Synopsis:
The Doctor and Susan are trapped in the drainpipe as Smithers empties the sink of water...
Luckily they have sought refuge in the overflow pipe, and so avoid being washed away. Once they hear the "giants" move away they emerge and begin to clamber up the plug chain to look for Ian and Barbara. Soon everyone is reunited on the workbench. Barbara is beginning to feel the effects of the toxin in her system but declines to tell the others about this.
As they explore they come across a notepad and decide to see what it says. The exposed page outlines the formula for DN6, and the Doctor finally discovers its true destructive nature.
Forester disguises his voice to call the Ministry posing as Farrow. At the local telephone exchange, Hilda Rowse is suspicious as this doesn't sound like the civil servant. She calls Smithers' farmhouse with a fake call from Whitehall, and gets her husband Bert to listen in.
The Doctor decides that they might be able to use the lab telephone to call for help. They use corks to hold the receiver up off its cradle then shout in unison. At the exchange, Hilda can hear nothing, but the call does prompt her to get Bert to go to the farmhouse to investigate. He is the local policeman.
The travellers finally discover that Barbara is ill, poisoned by DN6. She insists that they continue to try to find a way to stop the chemical being produced.
Forester notices that the telephone is engaged and he and Smithers go to the lab where they find the corks underneath the receiver. Forester thinks that Smithers might be responsible as there has been no sign of anyone else on the premises. The scientist is beginning to realise the error with his insecticide.
The Doctor has spotted an aerosol can whose contents are flammable, and sees that it is sitting next to a gas tap. This gives him an idea. He has his companions fetch a match from a nearby box and then they then turn on the gas supply.
As the Doctor and Barbara take shelter, Ian and Susan strike this match and hold it to the gas jet, igniting it. They hurry to join the others as the flame begins to heat the container.
Forester and Smithers return to the lab and spot this - but too late. The can explodes in Forester's face. Before he can recover, Bert Rowse walks in and arrests both men.
Satisfied with their work, the Doctor ushers everyone to the sink so they can descend the pipe to the garden.
Back in the TARDIS the Doctor tells his companions that he witnessed the arrest of Forester and Smithers. He instructs Ian to place the huge seed on a table, then repeats the procedure he used just prior to their landing. They see the seed appear to shrink in size, demonstrating that they are returning to their own proper dimensions. The toxin in Barbara's body similarly reduces and she quickly recovers.
Some time later, the scanner has been repaired. However, the image is unclear and the Doctor cannot make out where they have landed. It could be anywhere...
Next episode: World's End
Written by: Louis Marks
Recorded: Friday 4th September (Crisis) and Friday 11th September 1964 (The Urge to Live) - both Television Centre Studio TC4
First broadcast: 5:15pm, Saturday 14th November 1964
Ratings: 8.9 million / AI 59
Designer: Raymond P Cusick
Director: Mervyn Pinfield (Crisis) and Douglas Camfield (The Urge to Live, and credited).
Additional cast: Rosemary Johnson (Hilda Rowse), Fred Ferris (Bert Rowse)
Critique:
For completism's sake, we have to point out that this story was written and produced as a four-parter, yet only made it to the screen as three episodes.
As far as the production team were concerned, Planet of Giants was not the ideal story with which to launch the new season of Doctor Who. It was felt to be low in incident in its original form. The giant insects used in publicity tend to be either already dead, or die soon after appearing, and the TARDIS crew never get the opportunity to interact with the villains of the piece - all of which hampers the action.
As you can see from the memo reproduced below, the Dalek sequel was the favoured opener, but the departure of Carole Ann Ford complicated matters. The running order couldn't be swapped around as she was due to leave at the end of the Terry Nation story.
In order to make the story more exciting, it was decided by Verity Lambert's boss Donald Wilson, one of the architects of the series and a big supporter of it at the BBC, to have the third and fourth episodes edited into one - dropping most of the longueurs.
Editing took place over three days - Thursday 29th and Friday 30th October, and Monday 2nd November, reducing 48' 30" of material down to 26' 43" for broadcast.
One complicating factor was that each episode had a different director.
Mervyn Pinfield had been working on the story from the beginning, but was unavailable to direct the final instalment. This was offered to Douglas Camfield, by way of testing him out as a potential full-time director.
Camfield joined the BBC in 1955. He had a keen interest in the British Army, which he joined in 1951 as part of his National Service, and had attempted to join the Special Air Service only to have to withdraw from training due to injury. This fascination with the military was to stay with him his whole life, and he tended to run his film units in regimented fashion.
He had been production assistant to Waris Hussein, and had worked with him on both of his Season One Doctor Who stories - An Unearthly Child and Marco Polo.
With more experience of filming (as opposed to studio recording) than Hussein, he had been allowed to direct the material filmed at Ealing for the first story - including the climactic fight between Kal and Za in the Cave of Skulls.
As it was his first directorial work on the show, and there was far more of the original fourth instalment than the third retained in the new episode, Pinfield was happy for Camfield to take the on-screen credit.
The production team were impressed with the new director and indicated that they would like to use him again in the not too distant future.
The material cut included the death of the cat, plus information regarding some history between the Rowses and Forester. Bert had almost been knocked off his bike by Forester's big American car, and Hilda even knew that Forester smoked the same cigarettes as her husband used to. As broadcast, Hilda's suspicions just appear out of nowhere. Only hinted at on screen, Forester grew suspicious that Smithers was behind the actions of the TARDIS crew - such as messing about with the telephone extension. At the same time, Smithers was beginning to question Forester's actions. Much more was made of the TARDIS crew trying to read the contents of the notepad. Once it became known that Barbara had become infected with DN6, she elected to concentrate on stopping it from becoming widespread over her own health - so rather than flee the lab they decide to stay and fight.
An inlay shot was lost from the end of the fourth episode - when a giant hand would have been seen in the same shot as the travellers hiding behind the gas tap.
All the key plot points survived the edit, with only build-up to events being deleted - with the unfortunate effect of removing some of the characters' motivations.
Ray Cusick claimed to have had a hand in the explosive conclusion to the story, being asked what was possible prop-wise - and the script was then modelled around this. However, the rehearsal scripts seem to disagree with this, having the exploding aerosol can set-piece already in place.
Once again we have some problems with scale. The props seem consistent, but the photographic blow-ups once again do not match. The photo of the telephone is far bigger than the actual scenic prop.
Another unseen adventure is mentioned as the Doctor and Susan discuss their experience of a bombing raid. Viewers would have automatically thought of the London Blitz, being so recent in the public consciousness, but they then go on to mention Zeppelins as the cause, taking us back to World War I - unless it is some alien planet or parallel Earth where airship warfare was common.
The deletion of the fourth episode would have a knock-on effect that would not be resolved until the third season - as we will see when we get to Mission to the Unknown...
- A half million increase in audience, and another rise in the Appreciation Index.
- William Russell was ill on the day before the recording of the fourth episode. He was able to come into the studio for the recording, but a car was standing by to take him straight home afterwards.
- This story marked the final appearance of the TARDIS fault locator, at least in its original form. It will later be mentioned in a missing Troughton episode (Part One of The Wheel in Space), when it has become a component of the central console.
- Liverpudlian Fred Ferris was a well known comedian, who had often featured on radio. He was a late replacement for another actor - John Dawson.
- For the DVD release it was decided to recreate the missing episode. William Russell and Carole Ann Ford returned to voice their characters - the former sounding far too old - whilst other parts were played by a new cast who generally didn't sound like the characters they were playing. Ian Levine directed. Missing visuals were recreated using clips from other episodes - so there were a lot of character close-ups - plus a bit of animation (including a truly dreadful cat). There was a very good reason that this episode was deleted...
- Donald Wilson's memo of Monday 19th October, regarding the editing together of the third and fourth episodes:
- On November 14th 1964, on the day this episode was broadcast, Doctor Who made its debut in TV Comic. The strip introduced the Doctor's grandchildren John and Gillian. They would remain the comic strip companions well into the Troughton era, when they were eventually replaced by Jamie. Unable to use the Daleks, who were going to feature in their own TV Century 21 strip, the first aliens to menace the cartoon Doctor were the small amphibious-looking Kleptons.
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