Planet of Giants (TV story)

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Planet of Giants was the first serial of Season 2 of Doctor Who. Episode one, or "Planet of Giants", was the first episode set in then-contemporary England since "An Unearthly Child". Though similar to an idea first proposed by C. E. Webber for the pilot of Doctor Who, writer Louis Marks claimed that the inspiration for the story was the seminal pro-ecology work by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, which contained strong warnings against the use of insecticides. He reckoned that by shrinking the Doctor, he would have the opportunity to put the TARDIS crew face-to-face with the dangers Carson had warned against in her book. (REF: The First Doctor Handbook) It was therefore the first "environmentalist" Doctor Who story, a kind of gently moralistic tale — like Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Green Death — later to be particularly favoured by Barry Letts.

Though fully scripted and recorded as a four-parter, parts three and four were merged into a single episode, effectively leaving an episode on the cutting room floor. This edited material was never retained — though some of it made it into the novelisation. In a sense, then, Planet of Giants was the first serial to have a missing episode.

Aside from being Marks' first work on the series, it was also the Doctor Who debut of long-time composer, Dudley Simpson, and the first credit for frequent director, Douglas Camfield.

Synopsis

The main doors of the TARDIS open of their own accord just before it materialises, causing it to run out of control. On emerging, the travellers discover that the ship has been reduced in size and they are now only about an inch tall.

In this miniaturised state, they stumble across a plot by a ruthless businessman, Forester, and his misguided scientist colleague, Smithers, to launch a new insecticide named DN6 - a product so destructive that it would kill not only those insects harmful to agriculture but also those vital to it.

Forester is even willing to commit murder to ensure the success of his business, as civil servant Arnold Farrow discovers to his cost.

The criminals are eventually brought to justice when the Doctor and his friends - hampered by the fact that Barbara has herself been made ill by the insecticide - tamper with the telephone in Smithers' laboratory, thus fuelling the suspicions of the local exchange operator, Hilda Rowse, who sends her police constable husband Bert to investigate.

Plot

Planet Of Giants (1)

Following a malfunction on the TARDIS console and the bleating of a klaxon indicating something is amiss, the Doctor insists the fault locator shows nothing is wrong and it is safe to venture outside. He leads his companions Ian, Barbara and Susan to the world beyond and within minutes they find a dead giant earthworm followed by a large deceased ant. They seem to have died immediately. After some deduction the travellers realise they have arrived on Earth but have shrunk in size to mere millimetres.

Ian is investigating a discarded matchbox when someone picks it up and he is hurled around inside. That someone is a government scientist called Arnold Farrow, who has come to the home of callous businessman named Forester to tell him that his application for DN6, a new pesticide, has been rejected. In reality DN6 should not be licensed: it is far too deadly to all insect life. When they fall out over this news, Forester shoots Farrow and leaves him for dead outside his home.

The Doctor, Barbara and Susan hear the gunshot as an enormous explosion, and head for the house. They find Ian unhurt near the dead body and surmise a murder has taken place but can do little about it. However, they are determined to ensure the murderer is brought to justice despite their microscopic size.Suddenly a cat looks down on them.

Dangerous Journey (2)

They avoid the cat the travellers split up again, with Ian and Barbara hiding in a briefcase. The giant Forester returns to the garden and collects the briefcase, taking it inside to his laboratory. His aide, Smithers, suspects him of murder, but does not report him for fear of undermining the DN6 project to which he has given his life. The Doctor and Susan scale a drainpipe to gain access to the house and locate their friends, braving the height as they go. Suddenly the water starts to rise threatening to drown them.

Crisis (3)

Meanwhile Ian and Barbara examine the laboratory and encounter a giant fly. She foolishly touches a seed that has been contaminated with DN6 and soon starts to feel unwell. Nevertheless, attracted by Susan's voice in the reverberating plughole, the four friends are reunited.

Forester has meanwhile doctored Farrow's report so as to give DN6 the licence he wants and, disguising his voice as Farrow's, makes a supportive phone call to the ministry to the same effect. This overheard by the local telephone operator, Hilda Rowse, and her policeman husband Bert, who start to suspect something is wrong.

The Doctor has meanwhile realised the deadly nature of DN6 and the probable contamination of Barbara. They try to alert someone by hoisting up the phone receiver with corks, but cannot make themselves heard. However, Hilda notes the engaged signal and she and Bert become even more concerned. Forester and Smithers return to the lab and correct the engaged handset and then Hilda rings to check things are okay. She rings again moments later and asks for Farrow and, when Forester impersonates him, knows there is something badly wrong. Bert heads off to the house to investigate.

The Doctor and his companions decide to start a fire to attract attention to the house and succeed in setting up an aerosol can of insecticide as a bomb. This coincides with Smithers discovering the true virulence of DN6 - it's lethal to everything - and demanding Forester stop seeking a licence. Forester spots the makeshift bomb, which goes off in his face. Smithers retrieves the gun as PC Rowse arrives.

Their work done, the travellers return to the TARDIS and the Doctor reconfigures the machine to return them to normal size. Barbara, who was on the verge of death, recovers on being returned to full size; the insecticide in her bloodstream and the seed responsible remain their proper miniscule size.

Cast

Crew

References

Story notes

  • All 3 episodes exist as 16mm telerecordings.
  • Negative film prints of all 3 episodes were recovered in 1978.
  • Arabic prints of all 3 episodes are also held by the BBC.
  • The request to compress this serial into three parts came from Donald Wilson, BBC Head of Serials, who felt the story simply didn't work in four parts. Episode 3 was entitled, "Crisis", and episode 4 was to be called, "The Urge to Live". In the end, the edited episode retained the original title of episode 3, "Crisis", but the end credits for "The Urge to Live", because that required the fewest edits at a time when editing was a very expensive proposition. Thus Douglas Camfield, who was in fact the director of "The Urge to Live", came to be the credited director of the transmitted version of "Crisis".
  • The story was originally developed under the title The Miniscules. The working title of "Dangerous Journey" was "Death in the Afternoon". (REF: The First Doctor Handbook)
  • The story was filmed as part of the first bloc of stories but a decision was made to hold it over as the opener for the second series.

Shrinking the Doctor

It is sometimes casually asserted that Planet of Giants was a story that had been proposed by C. E. Webber as the first story of season 1. However, it was merely the general idea of shrinking the Doctor and his companions that linked Marks' script to Webber's idea. All the details were quite different. Indeed the story of how a miniaturised TARDIS eventually made it on screen was relatively complex.

The idea of a story that featured the minaturisation of the TARDIS crew went back to one of the foundational documents of Doctor Who: "Dr. Who: General Ideas on Background and Approach" written by C. E. Webber and heavily amended by Sydney Newman. There, Webber said that the first story "may result from the use of a micro-reducer in the machine which makes our characters all become tiny". The idea was carried forward in a 16th May 1963 document, prepared by Newman, Webber and Donald Wilson, in which the first story, called The Giants, was proposed. Its first episode was to be broadly similar to "An Unearthly Child", but instead of landing in Earth's past, the TARDIS would land in the Coal Hill School laboratory — at a much-reduced size. The travellers would then spend the next three episodes avoiding the now-huge students, teachers and classroom objects all around them. By 4th June 1963, Webber had completed his full outline, which now included a scene in which the travellers placed themselves under a microscopes so the students could see and communicate with them.

By 10th June, Newman began to sour somewhat on Webber's idea, noting that the storyline didn't seem to allow for much in the way of character development. He also felt that portraying the shrinkage of the TARDIS would be "patently impossible without spending a tremendous amount of money", and asked Webber to reconsider his ideas such that they could be practically achieved. Webber only got as far as the draft scripts of the first two episodes before the script was officially rejected by Donald Wilson and Rex Tucker, the interim producer who briefly preceded Verity Lambert. Their objections were quite different to Newman's. They now knew that the first serial of Doctor Who had to be recorded at Lime Grove Studio D, whose cameras couldn't be fitted with wide-angle or zoom lenses. This made the convincing portrayal of miniaturisation impossible. Webber was duly paid for his first two scripts in July 1963, and the idea was temporarily shelved.

Nevertheless, script editor David Whitaker — who, having been appointed in the last week of June, was not party to the decision to reject The Giants — wasn't ready to give up on the idea just yet. He wrote an 8th August memo to Ayton Whitaker saying, "We badly need a serial about our four running characters being reduced in size". His plan of attack to achieving this goal was to eliminate Wilson and Tucker's objection: Lime Grove. He argued that Studio D was simply not up to the production of a variable format show like Doctor Who, and that the production could not continue if it was permanently restricted to that antiquated studio.

By 16th September, David Whitaker had placed a "shrunken Doctor" serial back on the season 1 schedule. Never named, it was to be written by Robert Gould, and it had nothing to do with Coal Hill School. It did, however, posit the notion of returning the TARDIS crew to 1963. The Gould script proceeds slowly, however, and by 4th February 1964, Whitaker releases Gould from that idea and requests a replacement story — one that also never even makes it to the synopsis stage. Whitaker commissions Louis Marks to write an outline for a "shrunken Doctor" script, on which Gould had given up. By late May 1964, the idea finally moves to full commission, with four episodes being requested of Marks. More importantly, Whitaker achieves his ambition of ensuring that the story will be recording at BBC Television Centre, rather than Lime Grove.

Even after Giants went before the cameras at TC4, it still underwent changes. Donald Wilson didn't feel it was a great season opener and would have actually preferred to have begun with The Dalek Invasion of Earth, had not Carole Ann Ford's departure in Invasion made the transposition of the serials impossible. Saying that "by its nature and the resources needed we could not do everything we wanted to do to make it wholly satisfactory", he took the unusual step of editing the already-recorded third and fourth episodes into a single episode. (REF: The First Doctor Handbook)

Ratings

  • Planet of Giants - 8.4 million viewers
  • Dangerous Journey - 8.4 million viewers
  • Crisis - 8.9 million viewers

Myths

to be added

Filming locations

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • At the end of episode 2 the sink is emptied and the plug is placed upon the bench. At the beginning of episode 3 the plug is back in the sink providing a method of escape.

Continuity

  • An emergency klaxon is heard in the TARDIS in episode one which appears to be a forerunner of the Cloister bell (first heard in DW: Logopolis, and various stories since).

Timeline

Home video and audio releases

Video releases

UK Release: January 2002 / US Release: May 2003
PAL - BBC Video BBCV7263
NTSC - Warner Video E1740

This story was enhanced by the Doctor Who Restoration Team and further information on this project can be found at Restoration Team Website

DVD release

Currently being reviewed for release in February 2011. Could be released 2012

Novelisation and its audiobook

Planet of Giants novel.jpg
Main article: Planet of Giants (novelisation)

Novelised as Planet of the Giants in 1990 by Terrance Dicks.

See also

Stories that involve the main cast being shrunk

External links

Template:Season 2

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