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Serial: AAA Episode Nos. 254, 255, 256, and 257. Title: Spearhead From Space Special Edition.
The Doctor's exile to 20th century Earth begins when the newly regenerated Doctor arrives
unconscious in the middle of a meteor shower. While the Doctor recovers in a nearby hospital,
the meteors that fell are being collected by strange mannequin-like men and being taken to a
local plastics factory and an alien creature being grown in a tank. UNIT's own investigations
are falling short, but can the new Doctor recover in time to stop the aliens?
This story sees the debut of Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who and Caroline John as Liz Shaw, and
marks the beginning of the Doctor's exile on 20th century Earth where he assists UNIT as
Scientific Adviser. It also features the debut of the Nestenes and Autons, as seen in the first
episode of the new series, Rose and in subsequent episodes.
starring Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who, Caroline John as Liz Shaw, and Nicholas Courtney as
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Written by Robert Holmes, Produced by Derrick Sherwin,
Directed by Derek Martinus.
Originally
transmitted from
DVD features:
Features listed in italics are new to the Special Edition. Those in normal type were also
in the original edition.
- Graphical menus, episode selection features, and scene selection features.
- The restoration
has been redone from scratch, and for the first time, from using the
original film negatives.
This was the only story in the classic series that was made
entirely on film
(16mm).
- Commentary track 1 by actors Caroline John (Liz) and Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier).
- Commentary track
2 by script editor Terrance Dicks and producer Derrick Sherwin.
- "Down to
Earth: Filming Spearhead from Space" A 23-minute featurette
about the
making of the story
with interviews with Terrance Dicks, Derrick Sherwin,
costume designer
Christine Rawlins, assistant script editor Robin Squire, and archive
interviews with Jon Pertwee and producer Barry Letts.
-
"Regenerations: From Black and White to Color" A 19-minute featurette about the BBC's
transition from
black-and-white to color broadcasts, featuring interviews with Derrick
Sherwin, Terrance Dicks, actors Frazer Hines
and Wendy Padbury, designer Roger
Cheveley, directors
Timothy Combe, Michael Ferguson, and Christopher
Barry, and
title sequence
designer Bernard Lodge, who also goes into detail as to how he created
the Jon Pertwee era title sequence that debuted with this story.
- Production Notes Subtitles, rewritten after new research.
- A 5-minute "UNIT Recruitment Film" that was made as a spoof for a run of repeats in 1993.
- A new photo gallery package of stills taken
during production of the story. 4 minutes.
- Three BBC2 trails from the 1999 repeats of this story. 2 minutes.
- PDF Files. Place this DVD into the optical drive of a computer and you can see the original
1970 Radio Times billings and feature articles that accompanied this story.
- An Easter Egg (hidden feature – highlight here to see how to get
to it): an unused
version of the main Jon Pertwee opening title sequence.
This is accessible as follows: from the main menu, highlight "Scene
Selection" and double
click the left
arrow. The Doctor Who logo at the top will become
highlighted. Click on this
and you'll see
an earlier, "first draft" of the title sequence never used on the
finished shows.
- In all previous DVD and VHS releases of
this story, a section of music that played over the
top of the establishing scenes in the plastics factory early
in Episode 2 had to be removed
due to the rights clearances for this track being too
expensive. It was the opening guitar
riffs
of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well (Part One)," which
were much cheaper for the BBC to use in
1970 when the band was still largely unknown than it later became. These rights issues have
at last been cleared up, and for the first time, that music
is left intact and is here on this DVD
right where it
should be.
- The original edition had a series of text-only biographies of the
principal cast called "Who's Who"
which are not present in this edition.
