Before I get to Doctor Who I need to brag. Dudes, check it out! This morning I not only weighed in at my lowest weight since starting this project, but definitely at my lowest weight in the past ten years and possibly in this millennium. How weirdly serendipitous is it to hit this milestone on the same day I started a brand new era of Doctor Who? Of course, I also hit this milestone on the same day that I am going to an Independence Day pool party where I will be eating mass quantities of grilled burgers and hot dogs,  not to mention plenty of potato chips and almost certainly drinking non-trivial quantities of adult beverages. I'm just sayin', tomorrow I might not still be below 270. In the meantime, I started watching Spearhead from Space this morning.

Let's talk about that.

Spearhead from Space - Episodes 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

A funny thing happened while filming this story. Of course, as noted, it was the first story shot in color, which led to a slight wrinkle: between the time of the location filming and the studio filming, all of the BBC studio camera operators went out on strike. They demanded more money for operating the new and much more sophisticated electronic color cameras, which left producer Derrick Sherwin with a problem. He decided that, since the film camera operators were in a different union than their studio counterparts and thus weren't on strike, they would just shoot the entire story on 16mm color film. As a result, Spearhead from Space is the one and only classic Doctor Who story shot entirely on film, and thus is the only classic story to get a complete high definition remaster for release on Blu-ray.  

As for the story itself, the first episode is (not surprisingly) mostly setup, and a slow tease to revealing the new Doctor. The opening has a cluster of meteors entering the Earth's atmosphere and then crashing into the ground in Oxley Woods in rural England northeast of London. A poacher spots one of them and, apparently having never seen any science fiction film ever, picks one up. Here's a pro tip: if something falls from the sky and has a pulsing organic glow, you shouldn't touch it or even poke it with a stick. You should just back away slowly and let some other poor sucker take the fall.

At roughly the same time, in the same area, the TARDIS materializes and the Doctor staggers out and collapses to the ground without ever showing his face. He winds up at the local hospital, having been found by some UNIT soldiers there to find the meteorites, and for at least half the episode his face remains obscured by camera angles. His new appearance isn't shown clearly until Brigadier Lethbridge-Steward arrives, and even then the Doctor seems to be delirious. The hospital staff is very curious about him, largely because of the Doctor's binary circulatory system (this is the first time that it is stated that Time Lords have two hearts), and that leads to a bit of a media circus as well as some nefarious characters out to kidnap the Doctor. The end of the episode has the Doctor escaping a kidnap attempt, staggering back to the TARDIS, and then being shot by a startled UNIT guard.

It's the second episode where we finally get our first real taste of the Third Doctor, and where he picks out his signature costume. He is taken back to the hospital unconscious and with a grazing head wound. Once there, he feigns a coma until he is left alone to sneak out again and finds himself in the private doctor's lounge. There is a lovely bit of business where he finds the door marked "Doctors Only", and just kind of gives it a shrug like, "Well I guess that's me...". He passes through a changing room and then into a locker room area with a very prominent shower stall. Which then leads us to this beautiful scene in which we very nearly get to see the Third Doctor's naked butt:

Honestly, take three minutes and watch it, it is the template for so many future "the Doctor picks his new wardrobe" scenes. By the end he has his new look, complete with a dramatic cape, and he has a new car which either foreshadows Bessie or becomes Bessie. I'm not sure which yet. In any case, the Doctor promptly arrives at UNIT headquarters where the Brigadier has conveniently brought the TARDIS. It is there that the Doctor first meets civilian scientist Liz Shaw, and they immediately take a liking to each other (much to the Brigadier's frustration). It seems the Brigadier holds the key to the TARDIS, and he promises to release it to the Doctor if he will only help UNIT solve the mystery of the meteorites.

Speaking of which, the other thing going on in this episode is a creepy doll factory which has clearly been taken over by the bad guys. We get our first scenes with an Auton, a creepy mannequin just walking around the woods searching for the missing meteorite. At the end of the episode, a suspicious ex-employee comes face to face with another of the Autons and lets out a blood-curdling scream.

It would seem that introductions and setup are done, and tomorrow we will get right to the good stuff!

STATS:

Doctor(s): Third
Companion(s): Liz Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Episode(s): Spearhead from Space - Episodes 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 6,216 today, 867,594 total
Distance Walked: 3.18 miles today, 421.32 miles total
Weight: 270.48 lbs (five day moving average), net change -36.82 lbs