…Honey, I Shrunk the Time Travellers, it’s…
Planet of Giants
In which Barbara
realises that size is important; while the whole show quite literally goes down the plughole…
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| When Barbara felt a small prick on the TARDIS console, Ian was first in line to ask her if she'd like to feel a much larger one. |
- I’ve only just noticed this, but the internal workings of
the time rotor would appear to include a salad spinner. Handy I suppose if
anyone’s on a diet. How long’s that been there I wonder? And how long will it
stay? If it’s going to be a while then I’m sure Mel will make great use of it.
- ‘ …there we were in the late eighteenth century and I
tried another frequency to sidestep the ship back into the middle of the
twentieth century’ - “another frequency”? Are you telling me, Louis Marks, that
you fly this highly complex time-ship by tuning it in like a radio? Still, I
suppose that’d account for the bizarre landing noise it makes in The Crusade.
- The Fault Locator -
yes, it’s back…(and just like the McGann crapfest, it’s not about time!) Here it
reads QR18 / A14D, but heaven alone knows what it’s supposed to mean. It’s like a
cross between a Sudoku and a crossword puzzle. Why can’t it just read “The
bloody doors are about to open”? I mean, I question how user friendly it is
when every time there’s an emergency you have to spend precious minutes getting
the user manual out to find out what’s gone wrong, when what you really should
be doing is assuming crash positions, putting on an oxygen mask and wishing
you’d never stayed up late to watch Alive
the last time it was shown on TV…all whilst uttering a quick final prayer. Oh,
and it causes the cloister bell (?) to go off again. The Doctor still hasn’t
got the setting right - this time it sounds like the horn on a vintage car. Thankfully,
when we next hear it (in about twenty years’ time), he’ll have worked out how
to adjust it to something a little less ear-splitting.
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| Telling Susan to be a brave girl, Ian prepared to administer her daily suppository. |
- so, yes…anyway, the doors open whilst the TARDIS is in
flight, which the Doctor indicates could’ve been catastrophic (Billy certainly
does a fairly earnest bit of forehead mopping with his hankie). Yet there’s not
a special effect in sight! The camera doesn’t even wobble! Normally it’s
bumping and crashing into things all over the shop like a drunk old lady on a
mobility scooter. But nope...not even a tremor.
- ooooh, Barbara’s startled by a big pink snake dangling over
the edge of a crack! Well, she would be, wouldn’t she. It actually looks like
the attachment that came out the back of my mother’s tumble dryer...you know the kind of thing I mean...the thing which directed the expelled hot air out the laundry room window.
- hmmm, ants eggs or giant Tic-Tac’s?
- inside the matchbox, Ian has to hurl himself about from
side to side. This man was made for a part in Star Trek.
- when the Doctor insists he be the one to climb up the crazy
paving to see what the view is over the top, both Jackie Hill and Carol Ann
turn a distinct shade of white, terrified that Bill’s going to go arse over
tit. In fact both girls cling onto him for dear life. I bet everyone in the
gallery was holding their breath too.
- Death-O-Meter: 49. Farrow - shot by Forester.
And thank Christ for that, because those whistling teeth of his were driving me
up the bloody wall (the cats looked a little uncomfortable too). In fact it’s a
pity the deed couldn’t have been done after his first sentence. Bless Frank
Crawshaw though who plays him, he has to spend the rest of the opening episode
and the beginning of the next face down in a flower bed. The way in which he
dies is actually quite disturbing. Unlike Webster in the last story, he snuffs it with his eyes wide open. Also, he’s shot in the heart, and indeed there’s
a big red patch on his shirt marking where the bullet entered. Then, once he’s been
moved, Smithers has to mop up the bloodstains with an old rag. It’s all a bit
gruesome.
- ‘What’s that smell? Cordite? Gunpowder?’ queries the
Doctor. Or is it just Carol Ann after a hefty plate of liver and onions in the
refectory at teatime?
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| Look Kitty, I'll give you fifty quid, as much Whiskas as you can eat, and a shit load of catnip if you'll just eat the girl first. |
- aw, pwetty puddy tat! I once did a film which called for my
character to have a pet cat and let me tell you, it received far better
treatment than any of the actors on set. It was all “we have to wait until the
cat’s ready for a take” and “Sorry, the cat’s a bit stressed, can we take it
back to its dressing room please”. Yes, the cat had his own dressing room! Plus
it was on about 500 quid an hour! And it didn’t have to line up at the catering
van in the freezing cold for its meals and then eat them in a dilapidated double
decker bus with no heating. Meanwhile, us actors had to sit around for three
hours waiting for the sodding thing to do something simple like go through a
cat flap on queue. At which it got a huge round of applause!
- Susan insists she go up the drainpipe ahead of the Doctor.
Clever girl. She’s obviously reminded of Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure. And who can blame her. The last thing you want in such a perilous situation is old man gas wafting down into your face.
- oh, look! Ian and Barbara have just come across what looks
like a giant bowl of peanuts. All they need now is an equally large Martini
each.
- ‘Can you get the flap open’ enquires Barbara of Ian at one
point. I’m sure he can dear, but you’re going to have to wait until The Romans before he does. Still, nice
to know she’s so keen.
- yes, indeed - the fly is very impressive, although it looks
nothing like Jeff Goldblum.
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| Smithers, pictured yesterday. |
- Smithers - the shows first dodgy, completely up
his own bottom, delusional - bordering on the edge of barking - scientist…who’s
a bit of a wimp. Before finding out how inimical DN6 is in the last episode he
seems determined to go through with its production no matter what…ostensibly
so’s to put an end to starvation, but in the process he becomes an accomplice
to murder. Of course, twenty years later he’d have got the backing of Bob
Geldof and having to resort to such actions would’ve been out of the question.
He’d have just had to listen to I Don’t
Like Mondays a couple of times and pretended to have liked it. Oh, and is it wrong of me to expect Mr Burns to walk in through the door at any
minute.
- the Doctor tells Susan that at their current size only a
dog might be able to hear their voices. It’s a pity then that Lassie isn’t
amongst the cast!
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| Coming across a giant bowl of Sugar Puffs reminded Barbara of just how hungry she was...it was a pity she was too small to get the milk out of the fridge. |
- the beginning of Crisis is all re-shot and it’s more
than a little jarring. Not only is there inconsistency with the placement of
the plug (Smithers puts it on the bench at the end of Dangerous Journey yet
here he leaves it floating in the sink), even the soap’s put back the wrong way
round. Plus Smithers rolls his sleeves up one minute yet the next they’re down.
Where was the continuity lady? Down the pub with Richard Martin? And how can we
join in with Ian’s and Barbara’s fretting over their friends safety when we’ve
already been shown that they’re safe and well and hiding in the overflow pipe?
- Hilda Rowse is phone hacking! Quick reconvene the Leveson Inquiry.
- this story is such a strange mix of TV series and films
both old and, in 1964, yet to come. The whole thing of course is a template for
Irwin Allen’s Land of the Giants,
although its own roots are in 1957s The
Incredible Shrinking Man, while the murder of Farrow and the concealment of
his body puts me in mind of Hitchcock’s Rope.
All the talk of blood and its psychological effects on both the murderer and
his accessory is straight out of Macbeth
(Barbara’s attempts to wipe her hands clean of DN6 after coming into contact
with it also echoes Lady M’s ‘Out damn spot’ routine). It could also be an
episode straight out of Doomwatch, in
fact instead of Farrow snooping around it’s pretty easy to imagine the likes of
Dr Spencer Quist, Dr John Ridge or Toby Wren in his place. The last episode
suddenly becomes Inch High, Private Eye
(anyone remember that) as our miniscule heroes suddenly turn detective and set
out to expose Forester’s crime. Finally, the Doctor is very physical in this
story…actively so - how fitting then that he chooses to wear a cape...which has the effect of making him look like a geriatric Batman.
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| Hilda Rowse had a thriving business going on on the side...she just hoped Fred didn't find out about it. |
- what a lovely touch it is that the notepad the travellers come
across (upon which the formula for DN6) is written is curled up at the edges. Little
details like this make up for the fact that sometimes they’re just standing in
front of bloody great big blow up photographs of a telephone, a rack of test
tubes or a dead body. Imagine having to come back from Boots the chemist with those in your shoulder bag (yes kids, can
you believe it, in the old days we had to put film in cameras and then take it
to be developed! And you all thought the Tribe of Gum were a bunch of
primitives).
- The History Bit - a
story warning about the use and misuse of insecticide was very prescient for
1964. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
had been released just a couple of years earlier in 1962 which outlined the
danger the use of pesticides posed to the environment, while the Vietnam War
saw vast quantities of Agent Orange being used on a regular basis from January
1962 onwards. So yes, Doctor Who was
cutting edge…even back then…a bit.
- at the end of the last episode, the TARDIS crew find
themselves having to start a fire…again! And, as was the case in 100,000 BC, it’s not as easy a task as
you might think. Still, at least Ian’s got a box of matches here, even if they
are as large as a lollipop lady’s sign.
Score on the
TARDIS Doors - 5 - sometimes I can
watch this story and think “Lordy, that was crap”, other times “Well, that was
okay”, but really that’s as good as it ever gets. It’s inoffensive enough -
just a bit dull. Every time it presents us with a decent bit of drama, it lasts
about two seconds before it’s suddenly all over with and the “action” (and I
use the term loosely) moves on to the next set piece, whereupon exactly the
same thing seems to happen again. Take the business with the cat for example - its
purpose is purely to lure viewers back next week and once this has been accomplished,
the danger is quickly dispensed with (mind you, the brevity in this case must
surely have been down to the limited resources and technology available to the BBC at the time. There’s no way a cat and the time travellers could’ve interacted with each other any more than they actually
do…unless the designer had come up with a giant stuffed paw which
could’ve taken an aimless swipe or two at our heroes - but then we’d be
dangerously close to encroaching on the territory of The Goodies. Doesn’t alter the fact though that as soon as its
rushed off to receive its kitty treat for acting on cue, the silly buggers
just stand around talking about how dangerous their predicament is instead
of running for protection undercover). Studio size is clearly a problem here
again, just as it was in The Sensorites,
with Susan and Ian coming across a single ant egg, going on to find a whole lot
more, before finally ending up face-to-face with a great big ant, all without
turning a single corner or venturing barely an inch from where they made their
first discovery. Same goes for the Night Scented Stock packet - they’re right
on top of it before the ubiquitous “Oh look, what’s this” moment. The studio
floor is also hideously recognisable as…well…a studio floor, no matter that the
designer’s tried to disguise it by painting it with a pattern that’s supposed
to represent soil or grass (a problem which recurs in The Chase). It’s too smooth, too flat - the grass should be at head height at the
very least and the soil of the flower bed lumpy and uneven. Yes,
the props are great, but the surrounding scenery can be a bit rubbish.
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| The original cover for the Target novelisation of Planet of Giants (can't think why they didn't use it), plus the actual first page. |
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