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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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About twenty years ago a friend of the family was writing an article for the Daily Mail on the viewing habits of little kiddies. So she got me and my brothers to talk about our favourite shows. The cutting is lost in someone’s attic somewhere, but I remember what it said – ‘Jeremy is 8 years old and his favourite program is Doctor Who because 'It is brilliant space adventures.' Well it's back on the BBC tea-time shift, and hopefully I can articulate the show's appeal more effectively this time.
They're kicking things off with first John Pertwee story, 'Spearhead from space.' I never saw it when it was first broadcast (I came in about halfway through his tenure), but the look and feel of the show is pretty much as I remember it.
The Doctor gets exiled to earth with a new face and ends up back working with UNIT, facing off against those scary plastic Auton guys. The plot hardly blisters along, and the camera work is rather stilted. Remember that scene Austin Powers where he gets stuck pulling a three-point turn in a tight corridor? – they play that one here, but not for laughs but for tension. It’s mind-wandering stuff at times.
So it's shit then? Another example of over misty-eyed nostalgia clouding the brain? Hell no, for all its cheapness points, it wipes the floor with a lot of 90s sci-fi. It never gets bogged down by the hammy sentimentality that pervades the Star Trek franchise. It is never pretentious to the level of brow-beating introspective bollocks that threatens to sink every X-files episode. Pertwee knows how to play charismatic without straying into annoying and wacky. The majority of it is shot on location which gives it a nice gritty feel (and no granite pits in sight), and the story's spin on alien body snatching (well, body replication) is way more bizarre and creative than your modern efforts – check The Faculty and Abel Ferrara's Bodysnatchers for tired non-starters.
Catch it before BBC2 change their mind and swap it for bloody Randal and Hopkirk or something.
BBC2 Tues 18.00 GMT
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