Production Code J
First Transmitted:
CAST
CREW
Plot Outline from Wikipedia Following a malfunction on the TARDIS console and the bleating of a klaxon indicating something is amiss, the Doctor insists the fault locator shows nothing is wrong and it is safe to venture outside. He leads his companions Ian, Barbara and Susan to the world beyond and within minutes they find a dead giant earthworm followed by a large deceased ant. They seem to have died immediately. After some deduction the travellers realise they have arrived on Earth but have shrunk in size to mere inches. Ian is investigating a discarded matchbox when someone picks it up and he is hurled around inside. That someone is a government scientist called Farrow, who has come to the home of callous scientist named Forester to tell him that his application for DN6, a new insecticide, has been rejected. In reality DN6 should not be licensed: it is far too deadly to all insect life. When they fall out over this news, Forester shoots Farrow and leaves him for dead outside his home. The Doctor, Barbara and Susan hear the gunshot as an enormous explosion, and head for the house. They find Ian unhurt near the dead body and surmise a murder has taken place but can do little about it. However, they are determined to ensure the murderer is brought to justice despite their microscopic size. Having avoided a cat, the travellers split up again with Ian and Barbara hiding in a briefcase. The giant Forester returns to the garden and collects the briefcase, taking it inside to his laboratory. His aide, Smithers, suspects him of murder, but does not report him for fear of undermining the DN6 project to which he has given his life. The Doctor and Susan scale a drain pipe to gain access to the house and locate their friends, braving the height as they go. Meanwhile Ian and Barbara examine the laboratory and encounter a giant fly. She foolishly touches a seed that has been contaminated with DN6 and soon starts to feel unwell. Nevertheless, attracted by Susan’s voice in the reverberating plug hole, the four friends are reunited. Forester has meanwhile doctored Farrow’s report so as to give DN6 the licence he wants and, disguising his voice as Farrow’s, makes a supportive phonecall to the ministry to the same effect. This is overheard by the local telephone operator, Hilda Rowse, and her policeman husband, Bert, who start to suspect something is wrong. The Doctor has meanwhile realised the deadly nature of DN6 and the probable contamination of Barbara. They try to alert someone by hoisting up the phone receiver with corks, but cannot make themselves heard. However, Hilda notes the engaged signal and she and Bert become even more concerned. Forester and Smithers return to the lab and correct the engaged handset and then Hilda rings to check things are okay. She rings again moments later and asks for Farrow and, when Forester impersonates him, knows there is something badly wrong. Bert heads off to the house to investigate. The Doctor and his companions decide to start a fire to attract attention to the house and succeed in setting up an aerosol can of insecticide as a bomb. This coincides with Smithers discovering the true virulence of DN6 - it's lethal to everything - and demanding Forester stop seeking a licence. Forester spots the makeshift bomb, which goes off in his face. Smithers retrieves the gun as PC Rowse arrives. Their work done, the travellers return to the TARDIS and the Doctor reconfigures the machine to return them to normal size. Barbara, who was on the verge of death, recovers on being returned to full size; the insecticide and seed responsible aboard the TARDIS shrinking to their real microscopic and minuscule sizes.
Four years before the popular American TV series, Land of The Giants, and thirty years before Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Doctor Who did it first – perhaps not so glossily, it must be admitted, but they did it. This was, of course, the plot which had been suggested for the first episode but shelved in favour of the prehistoric theme eventually aired. Although some critics failed to understand why the miniaturisation theme should have been used at all, the producers reworked the original concept for the opening story of the second series. Over three episodes, slimmed down from four, it follows a perfectly straightforward story with only two strands – the problems of being reduced to a size where a lawn is a jungle and insects are dangerous monsters, and foiling the ecological sabotage of the villainous Forester and Smithers. Apart from the travellers and the two main villains, there are only three other characters, the luckless civil servant who is quickly murdered simply to prove that Forester is a ruthless villain utterly beyond redemption, and Bert and Hilda Rouse, village policeman and telephone operator. There are two major issues about the plot. Firstly, the far too obvious villainy of Forester and Smithers, who plan to poison the planet in the name of profit and commit murder to get their way. They are just a bit too one dimensional to be completely believable. Secondly, the comic working class stereotypes of Hilda and Bert is hard to swallow. Bert, in particular, is presented as a benign PC Plod. Hilda is the lady who runs the manual telephone exchange in the rural area. They’re nice, simple people with rural accents. The only excuse for either is that this is a three part story with a lot to pack into it. There isn’t scope to make either the guest villain or the guest good guys anything more than simple, easily recognisable stereotypes. But that’s a poor excuse, and one that gets jumped on in modern episodes. Watching the episode from a forty year distance, it is difficult to believe that Forester, who has already murdered once, allows himself to be arrested by the unarmed policeman, Bert in the resolution of the story. But on second thought, it should be remembered that this story takes place in the early 1960s. Dixon of Dock Green is the most appropriate fictional analogy. Remember the pilot film, The Blue Lamp, in which the murder of a policeman sends shock waves through East London. In real life, too, it was a mere eleven years before that Derek Bentley had been hung for his incidental part in a policeman’s death. Killing policemen was a serious matter in the 1960s. Even if this wasn’t a drama aimed at family viewing, Forester would not have killed Bert as easily as he killed the civil servant. In that sense, this episode of Doctor Who says something important about the times in which it was made. The ecological theme, with the fictional DN6, which was not a huge jump away from DDT, was possibly ahead of its time, but not by very much. Such a lightweight fictional story probably didn’t have much of an impact on ecological awareness, but times were changing and a plotline like this would probably not even happen maybe ten years on when the development of such products as DN6 would be under much stricter supervision. Again, the story says something about the times in which it was made. This story was MOSTLY well filmed, (saying nothing about the giant cat backscreening) with excellent work by the set designers to create the ‘giant’ world on a relatively small sound stage. Nevertheless, this story was far from popular or memorable in the long run. One problem with the story is that the science versus ecology plot and the ‘lost in the alien/familiar miniature territory’ idea are two different issues which could have been explored more fully separately. Together they did not allow enough development of either idea. This is true of a lot of later Doctor Who episodes, especially in the Jon Pertwee era. Quite often they seem to put too many threads into the plot just to fill the screen time. A contemporary critic derided the plot as ‘far-fetched, but that is actually a really silly criticism. An alien and his Human companions travelling through time and space in a ship that is bigger on the inside than the outside is a far-fetched idea to begin with. For that matter, so is the whole genre of science fiction. Suspension of disbelief is mandatory. Anyone coming up with complaints like that really has no argument.
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