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Story Nine
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Story Code
J
Title
Planet
Of Giants
“Friends” Title
The
One With The Giant Earthworm
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Episode Titles
Planet
of Giants
Dangerous
Journey
Crisis
Current availability
All
three episodes exist.
Source
UK
Gold omnibus repeat transmission.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date
1964.
None
is given, but the telephone system etc are very much of the era when the story
was produced.
Genre
Action
Adventure.
Plot synopsis
1. The TARDIS doors open when still in
flight. The Ship lands in a maze of
stone, and they explore, coming across oversized dead insects of all kinds, as
well as a giant matchbox. They realise
they are on Earth, but have been “reduced roughly to the size of an inch” - the
maze is a crazy paving path. Ian falls
into the matchbox, which is picked up by a health minister called Farrow. He has written a report condemning a new
insecticide - DN6 - as it is too dangerous and kills indiscriminately. Forester, whose money is sunk into the DN6
project, shoots Farrow. Ian is reunited
with the others, and they examine the dead man.
Suddenly, they notice a large black cat eyeing them up.
2. The cat loses interest and goes
away. Smithers, the scientist who
invented DN6, agrees to help Forester cover up the murder for the sake of the
project - he believes the new, powerful insecticide will save millions from
starvation. The travellers have
inexplicably split up, and Ian and Barbara are carried into the laboratory in
Farrow’s briefcase. There, they find a
pile of seeds. Ian guesses they are
coated in the poison that has killed everything in the garden, but Barbara has
already touched one of them. She keeps
this to herself. The Doctor and Susan climb
up a corroded drainpipe and come out in the lab sink. Before the travellers can rejoin each other,
Forester and Smithers enter the lab and wash the blood off their hands in the
sink...with the Doctor and Susan still inside.
3. The Doctor and Susan avoid the water in
the overflow pipe. Forester calls
Farrow’s ministry with a false report, arousing the suspicions of the local
telephone operator and her policeman husband Bert. The Doctor finds the formula for DN6 and
realises that if it enters the eco-system in sufficient quantities it could be
disastrous for mankind. After a lot of
messing about with the telephone, Barbara collapses, and the others realise her
condition. In an effort to attract
outside attention and thus hinder Forester, they use a match and a gas tap to
explode a canister. Smithers, meanwhile,
has discovered the truth about DN6, and the explosion allows him to grab
Forester’s gun, as Bert arrives to ask questions. The travellers make it back to the Ship: as they return to normal size, Barbara
recovers. The Ship materialises
somewhere new.
Pitch
Honey, I Shrunk The Time
Travellers.
The Money Shot
The
camera zooms up from the TARDIS to reveal it is parked in one of the gaps in a
crazy paving path leading to a little house. (Episode 1)
The TARDIS log
•
Extreme pressure on the Ship has apparently caused it and its occupants to
shrink to an inch in size. Okay, but
what about when they were heading into the Big Bang in The Edge Of Destruction? Did
they shrink then, and just didn’t realise it?
•
The scanner has blown (Ian jokes it needs a new tube) and remains broken when
the Ship lands at the end of episode 3.
Thing is, it seemed to shatter in episode 1, but is physically intact in
episode 3...
•
The TARDIS has a warning siren, but possibly it only comes into operation in
the specific instance of the doors opening before materialisation.
•
The console seems capable of overheating, as Barbara discovers.
•
Two readings on the fault locator read “QR18” and “A14D”. No idea what this means, though.
•
Once again (as in The Keys Of Marinus),
there is no sound as the TARDIS materialises and dematerialises. Why?
Past Journies
•
The Doctor and Susan refer to an air raid by Zeppelins they were in.
The Doctor’s Achievement
•
He appears to have prevented DN6 from being produced. Of course, he doesn’t know this as such. And nor do we, really - Forester might have
talked his way out of it.
Things I learned from Doctor Who
•
The worker ant will give his life rather than abandon eggs.
Body Count
Only
Farrow. Unless you count a garden full
of insects. Therefore:
1.
EffectsWatch
Uniformly
marvellous effects here, with everything from seeds to bees to sink plugs to
matchboxes to briefcases blown up to giant size very convincingly.
Dudley!
Nothing
special to report, just that this is the first story where incidental music is
provided by the great Dudley “Blake’s Seven” Simpson, after whom this category
is named.
Notes
•
I’m asking for the last time...can Carole Ann Ford please stop acting so pathetic? Only one fit of hysterics this time - when
Ian is carried off in the matchbox - but it really is getting beyond a joke.
Queries
•
How does Forester hope to get away with it?
The moment DN6 went into mass production, the effects would be noted and
he’d be ruined.
•
Come to that, why has Smithers taken so long to catch on? Didn’t he create it? What tests has he done up to now that have
been less revealing than those carried out by Farrow?
•
Why does Ian think at first that being shrunk is ridiculous? Hasn’t he seen enough marvels by now?
•
Why is it that Ian - a science teacher - can’t understand the formula for DN6?
•
What was Bert going to say when he reached the house? “My wife was just eavesdropping on your phone
calls, sir...”
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On-screen Credits
Taken from The Television Companion.
CAST
Dr.
Who - William Hartnell, Ian Chesterton - William Russell, Barbara Wright -
Jacqueline Hill, Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford, Forester - Alan Tilvern,
Farrow - Frank Crawshaw (1-2), Smithers - Reginald Barratt (2-3), Hilda Rowse -
Rosemary Johnson (3), Bert Rowse - Fred Ferris (3).
CREW
Written
by Louis Marks. Title Music by Ron Grainer
with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Incidental Music by Dudley Simpson.
Costumes - Daphne Dare. Make-up -
Jill Summers (1); Sonia Markham (2-3).
Studio Lighting - Howard King.
Studio Sound - Alan Fogg. Special
Sounds - Brian Hodgson. Production Assistant
- Norman Stewart. Assistant Floor
Manager - Valerie McCrimmon; Dawn Robertson.
Story Editor - David Whitaker.
Designer - Raymond P Cusick.
Associate Producer - Mervyn Pinfield.
Producer - Verity Lambert.
Directed by Mervyn Pinfield (1-2); Douglas Camfield (3).
Review
A
somewhat offbeat way to start the new season, Planet Of Giants is nonetheless very well executed, with plenty to
keep the eyes entertained enough that it doesn’t matter that the plot is
virtually non-existent. In fact, one can’t
help but wonder why the DN6 plotline between the “big people” was dreamed up at
all. Clearly someone wanted to get
environmental issues into the show, which is laudable, but was this really the
best vehicle for them? Not that it
matters - the success of this story is down to the effects, the first truly
great ones in the show’s history. The
time travellers clamber over enormous telephones and briefcases, climb down
plug chains and stare up into enormous faces.
It could so easily have gone horribly wrong, but someone put just the
right amount of money into it. It’s nice
and brief, it’s action-oriented, the moving creatures are kept to a sensible
minimum and large and small actors alike acquit themselves decently. Doctor
Who had to do a story like this sooner or later, so thank goodness it did
it well. It doesn’t matter that the
explanation for it all, while falling short of being technobabble, makes no
sense at all, along with several other elements of the plot. The show has presumably got this out of its
system now, and we can look forward to monsters next week.
Rating
7 / 10
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