Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

For January, I decided to tackle the biggest project of my Epinions career: the current range of Doctor Who on DVD. Nine hundred episode, 26 years - and only 30 days to go. Something tells me I'm not going to make it. . . .

First the standard Doctor Who Primer for those of you just joining us:

From 1963 to 1989 (and a couple of false starts thereafter) the BBC ran an immensely popular family program called Doctor Who. The main character is called The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He travels the universe in the TARDIS, a wondrous spaceship that can go anywhere in time and space - provided that the Doctor can steer it correctly. During his adventures, he and his companion (usually a young human female with weak ankles and good lungs) combat evil and injustice wherever they find it. Key to the longevity of the series - Doctor Who can do what the James Bond movies have done several times. When fatally injured, Time Lords have the ability to regenerate, totally changing their faces and personalities, allowing the ability to swap out the lead roll when the actor wants to leave the series. So there have been several Doctors with different faces (ten, so far), but all of them the same character.

Oh, and the name of the show is Doctor Who. The main character is simply called The Doctor.

Ok, kids - it's new Doctor time! Taking over from Patrick Troughton (the one with the Moe Howard haircut) is newcomer Jon Pertwee (the one with the frilly shirts and velvet smoking jacket) - and for the first time ever COLOR!

That's right - most folks don’t know, but the series that would go on to run for another 20 years nearly didn’t make it out of it's sixth season. The BBC had been spending too much money on the show and the ratings had been slipping. The producers were ordered to cut costs and turn things around or season seven would be the show's last.

As you can imagine, Doctor Who escaped that fate.

However as a result, the production team grounded the Doctor in exile (to slash the budget), hooked him up with an international taskforce charged to investigate and combat paranormal and extraterrestrial threats to the Earth years before the X-Files, and switched the show to color (despite a low number of color sets at the time).

Meanwhile, as a freshly regenerated Doctor lands his now crippled TARDIS, a swarm of meteors falls onto the English countryside (the aliens, of course are following the traditional rules of engagement - any invasion must have it's beachhead in the south of England).

The Meteors are actually containers for the non-corporeal intelligence called the Nestene Consciousness. The Nestene have this thing for plastic, able to animate humanoid facsimiles made from that material. As the Nestene set up shop in a London toy factory, a cat and mouse game is underway for the last of the missing meteors. Will the Doctor recover from his regeneration trauma in time to assist UNIT, stop the Auton invasion and save the Earth?

Post regeneration stories are usually pretty weak compared to what came before. Logopolis is so much better than Castrovalva, Robot is ok but not nearly as good as Planet of Spiders, and of course we wont get into how bad the Twin Dilemma is compared to it's proceeding episode. Even the Christmas Invasion - which was a pretty good story - wasn’t nearly as good as The Parting of Ways.

So, how does Spearhead from Space stand up?

For starters, Robert Holmes - a script writing GOD amongst men - provides an excellent script, nice and tight and manages to set the tone for the remainder of the Pertwee era. Jon is great right out of the gate (where did the Doctor get that Tattoo, anyway? Some kind of strange Gallifreyan criminal brand?), and the incidental characters - the one thing Robert excels at - are real and believable. The Brigadier (commander of the UNIT UK forces) gets some nice screen time and sets himself up nicely as series regular for the rest of the run.

Oh, I must take a moment to point out one flaw. The original broadcast (and the VHS copies from 1995) have one thing included that's missing from the DVD release. On the audio track in the background of a scene in the toy factory, some Fleetwood Mac could be heard. Unfortunately the rights to the song couldn’t be cleared and the song had to be replaced with generic music.

THE DVD -
The video for Spearhead is a step up from what we got on the Robots of Death and Five Doctors releases, but it's still a far cry from what is yet to come. Thanks to problems at the BBC, the entire episode was shot on film - even the interiors (very unusual for the series), so it does have a nice heavy feel to the production.

THE EXTRAS -
As the video quality improves so do the extras. This time we get a much more robust package, including a commentary with Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier) and Caroline John (Liz Shaw), a short tongue-in-cheek UNIT Recruitment Film, the trailers from the 1999 BBC2 repeats, a photo gallery and one of the best extras the ranges has: on-screen production Notes, a trivia track that runs as subtitles during the feature, imparting tidbits, trivia and wisdom that only the exceptionally diehard fans would know.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
Forever known as "The one where the shop window dummies come to life", Spearhead From Space is a great addition to the Doctor Who DVD range. Captivating and brisk, the episode ushers in the third (and possibly the most unique) era of the shows very long run.

OTHER DOCTOR WHO EPISODES ON DVD:
* The Beginning
* Doctor Who and the Daleks
* The Lost in Time Collection
* Tomb of the Cybermen
* Spearhead From Space
* The Ark in Space
* Genesis of the Daleks
* The Pyramids of Mars
* The Robots of Death
* The Caves of Androzani
* Vengeance on Varos
* Revelation of the Daleks
* Rememberance of the Daleks
* Doctor Who - Series One
* Doctor Who - Series Two
* Torchwood - Series One
* Doctor Who - Series Three


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12