Doctor Who: Planet of Giants (1964) William Hartnell, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford
Planet of Giants
The crew arrives in a place where everything is on a gigantic scale, due to the TARDIS doors malfunctioning. They opened before it had finished materializing. They are soon aware of the nefarious plans of a ruthless businessman, and the misguided scientist working for him.
Barbara Wright: [finding the dead giant earthworm] Doctor! Doctor! It’s a huge snake!
The Doctor: What? Yes.
Barbara Wright: Let’s call the others.
The Doctor: Oh yeah. Wait, wait, wait. Yes, I think it’s dead.
Barbara Wright: It’s a fantastic size.
The Doctor: No eyes. No head. The skin is interesting, isn’t it?
Barbara Wright: Interesting?
The Doctor: It’s so dull, not scaly.
Barbara Wright: Doctor, Doctor, are you sure it isn’t just sleeping?
The Doctor: No, no. It’s quite dead. Death has its own particular posture and appearance. Yes, yes.
Ian Chesterton: All right. What’s your theory, then?
Susan Foreman: These things haven’t been made bigger. We’ve been made smaller.
Dr. Who: As I said my dear, it’s fortunate for all of us that everything is dead.
Susan Foreman: [seeing the giant cat which is very much still alive] Grandfather!
Dangerous Journey
The Doctor realizes that Forester has murdered the government scientist, Farrow. Meanwhile, Barbara inadvertently comes into contact with a poisonous strain of insecticide. And, the Doctor and Susan are hiding in a sink drain — when the scientist comes in to wash his hands!
Forester: [trying to explain Farrow’s dead body] He pulled it out of his pocket and told me he was stealing the formula. I struggled with him. The gun must have been turned to his body. It went off.
Smithers: [after a cursory examination of the corpse] I wouldn’t try telling that story to the police, if I were you.
Crisis
The Doctor and Susan reunite with Ian and Barbara. Barbara’s uncharacteristically weaker than normal. And they realize that she’s been infected with the DN6 insecticide. While Barbara’s health is failing, the crew find the formula for DN6. It’s the pesticide for Farrow was willing to kill for, and which could now be responsible for killing Barbara! Of course, if they can restore Barbara to her normal size, her body could fight off the insecticide without a problem. A sizable if … (no pun intended).
The Doctor: Wait a minute. I see we’re beginning to materialise. Perhaps I should know now where we are.
Product Description
“Planet of the Giants” opened the second season of Doctor Who with William Hartnell’s Doctor and companions Susan, Barbara and Ian finding themselves in a mysterious labyrinth filled with dead giant ants. A TARDIS malfunction has left the travellers an inch high and they have landed in the cracks in a garden path, part of a testing ground for an insecticide which could trigger a biological apocalypse.
The plot combines the urgent warning of Rachel Carson’s 1962 environmental landmark Silent Spring, with the basic scenario of Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), the characters facing similar hazards including being menaced by a domestic cat. The low budget means the huge props necessary to realise the story are limited, but what there are prove surprisingly good. Even the over-size ants and a big fly look fairly impressive. The story maintains an unsettling mood, with an effective cliff-hanger involving the laboratory sink. Continuity problems stem from the original four-episode story being re-edited into three parts prior to transmission, but this is still a superior example of early Doctor Who, predating the popular American TV series Land of the Giants (1968) by four years. Lindsay Gutteridge’s once popular 1973 novel Cold War in a Country Garden owed much to the story. –Gary S Dalkin
Cast of characters
- William Hartnell (Doctor Who: The Time Meddler) … The Doctor
- William Russell (The Great Escape) … Ian Chesterton
- Jacqueline Hill (Doctor Who: The Daleks) … Barbara Wright
- Carole Ann Ford (Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child) … Susan Foreman
- Alan Tilvern (Captain Horatio Hornblower) … Forester
- Frank Crawshaw … Farrow
- Reginald Barratt … Smithers
- Rosemary Johnson … Hilda Rowse
- Fred Ferris … Bert Rowse