Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space

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Spearhead from Space is the first serial of Doctor Who Season 7, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 3 to 24 January 1970. It was written by Robert Holmes and directed by Derek Martinus. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, Caroline John as Liz Shaw, and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

This story launches the Doctor’s new era on Earth:. Injured after his latest regeneration, he is taken to a hospital while strange meteorites fall and the plastic Autons (controlled by the Nestene Consciousness) begin to stir.

With UNIT investigating and the Brigadier seeking answers, the recovering Doctor teams up with scientist Liz Shaw to uncover a plot that hides in plain sight, among shop windows and factory floors.

Episode 1

Meteorites streak across the night sky and fall in a rural wood as UNIT scrambles to investigate. The Brigadier is on the scene with a new civilian recruit, Liz Shaw, cool, sceptical, and brilliant. In the same storm, the TARDIS staggers into orbit and the Doctor collapses on the console floor, newly regenerated and barely conscious. He tumbles out in the rain and is taken to a nearby hospital under an assumed name.

The Brigadier hears of a mysterious patient with two hearts and hurries over, half convinced this stranger is his old ally. The Doctor wakes, speaks of exile and danger, then slips back into a feverish sleep. Meanwhile UNIT recovers strange plastic spheres from the crash sites; one goes missing in the confusion, carried off by a poacher. At the hospital, the Doctor attempts an escape, steals some clothes, and commandeers a wheelchair with mischievous flair, only to be recaptured.

In a plastics factory, a pale, watchful man named Channing quietly takes charge, steering timid owner Hibbert toward a secret purpose. Liz examines an inert plastic hand at UNIT’s lab, bemused, as something unseen stirs. The Doctor opens his eyes, determined to warn them: the invasion has begun.

Episode 2

The Doctor negotiates his release into UNIT’s care and sizes up Liz Shaw with quick, amused intelligence; he needs her scepticism as ballast. Granted a temporary lab, he tinkers with alien readings from the meteorite fall and warns the Brigadier that Earth is facing a coordinated landing, not falling debris. In the countryside, a poacher drags the missing sphere home, only to be stalked by a faceless figure in a raincoat whose skin looks oddly glossy.

At the plastics factory, Channing tightens his grip on Hibbert and accelerates production of blank-faced mannequins, insisting on absolute secrecy. Back at UNIT, the Doctor’s tests reveal a consciousness riding inside the plastic, a signal pulsing like a heartbeat. As Liz leans over the bench, the “inert” hand springs to life and claws at her throat until the Doctor wrenches it free and deactivates it.

He builds a trace to hunt the signal source while the Brigadier deploys troops to guard warehouses and radio masts. Channing recovers the remaining sphere and fits it into a control unit, and something wakes across the factory floor. Night falls. Behind shuttered windows, glassy eyes swivel in unison, and the first Auton takes its testing breath at last.

Episode 3

UNIT tightens the cordon, but the enemy is already inside the wires. Channing perfects his human imitation, speaking enough, blinking hardly at all, while Hibbert repeats his phrases like a man hypnotised. Ransome, the sacked factory engineer, creeps back at night and finds a showroom of mannequins standing in ranks, wired to a humming control rack.

When he flees to UNIT, breathless, the Doctor believes him. A daylight raid is mounted: only for the factory to present spotless floors and ordinary stock, as if the night never happened. The Brigadier fumes; the Doctor listens to the silence between the machines and hears a carrier wave. He and Liz isolate a nesting frequency and assemble a crude jammer, part electronics, part intuition.

Out on the roads, faceless figures are being delivered to high streets and depots, their features painted on with chilling care. Channing dispatches an Auton to eliminate Ransome, and the witness dies alone among packing crates. At the hospital, another Auton stalks the Doctor, but he improvises an escape and returns to his lab with new urgency. He is certain now: a gestalt mind called the Nestene Consciousness is colonising Earth through plastic, and its spearhead is ready at last.

Episode 4

Dawn lifts over quiet streets as shopkeepers roll up shutters: and rows of window dummies blink awake and smash through glass. Panic spreads. Autons march with gun-hands exposed, cutting down police and bystanders while UNIT scrambles to contain the chaos. In the lab, the Doctor and Liz finish an anti-plastic disruptor, a box of coils and guesses, and rig it to a mobile power supply.

The Brigadier leads an assault on the factory; Channing watches, untroubled by bullets. Freed for a moment, Hibbert accuses his puppet master and is killed without ceremony. The Doctor and Liz fight inside to the heart of the complex: a sealed chamber where a tentacled mass heaves in a transparent tank. The Nestene Consciousness, fully materialised, writhes toward them. The disruptor falters; the Doctor is dragged against the glass, choking in plastic coils.

Liz boosts the output and the device screams into resonance. Across the city, Autons freeze mid-stride and topple as the link collapses. Channing’s features slacken into wax and he slumps, unmade. In the aftermath, the Brigadier offers the Doctor a post as UNIT’s scientific advisor. Grounded by his damaged TARDIS, he accepts now with a wry smile and a hunger for Earth’s mysteries.

Themes

As a season opener and a new-Doctor launch, Spearhead from Space stands tall beside the best introductions in the series. It follows directly from The War Games, using the Doctor’s exile to Earth as a crisp story engine and a fresh palette for the new era. The Autons and the Nestene Consciousness feel modern and uncanny, and the partnership with UNIT settles quickly, building on The Invasion and the Brigadier’s earlier appearance in The Web of Fear.

In terms of impact and confidence, it rates alongside later debuts like Robot, The Eleventh Hour, and Rose, and it remains one of the most stylish and assured first outings for any Doctor.

This story also sets up rich lines for the future. Liz Shaw’s scientific rigor foreshadows the grounded challenges to come in The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno, while the Autons’ plastic menace returns with sharper teeth in Terror of the Autons, bringing the Master into play.

The image of shop dummies waking echoes forward to Rose, linking the classic and revived series with a single chilling idea. By closing its mystery neatly yet leaving the Doctor stranded, Spearhead from Space launches the UNIT years with purpose and points the way to a long arc that culminates in The Three Doctors.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Third Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Third Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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To view the list of other Doctor Who serials, please click this link

Doctor Who Episode Guides for Sale on Amazon

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