Doctor Who-Spearhead from Space (1970)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Informational Subtitles Gallery-Photo Audio Commentary-Caroline John (Actor) & Nicholas Courtney (Actor) Featurette-UNIT Recruiting Film Trailer-BBC 2 Trailer (Episodes 1/2) Trailer-BBC 2 Trailer (Episode 3) Trailer-BBC 2 Trailer (Doctor Who Night)
Rating
Year Of Production	1970
Running Time	96:58
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Derek Martinus
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Jon Pertwee Caroline John Nicholas Courtney
Case	C-Button-Version 2
RPI	$34.95	Music	Dudley Simpson Ron Grainer

    Once again, I've delved into my bag of tricks and churned out another effort with my patented Doctor Who plot synopsis kit:

• The Doctor: the kindly-looking, white-haired one with the craggy voice who was Earth-bound for much of his tenure and has since played characters like Worzel Gummidge, also known as the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee).
• The companions: UNIT leader Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) and UNIT scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Caroline John).
• The setting: a point in time where The Doctor was exiled to by the Time Lord government, on a version of planet Earth where the interestingly-named United Nations Intelligence Taskforce serves to investigate the great scientific wonders that have an uncanny habit of popping up around the Doctor.
• This serial's main nemesis: the Nestenes, a group of alien beings with a collective nervous system, who land on Earth via a series of artificial meteorites and possess such inanimate objects as storefront mannequins as part of an invasion force. Said possessed mannequins are referred to throughout the story as Autons.

    Everyone who's seen Doctor Who seems to have a favourite Doctor, whether it be Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor, because of his imposing figure, or William Hartnell, the First Doctor, for the wisdom and gentility he displays. The Third Doctor is known for being the first to have his adventures recorded in colour, not to mention being a generally cranky old character with a more colourful dress sense than his predecessors. Indeed, this more colourful and human incarnation of the Doctor represented a change of direction for the series that risked alienating old fans, but drew in a whole crowd of new ones. Although Jon Pertwee was not my favourite Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is one of the Doctor's most memorable and longest-serving companions.

    Regular viewers of Doctor Who serials will be aware that the previous serial entitled The War Games, which closed the 1969 season, ended with the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) having his companions taken away, and being exiled to Earth. Not only was he sentenced to spend all of his time in the one period of Earth's chronology, he was also forced to regenerate because his appearance was already well-known on the Earth of the 1970s. On the planet, it is business as usual, at least what can be considered usual in the Doctor Who universe, until radar operators for UNIT notice an unusual formation of some fifty meteorites landing in a nearby forest within English territory. What makes this unusual is that a smaller load of meteorites landed in more or less the exact same spot a while ago, and strange things are afoot at the local toy factory to boot.

    In the midst of this bizarre situation, the Doctor's police-box-shaped TARDIS has landed, with the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) staggering out the door and falling to the ground. Meanwhile, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) is talking with the newest scientist to be assigned to UNIT, Elizabeth Shaw (Caroline John). Elizabeth is incredulous about the scientific mysteries that are popping up around the world all of a sudden, but that soon changes when soldiers bring the Doctor in. As the alien meteorites are being recovered, and the Doctor struggles to come to terms with his new identity, it gets left up to our three intrepid heroes to figure out what on Earth is going on. The sight of mannequins taking life and attacking people is surreal enough that you'll never look at tacky clothing stores the same way again.

    Fans of the series will have almost certainly decided already to buy this disc, so there is little point trying to sell it to them. Those who haven't seen yet why this show has stayed on the air longer than any other aside from the news or the test pattern will be well-advised to check this serial out. There could not be a more fitting memorial to Jon Pertwee and his acting skills than the display he puts on in Spearhead From Space, so go out and buy the disc already. Those who do will be able to enjoy what is pretty much the only television series that really means it when it claims to be suitable for viewers of all ages.

    One last technical note: the BBC have once again decided to transfer this serial to digital without giving it any timing information, which will doubtlessly annoy the patience out of any viewer who likes to be able to use time encoding to conveniently skip to specific points of the programme. What this means for those reading this review is that all the time figures quoted here are only approximate. My determination to not let a refusal to put timing information in these serials get in the way of providing an informative review continues unabated.

Video

    Spearhead From Space is unique among the Doctor Who serials for a number of reasons, the most important to our purposes being that it was the first to be broadcast in colour, and that it is the only serial to have been captured entirely on film.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, the aspect ratio that every Doctor Who serial, save for the telemovie, was intended to be shown in, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced.

    The sharpness of this transfer is surprisingly good, with a lot of fine detail resolved in the resultant image. There is definitely more detail on offer here than any VHS tape or television broadcast of this serial, with the tattoo on Jon Pertwee's arm visible at 13:50 in Episode One having a solid and defined shape rather than the usual blur. The shadow detail is generally poor, but acceptable given that it never truly becomes an issue, and there is no low-level noise.

    The colours in this serial are generally quite muted and dull, as seems to have been requisite for television programmes that were broadcast during the 1970s and early 1980s. They are presented faithfully, with no composite artefacts or colour bleeding to worry about. There are patterns of film grain around the edges of some objects that can be confused with dot crawl, but rest assured that this is definitely film grain from the source material, and not the result of composite processing.

    MPEG artefacts were not apparent in this transfer, thanks in no small part to what appears to be an excellent restoration. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of a few minor instances of aliasing such as at 21:10 and 13:50 in Episode Two, but this artefact was well within acceptable limits. Film artefacts consisted of some minor black and white marks throughout the serial, as well as the very occasional serious warpings of the frame and a scratch in the lower right corner of the frame at 14:48 during Episode Three. Whomever was in charge of restoring the print element this serial was taken from should take a bow, as this is definitely the most natural-looking and film-like Doctor Who serial I've seen on DVD-Video, regardless of its region, to date.

    The English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles vary slightly from the actual spoken dialogue, but overall, they are about ninety-five percent accurate.

    This disc uses the Dual Layer format, with the episodes evenly distributed over both layers, as there is no pause at any point in the four episodes.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The emphasis of cost-cutting on the Doctor Who production is also reflected in the audio, with stereo not being introduced to broadcasts of this programme until very late in the 1980s.

    There are two soundtracks on this DVD: the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono with a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second, and an English Audio Commentary, also in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono with a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second. I listened to both of these soundtracks, and had a rollicking good time with them, I might add. There isn't much chance that they will get any better than this.

    The dialogue is generally clear and easy to understand, even from the bad guys. Jon Pertwee is always perfectly easy and pleasant to listen to, although some of the words he utters when he's supposed to be drifting in and out of consciousness got a little muffled. These words are mostly irrelevant, however, so I'm not going to take points off for that. There were no subjectively discernable problems with audio sync.

    The music in this serial can be divided into two parts: the original Doctor Who theme by Ron Grainer, and the incidental music by Dudley Simpson. At times, the music creates a certain dramatic feel that is hard to replicate in a shoestring science-fiction series as this, while other moments see the music taking on a sort of comedic feel. The music is well matched to the programme, and one cannot ask for more than that.

    Being that this is a Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack, there was no activity from the surround channels, and no stereo effects to speak of, either. In spite of this, the soundtrack did not feel congested at any time, although this can be partially explained by the "one sound effect at a time" approach that is characteristic of all but the most recent Doctor Who serials. The subwoofer was not specifically encoded into this soundtrack, but a fair amount of bass information spilled into it during sequences with gunshots, or during the opening credits. This can be partly attributed to the low-fidelity nature of the original sound mix, and it occurred even when I set the surround processor to do this as little as possible. Overall, this is one of the least congested 192 kilobit monaural soundtracks I've heard in a while.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Again, we have a fairly comprehensive collection of rare extras, although the emphasis is now shifting towards quality as well as quantity.

Menu

    Again, I have mixed feelings about the menus provided by the BBC. The menu features a well-themed introduction that lets you know you're about to embark on an adventure of the imagination, as well as a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack and animated backgrounds. The only complaint I have about this menu is that it kicks the user out into the programme after an exceptionally short period of time, making it all but useless as a screen saver for those moments when you need to get a cup of coffee. I don't know if I can say much more about this without becoming libellous, but one of the ingredients of my recipe for the perfect Doctor Who DVD would have to be a menu that loops infinitely.

Audio Commentary - Caroline John (Actor) & Nicholas Courtney (Actor)

    Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney, who have had approximately thirty years to age between the recordings of this serial and the commentary, have a lot of very interesting things to say about their experiences of recording this and other Doctor Who serials. The commentary is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo with Nicholas' voice coming from the left channel, and Caroline's voice coming from the right. It is quite a treasure for those who want to hear such things as what it was really like to work with the late Jon Pertwee. Caroline and Nicholas quickly settle down into a good rhythm, although any commencement of a new tangent tends to disrupt that a little, and some of the things they share are quite a revelation.

Trailer - BBC 2 Trailer, Episodes 1 and 2

    Getting to see a television trailer for any Doctor Who serial is a rare treat indeed. This trailer advertises the special 1999 broadcast of the first two episodes from Spearhead From Space on BBC Two, and it is an excellent inclusion despite the fact that it is obviously trying to advertise the show to viewers whose cultural vocabulary needs to be broadened by the show. It is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, and runs for thirty-three seconds.

Trailer - BBC 2 Trailer, Episode 3

   Again, this is an advertising of a broadcast of an episode out of Spearhead From Space from the year 1999, and it is quite a surprising inclusion. Similar in style to the previous trailer, it runs for twenty-three seconds, and it is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound.

Trailer - BBC 2 Doctor Who Night Trailer

   An advertisement for a broadcasting of several Doctor Who episodes from various serials, all in the one night. Beginning with a monochromatic snippet of footage that features Tom Baker, this trailer features small robotic toys moving around and flashing lights to the tune of the Daleks bellowing their favourite word, while viewers hide behind their seats. It is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, and it runs for forty-three seconds.

Informational Subtitles

    Subtitle track number three contains information about the locations where each scene was shot, and key plot points from the Doctor Who canon that are found in this serial. Some of the tidbits that are revealed won't be much of a surprise to regular viewers, but others will come as a real surprise. This is quite an excellent use of the subtitling system as more than just a rendering of the dialogue.

Photo Gallery

    A large collection of stills taken between takes and off the set, mostly featuring the principal actors posing for the camera or otherwise clowning about. The lack of annotation aside, these are well worth taking a look at.

Featurette - UNIT Recruiting Film

    With narration by Dexter Fletcher, who is making a pretence of being one of UNIT's soldiers, as well as some rather amusing in-character speech by Nicholas Courtney, this simple featurette is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. It is basically a four minute and forty-nine second collection of footage featuring UNIT in action, taken completely out of context with some hilarious voiceovers. This is another shining gem in the BBC archives that fans of the series will be glad to have.

Easter Egg - Unused Jon Pertwee Introduction

    From the main menu, highlight the Play All option and press left, which should highlight the Doctor Who title in the upper left corner. Press the enter button, and playback of this forty-five second, 1.33:1, Dolby Digital 2.0 snippet of unused footage will commence. This is basically an unused rendering of the opening titles sequence that involves slightly different arrangements of the psychedelic graphics. It is difficult to discern any real differences between this footage and the effects that were used, making me wish for at least some annotation explaining them, or why this sequence was never used.

    The Region 1 version of this disc is not yet released. It has been planned for a September 11 release, but ours was originally planned for early August, so there is no telling until it actually arrives in the catalogues of the online retailers. While the Region 1 version of the disc has considerably better cover artwork compared to our blurry still of an Auton, the usual PAL vs NTSC differences come into play far more considerably than is normally the case. Given that resolution is never a strong point with the masters used to transfer Doctor Who serials, the extra information in a PAL image is much appreciated, and there was never any intention of the serial being transmitted on anything other than PAL television, anyway.

    Those who are considering importing the Region 2 version of the disc will probably be aware that the two versions are fundamentally identical, making the local disc the disc of choice due to superior resolution and a cheaper price. The Region 2 and Region 4 discs are much closer to how the BBC would have this serial presented, so the only compelling reason to order the Region 1 disc applies to those who are really picky about cover artwork.

    Plastic men being used as an invasion force to spearhead a takeover of Earth by a collective alien consciousness. Could there possibly be a better metaphor for children's television of the present? Spearhead From Space is an excellent choice as the first of the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who serials to be transferred to DVD-Video. While it is not as great as The Robots Of Death, it contains a sublime display of acting in what is a very tough role, from an actor who is now, sadly, deceased. Fans of Doctor Who, and they are truly present in legions even today, will need no further convincing to buy this disc.

    The video transfer is very good, possibly as good as it is ever going to get.

    The audio transfer is functional, but it would have been nice to have an optional remix.

    The extras are comprehensive and an essential addition to any Doctor Who fan's collection.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall