1.9: Planet of Giants

In which it’s a godawful small affair.

Broadcast: October-November 1964

Watched: June 2019

1. Planet of Giants

There have long been arguments over whether season 1 really ends with The Dalek Invasion of Earth [the next story] rather than The Reign of Terror [the last one], but this definitely feels like something new. The relatively action-y opening, all the giant props, the sense of being in a totally different type of story, even the way it cuts between two different conversations... It feels like we’ve stepped up a gear. 

Which is odd, in some ways, because it was filmed the literal week after the previous story.

The fact it takes everyone half an episode to work out what is happening (the TARDIS has finally made it back to contemporary England, but everyone is an inch high), despite the presence of giant earthworm and ant, is quite funny. Ian in the giant matchbox is hilarious.

Oh! With the A-plot being about a horrible insecticide, it’s the first green story isn’t it? Wonder if Louis Marks had been reading Silent Spring. [Rachel Carson’s book, which I mainly know of from references in Peanuts cartoons, was published in 1962.]

Farrow’s “I’m about to leave on a three week holiday so no one will notice if, say, anyone happens to kill me!” speech is also hilarious.

Ian holding up a hankie to check if the giant Farrow is breathing is amazing. 

The cliffhanger is a terrifying giant cat! This one is so good, why had I never noticed before?

2. Dangerous Journey

Why do they hide in a briefcase? Bloody idiots. 

The giant plug is amazing. Another brilliant cliffhanger (“He moves to take the plug out of the sink the Doctor and Susan are in…”). This one’s dead good.

[Note: This was originally a four part story: the third episode, Crisis, was merged with the fourth, The Urge to Live, to speed things up and generally make them a bit more exciting. This is the result:

3. Crisis

Everything about the scenes in which the regulars try to use a giant, bakelite phone – up to and including the point when it turns out nobody can hear them anyway – is amazing. The resolution of the plot is perfunctory but works because that isn’t really the story. 

The fact growing Barbara back to normal size cures her of poisoning makes no sense, really, but this is the wrong story to look for sense in.

Anyway. Loved it, and it makes a really strong case that a lot of 20th century Who could be improved by just hacking a quarter of the material out of the final edit.

That said, WTF is the crisis it’s referring to? What a lazy episode title.

Next week: World’s End, the title card tells us. That’s more like it.

[Another note: My late grandmother used to delight in recounting a story about how, when I was about four, I ran into the room in floods of tears because I’d been watching television and, I quote, “Sooty got big! Sooty got BIG!” I can only assume it’s a good thing I didn’t see this story until some time in my 20s because who knows what scars it might have otherwise left.]