Doctor Who A-Z #51: Spearhead from Space (1970)

Hearing that Auto Plastics is now fully automated, Major-General Scobie allows himself a chuckle of class solidarity with the factory’s owner Channing. “Don’t get the machines going on strike, do you?” he smirks. That line must have been cherished by the producers of Spearhead From Space, since it was a strike by studio camera operators that cemented the serial’s status as a unique Doctor Who story. With the story’s studio sessions now scrapped, director Derek Martinus somehow found a country house that could be dressed to resemble a hospital, a military base, a farmhouse, a factory, an observatory and a wax museum. It’s a heroic act, but it would be a piece of funny trivia if it wasn’t for one particular knock-on effect of this decision. The BBC house style of the time was that location shoots had to be shot on 16mm, and since Spearhead From Space was one long location shoot that makes it the first – and still the only – Doctor Who story shot entirely on film.

What effect did this have on the serial? Well, it was a huge help to Jon Pertwee, making his first appearance here. Previously Pertwee had a stellar career in radio and movie comedy, but he’d never done drama and he’d never done television, making him a somewhat risky choice for a non-comedy television series lead. Martinus’s film shoot helped him feel at home, and barring one outbreak of gurning at the end this relaxed quality is palpable. Pertwee is undoubtedly having a lot of fun here, as the befuddled post-regenerative Doctor sneaks out of a hospital – by stealing a car! – but it never feels like too much of a charm offensive. The haughty, paternalistic quality he would eventually bring to the part, which some people find troublesome, is absent here. It’s hard not to fall for the old rascal.

The other thing that film helps with is a sense of realism. Which is useful, because Spearhead From Space isn’t just introducing a new Doctor, it’s introducing a whole new version of the show – one which was designed to be more realistic than the Hartnell and Troughton eras. You could make the case, looking at British telefantasy of the late 1960s and early 70s, that the decision to strand the Doctor on Earth wasn’t as artistically conservative as it seems now. The most adventurous, boundary-pushing, political SF and fantasy of the era wasn’t Moonbase 3 or Space: 1999, it was The Prisoner or Doomwatch. But the idea of bringing the Doctor to Earth was, specifically, to ground the wilder flights of fancy that late-Troughton era Who had indulged in, and whether you think that was a good idea or not Spearhead From Space makes the case superbly.

Again, nobody intended this to happen, but the fact that the curtain-raiser for Doctor Who‘s new, down-to-earth remodel begins with the only Doctor Who story whose main visual characteristics include “natural light” and “film grain” is a remarkable stroke of luck. In many ways, Spearhead From Space makes the Pertwee years feel less like an aberration; it means this era begins with the most extreme interpretation of what a gritty, grounded Doctor Who might look like, then immediately starts softening that and becoming more like its old self.

No other Doctor Who story – not even the found-footage experiment Sleep No More – has as much of a documentary look as this. Indeed, there’s some actual documentary footage mixed seamlessly into it. Just after Captain Munro remarks on the odd clamminess of Channing’s face, Martinus mischievously cuts to real-life footage of dolls being made in a factory, set to the joltingly contemporary sound of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Oh Well, Part 1’. We see that now as a cheeky hint that Channing is an Auton, but the plastic killers haven’t appeared yet. The sight of plastic baby heads being pummelled, pierced and squashed by machines is disturbing enough on its own to telegraph to the audience that Channing’s plan for automation is not what it seems. The first Auton we see is later in the same episode, a mannequin strolling through leafy countryside, forcing a military jeep off the road. 

It’s a fantastically creepy introduction to perhaps the show’s creepiest ever villains, and it establishes immediately what a present-day Earth setting has to offer to Doctor Who. Unlike the rather more incongruous invasions of Yeti and War Machines the show had featured before, Pertwee-era Doctor Who would be about subverting the recognisable. Forgive me my lapse into pretension – I know, I know, only one? – but this kind of spectacle has more to do with De Chirico and Lautreamont than HG Wells or Roger Corman, taking a recognisable object – a dummy – and a recognisable setting – a forest – and mixing them until they become absolutely, bizarrely terrifying. With the debatable exception of the aforementioned Prisoner, no other science fiction serial has this kind of low-key Surrealist unease as its USP.

And it is the show’s USP now. As an introduction to the cycle of UNIT stories, Spearhead From Space debuts the core concepts so successfully it permanently changed the public’s image of what this show is about. The first scene we get with the Brigadier, in which he calmly bats away Liz Shaw’s incredulity about their remit to protect the Earth against alien invasions, has an authentic frisson of being invited to look at some top-level state secrets. It must be said that UNIT aren’t very good at this – their twin missions here involve protecting the Doctor and covering up the Nestene landing, both of which they’ve utterly failed at by the end of episode one. But the script’s core strategy, of placing a new Doctor opposite a simple threat in order to give their personality room to shine, is one that was clearly influential on The Eleventh Hour and The Woman Who Fell to Earth as well as Rose. Spearhead From Space, then, isn’t just a great start to the Pertwee era, its influence continues to reverberate through the show to this day.

Next: The Silurians (1970).

Graham’s Archive – Spearhead from Space

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