Started 30-DecColour, film, new Doctor... mouth open.
We watched the 2013 Bluray edition.
The radical change is obvious. But the elements of Sherwin's UNIT are all still here. These parallels with Web and Invasion are present.
- Liz Shaw is like Anne Travers (sarcastic, sceptical and modern)
- Sam Seeley is like Driver Evans. (Everyday old fashioned eccentric...)
- Munro is like Knight. (cynical and duty worn)
- Ransome is like Gregory. (not evil hearted, technically focussed but exploited by the baddies)
- Lethbridge Stewart is Lethbridge Stewart. (and UNIT is like UNIT)
- Hibbert and Channing are revised versions of Packer and Vaughn. (Alien boss with conniving yet sympathetic 2IC who gets his comeuppance in the end, Vaughn is more aggressive, Channing is more quietly threatening but they're both psychotic)
- Scobie is like Rutledge. (establishment military authority who blocks attempts to take action against the baddies)
- The auton killers are a little like redesigned Invasion Cybermen. (they hide, they stalk, they shoot rays from some part of their body, they are immune to bullets (mostly), they have silver boots)
- In ep4 Liz and the Doctor build a Cerebration Mentor (sorta) (a maguffin that somehow ends the alien soldiers threat).
The budget looks cheap (compared to modern standards not 60's DW). The props and the sets are lacking in complexity. The furniture in the factory office looks sparse and cheap. The scenes in the hospital look empty and hollow.
I suspect the BluRay reveals little problems which were likely never meant to be obvious. The science equipment in the Doctor's makeshift lab (eps2,3) looks sparse. The Nestene in the glass tank looks like a plastic bag attached to the inside of a fish tank with vaseline. Note the total lack of broken glass in the famous window shop dummies scene in ep4. The 'plastic squid' climax in the factory is not the best.
The pacing is weird. Ep1 is kinda slow and ep3&4 are rapid. Ep4 seems a trifle rushed. It's as if the story starts properly about 5 minutes from teh end of ep2. There are several characters who seem to disappear without explanation (Seeley, Munro).
Apart from that the film looks good. What's very different is the level of visual exposition. In ep3 Channing calls off the Auton killer from chasing Ransome at the factory and the actors mime it; the communication is all silent. There are numerous other examples of this. The film camera gives us fast intercut editing and dolly shots and crash zooms. None of this seems gimmicky.
This is a very new thing in DW at this point.
The story of how it came to be all film is legendary. It's never been asked if Sherwin's tenure as Producer was affected by this cheeky decision.
Another important element in this is the incidental music. Like the all-film production, the music in Spearhead is almost unique in DW history. It is realised conventionally by flutes, drums, brass and piano but it is very modern and in some parts modern and experimental.
Like the atonal Malcolm Clarke Sea Devils or Carey Blyton Silurians it squawks and flaps (think of the opening and arrival of the meteorites in ep1) but the conventional instrumentation makes it sound very different. I like to think it's like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in that sense. There is tempo change. key change and dramatic pulsating parts but it's all in keeping with the action.
Importantly it really sells the scary parts. Think what the sound adds to the end of ep2 where Ransome is exploring the plastic factory. Dudley has progressed from Ice W's, Fury (essentially playing with the very new analogue synthesisers) and Seeds (where he rediscovered real instruments) to this.
Next series he will be back to pumping at the analogue synth like in the piano player in a silent movie theatre (Autons, Claws, Daemons) but it will settle eventually.
When Geoff Burgon follows this approach for Zygons and Seeds of Doom in 75/76 it works again, even though the style is more spooky and moody.
Spearhead from Space was and still is the most enormous shock in DW history. It is not particularly innovative as a DW story. The characters and plot elements are derived from The Invasion and Seeds of Death and the Robert Holmes scripted film "Invasion" (1966) (specifically the stuff about the alien at the cottage hospital) but the look is amazingly good.
Almost as big a shock is the inevitable crash back to studio/film next story.
ABM Rating 3.70/4.00
LJM Rating 4.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.40/10.00
No. 5 (out of 51)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
Rankings Scoreboard
From http://www.pagefillers.com/dwrg/spea.htm#11
ReplyDeleteThe Exile by Andrew Wixon 15/10/01
When the BBC cancelled the fondly-remembered children's fantasy series Doctor Who in 1969 it was the logical thing to do. For six years the programme had proven popular and inventive, surviving one change of lead actor, but in its final season the quality was wildly variable, the tone uneven and often sadly juvenile. More importantly, the series arc had run its course. At the conclusion of the epic final story The War Games, the Doctor was forced to contact his own people, the Time Lords, thus dispelling the enigmatic nature of the main character that many thought essential to Doctor Who's formula. In a memorably downbeat conclusion the Doctor was forced to return home to his life of scholarly seclusion, abandoning his adventurous pursuits.
The series the BBC chose to replace Doctor Who in the Saturday tea-time slot was, famously, The Exile starring Jon Pertwee as an alien stranded on Earth who's forced to assist the UN in investigations of unearthly phenomena. Those few Doctor Who fans still around often argue that the new series was little more than a blatant copy of their favourite, and that some elementary rewrites of Spearhead, The Exile's debut story, would have made it an ideal opener for a revamped and reformatted seventh season of DW. It's true that many of the cast and crew of Spearhead had previously worked on DW, including writer Robert Holmes, but the two series were fundamentally different in many ways, and this script could never have succeeded as an installment of the B&W series.
This is a much slicker, more professional and adult programme than DW ever was. There's some stunning direction throughout - from fluid camerawork in the first episode, to the scene where the alien Channing (a magnetic performance by Hugh Burden) is seen symbolically fractured through a window. The tone is also much closer to that of The Avengers or Doomwatch than Doctor Who. Adults could and did sit down and watch this without the need for a child to be present. Even the Auton creatures are convincingly designed and creepily utilised, containing just enough reality to make them genuinely disturbing - far more so than the outlandish Doctor Who monsters whose poor realisation so often let the series down.
Jon Pertwee as the Exile has far more of a leading man's presence than Troughton's clownish Doctor Who. The script cleverly builds his part up from a mumbling invalid in part one, to an assured and compelling hero by the story's close. His associates, Liz and the Brigadier, are not child-like companions but professional adults with jobs and agendas of their own. Liz in particular gets some acerbically humorous dialogue throughout the story. Almost all the visiting cast excel - the aforementioned Hugh Burden deserves special praise, as do John Woodnutt as Hibbert and Derek Smee as Ransome. All in all Spearhead is a great example of how to launch a brand-new TV SF series. Despite what some people may tell you, any resemblence to the Doctor Who of the 1960s is entirely fleeting, and almost certainly coincidental.
From Quickflicks
ReplyDeleteThe list of firsts for this DW serial is quite long. This is the first serial to made in colour. The first for Jon Pertwee as the Doctor and Caroline John as Liz Shaw. The first episode of DW to be made wholly on film. An accident but a notable first. It came about because of the unexpected unavailablilty of TV studios at the time of production. It means in 2013 this will become the first classic DW to be released on BluRay.
A