Planet of Giants

The doors of the TARDIS open while the ship is till in flight, setting off alarms and creating panic amongst the crew. The Doctor does not know exactly why it happened, but Susan knows that the most dangerous moments of their flight are just at the point of materialization. When the travellers emerge from the ship, they find that they have indeed been affected, and they are now roughly one inch tall. The TARDIS lands in between the stones of a garden path outside a cottage where an ambitious industrialist is financing a project to create DN-6, a lethal pesticide which kills indiscriminately. And if it can kill anything else that lives in the garden, then it could also be deadly to four time travellers.

Barbara comes into contact with the pesticide in the middle of this three part story, but tries to keep her contamination a secret either to keep her companions from worrying about her, or maybe she's just afraid of being told what an idiot she is for being careless. Still, it's a solid performance from Jaqueline Hill even if her 1964 hairstyle takes up more screen than her face. And what does she put in it? My sister watched part of episode 2 with me and noticed that when touched, Barbara's hair doesn't move.

There are two interesting points to the story; the first being the reasons why the TARDIS would materialize in miniature form at all. The ship does, after all, travel through the relative dimension of time, so who is to say that its other dimensions are not fluid while it is in transit? The space/time vortex that the TARDIS travels in is often referred to as a mysterious realm where ordinarly laws of physics do not apply, but in a physical sense it might require a lot less energy to transport a smaller object through time than it would a full sized police box. The other interesting point is the story's statement on ecology. In the beginning, Doctor Who was aimed primarily at children and when it was not focussed on historical adventures it would dip into the educational side; in this case the pesticide DN-6 was wiping out not only pests but other insects and life forms that are essential to the environment. Witness the dead earthworms, dead ants and the magnificent animatronic housefly (critics of the show's special effects should see this as an example of what can be achieved even on a limited budget).

And on the production side of things, this would be the only 3 part adventure until 1987. The script was originally much longer and reportedly was shot in its entirety as a 4 part adventure before being trimmed down to it's present length. No word has ever come on the status of that footage, but should it ever come to light it would be fantastic as a special DVD release with an alternate extended movie format version included in the package, such as with the 1989 adventure The Curse of Fenric.

Day saved again and all that by the end of episode 3. Season two has started well enough, but what's a second season without a little of the magic that made the first a smash...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH