this level of horror had continued beyond this series.

Superb, 10/10.

Review of all 4 episodes:

Spearhead From Space marks perhaps the biggest combination of changes in Doctor Who history:

• the change from the Patrick Troughton era to the Jon Pertwee era.

• the change from black and white to colour.

• the change from constant time and space travelling to an exile leaving The Doctor stranded in contemporary Earth.

• the change from two or three traditional companions to a whole organisation (UNIT) regularly working with The Doctor.

These changes are made even more striking by the fact that Pertwee's Doctor, having been forced to regenerate as a punishment from the Time Lords and subsequently getting injured, spends much of the early part of the story inactive in a hospital bed. Yet the story manages to be interesting enough and contains enough action, humour and thrills to make this big transition go very successfully.

The story involves the new Doctor finding himself stranded on Earth and suffering from his regeneration then having to deal with an invasion attempt by the Nestene Consciousness using their power to control plastic and creating armies of shop dummies.

The production is a peach with a superb look (recorded beautifully on film rather than the usual video), excellent direction by Derek Martinus and thrilling special effects (shop dummies coming to life and attacking through shop windows etc.) believably and excitingly executed.

The story is brilliantly written by Robert Holmes with superb plotting and dialogue. The acting from Pertwee and the whole cast is impeccable. Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart) and Caroline John (Liz Shaw) do fantastically well in their roles beginning already to get audiences to strongly sympathise and relate to them.

It is not absolutely perfect but it is perfectly entertaining and interesting with thrilling, scary moments. All 4 Episodes 10/10.

Having been sent to earth and forced to regenerate by the Time Lords, the new Doctor's entry seems a little odd when viewed in comparison to the last few regenerations where special shows are run to announce the new actor and generally a big deal special sends off the old guy, welcomes the new guy, or a bit of both. In this instance we simply have John Pertwee fall unconscious from the Tardis and then spend a lot of the first two episodes lying around in bed recovering. This is not the best introduction to him but it is wise as it allows the show to reestablish the character of Lethbridge-Stewart and, more importantly, UNIT – a military force charged with secretly investigating and fighting the potential for alien menace, sort of like X-Files but without the angst and sexual chemistry.

Pertwee arrives properly by the end of the second episode and once I had gotten over the novelty of seeing a Doctor Who with sailor's tattoo on his arm, I did quite take to him mainly because here he carries out a little in the mould of Troughton but with a little bit more comedy in the character. The story around him is pretty good and in some ways must have done for mannequins what Blink did for statues – made these lifeless things into a source of nervousness for children everywhere. I liked this subverting of the ordinary and it was nicely unsettling as an idea. The money shots in particular are pretty memorable. Outside of that it has a decent enough build with a lot going on due to the characters being introduced. The final monster to be defeated is a bit rubbery and silly and doesn't work when viewed next to the much more chilling Autons.

The color does add quite a lot to this as well as it being set in modern (at the time) earth and this is another good change. Performances from the support is pretty good; I liked Courtney even if he played it a little too stiff. Caroline John starts as a scientific character and I hope this is something they can keep so she is not just a bit of totty running around needing saving – from the look of this it could go either way. Burden is nicely cold in the main villain role and generally the various supporting turns are decent.

I'm not sure how I will feel with this new model being the norm for the foreseeable future but this short serial shows potential. UNIT links to a bigger picture while the contemporary setting allows for the horror- lite aspect to play with the viewer by having the action occur in places that are familiar as opposed to a galaxy far, far away. I will miss Troughton as he has been my preferred Doctor so far but hopefully Pertwee can make for a solid replacement (although hopefully the wiggling eyebrows and some other silly moments are the extent of his comedic endeavors as it is important to stay the right side of hammy silliness).