Spearhead from Space

In the serial, which is set in Essex and London, the alien time traveller the Doctor (Jon Pertwee), now exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, joins Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) of UNIT and the scientist Liz Shaw (Caroline John) to stop the incorporeal intelligence the Nestenes from colonising the planet through their use of the Autons, killer plastic automatons which act as human duplicates and shop-window mannequins.


The serial introduced Pertwee as the Doctor and was the first to feature the Autons. It also introduces Caroline John as the Doctor's new assistant, Liz. Nicholas Courtney becomes a regular cast member beginning with this serial.

Production[edit]

The working title of the serial was Facsimile, and was based on a story that Robert Holmes wrote for the 1965 film Invasion,^[2] which featured an alien crashing in the woods near a rural hospital, where a medical examination reveals his alien nature. The hospital is later visited by other aliens, seeking a fugitive criminal.


Industrial action by certain elements of BBC staff meant that this serial was filmed almost entirely on location, with the majority being undertaken at the BBC engineering college at Wood Norton near Evesham, and the pub in nearby Radford.


The change to colour production also necessitated changes to the programme's opening titles. Designer Bernard Lodge, who had produced the previous sets of titles used up until Spearhead from Space, originally intended to produce a new set using the same 'howlaround' technique that he had for the previous titles. Tests showed, however, that the technique did not produce satisfactory results when used with colour equipment and so the final set was produced in black and white before being manually tinted. These were completed in August 1969, a month before work began on the serial.^[3]


The new titles also introduced a new logo for the series. Unlike the logos used for the First and Second Doctor's eras, which used a generic typeface, the new logo was an attempt at being more stylised, particularly in the presentation of the initial "D" in "Doctor" and the "H" in "Who." This logo would be used until the final episode of The Green Death in 1973, but (in slightly modified form) would make an unexpected return in 1996 when it was adopted as the logo for the US-produced 1996 TV movie. The 1996 form subsequently became the official logo of the Eighth Doctor, and of the franchise itself, being used on original novels, video releases (1996–2003) including the alternative Ninth Doctor's animated Scream of the Shalka, DVD releases, and Big Finish Productions audio plays.