PLOTLINE  

In this, the first adventure of his third incarnation, the Doctor, Liz Shaw and the Brigadier grapple with the nightmarish invasion of the Autons. Living, giant-sized, plastic-modelled 'humans' with no hair and sightless eyes, they are waxwork replicas and tailors' dummies whose murderous behaviour is directed by the Nestene Consciousness - a malignant, squid-like monster of cosmic proportions and indescribably hideous appearance.

COMMENT

This is Caroline John's unabridged reading of the Terrance Dicks novelisation of Jon Pertwee's debut (Robert Holmes-penned) story SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE published by Target in the UK in 1974; the story was first transmitted in January 1970 and finally released on DVD in 2001 (it was initially released on VHS in April 1997).

I enjoyed this retelling of a classic telly story as an antidote to a Tate-tainted season (the fourth season of Who 2.0 is airing as I write). I am not a Dicks fan because I find him a work-horse rather than an innovator (he was script editor at the time), someone with the capacity to get the job done on time without any fuss or flair. This is a Holmes classic but its influences make it pure pastiche: Kneales' Quatermass II leaps to the memory when one notes that both it and SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE feature alien invasion by meteorite and culminate in a monster being grown in a tank.

John is superb. It's not her first Who audio: she is Liz Shaw after all and so who better to read this (not least because it's Liz's debut as well)? She adopts several different voices to help differentiate the characters and her rendition of the Brigadier while comic is superb; overall, she conveys natural authority in her tone of voice (which one would expect from UNIT's Special Adviser-in-waiting). Liz is a stand-out character here (she is a scientist in her own right): her reaction to the Brigs' story about alien invasions is laugh-out-loud funny ("He's cracking up").

Pertwee's clowning is not here, thank heavens. We do not see him going cross-eyed while being throttled by the Nestene Consciousness, nor do we endure his face-pulling when studying his new look in the mirror. His Doctor is prickly, pompous and very middle-class English ("Lethbridge-Stewart! My dear fellow!" is a greeting that could be replaced by "Hale fellow, well met!") and John puts that across to brittle effect.

In purely production terms, this release has a few nice sound effects (but the Auton tracking signal is missing!) and the music used to represent chapter and scene transitions is fine.

There is some good low comedy. When the Brig is told that the comatose Doctor's brain scan is flat, his reaction is a bemused "Not a lot going on?" And one unspoken reaction to the Doctors presence is priceless: "The tall chap is one of the nobs"

And there is one gaffe which I could not ignore. Dicks describes the Auton hand gun as working on a wrist hinge, which is plain wrong.

The story is laden with key moments but the most memorable are the Brigs offering the Doctor the job as UNIT's Special Adviser, the Doctor then asking Liz to come aboard as his assistant and then his choosing the alias John Smith. It ends with the clear indication that a sequel is likely which is fair enough because they did return in the Holmes-scripted TERROR OF THE AUTONS the following year. Unfortunately, Dicks wrote the Target novelisation for that, too.

The rating reflects the credibility which John's performance lends to this tale.