'Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space' (1970)


After watching 'Terror of the Autons' back in July, I'd had it in the back of my head since then to watch 'Spearhead from Space' when I got a chance. That took a little longer than I planned but I got there in the end :o) I know I could just subscribe to Britbox but I really enjoy hunting these DVDs down in the wild, as it were. A random trip to Greenwich, yesterday, saw me find a copy of 'Spearhead from Space' in the 'Music Exchange' shop and a day off sick, today, saw me watch it. How did I find it? Let me tell you...

Exiled to Earth, in the late twentieth century, by his own people – the Time Lords – the newly regenerated Doctor arrives in Oxley Woods alongside a shower of mysterious meteorites. Investigating these unusual occurrences is the newly formed United Nations Intelligence taskforce (UNIT), under Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, and things are about to get even more weird when people and meteorites start to disappear. Most puzzling of all is the attempted kidnap of a hospital patient, with two hearts, who insists that he recognises the Brigadier...

Irregular things are happening at a nearby plastics factory where faceless creatures are the advance guard of the fearsome Nestenes who want nothing else than to conquer the Earth. Can a newly regenerated Doctor stop them...?

'Spearhead from Space' gives us what is essentially two stories in one, the Doctor recovering from his regeneration and rebuilding his relationship with UNIT in time to play a part against the Auton/Nestene invasion. It works but only to a point, for me anyway, as there's only so much story that you can tell about an amnesiac Doctor, who is mostly asleep, and 'Spearhead from Space' crosses that line. What I did enjoy though was how the Doctor suddenly becomes national news, as the 'unconscious alien in a hospital', and gets the press involved which seems to lead to the Autons taking an interest and ultimately leads to the Doctor making his getaway in a wheelchair. I love it when Doctor Who decides to play it serious but still has it's tongue firmly in its cheek and that is what the wheelchair chase was, the shower scene as well come to think of it.

I also enjoyed 'Spearhead from Space' for the introduction of Liz Shaw and her blatantly not giving one shit about the chain of command in UNIT. It's not that Liz breaks the chain, more just has a habit of bypassing it entirely and very obviously humouring the Brigadier with his tales of alien invasion. And then she meets the Doctor and realises that it's all true...

This is the bit where the Autons really come into their own and honestly, it's like watching a budget 1970s version of 'The Terminator' with indestructible Autons marching down the high street and some vague idea of waxwork Auton's replacing their real life counterparts. It all looks a bit silly but you can't quite escape the feeling that it's all a little unsettling at the same time, especially with Channing pulling the strings. You know that there's going to be a way round it all but it's made really clear that it's all down to the Doctor and that nobody else could make the slightest difference. Which makes those implacable marching Autons even scarier when you think about it.

'Spearhead from Space' could maybe have done with a little tightening up, at the beginning, but goes on to be a pretty solid 'alien invasion' story that I watched the whole way through (and that doesn't happen often at the moment). On the whole, I'm glad I finally found it and gave it a go.

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