Spearhead from Space

Doctor Who is hurled into one of his most exciting and terrifying adventures when he battles an evil alien who’s trying to take over planet Earth!  After the Time Lords order Doctor Who to stop travelling through time and space, he decides to spend his exile on Earth.  But the Doctor soon discovers he isn’t the only alien intelligence headed for the planet.  A mysterious meteorite shower marks the arrival of Nestene Consciousness-an evil, cosmic, collective being with just one goal-total conquest of Earth.  The Nestenes are creating an army of indestructible killer mannequins called Autons. It’s only a matter of time before they order the Autons on a killer rampage!  Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, scientist Liz Shaw and U.N.I.T. need the Doctor to stop the relentless Auton invasion, but the Doctor has problems of his own…

• This story marks the first appearance of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor as well as the first story to be filmed in color.

• Another major change to the program was the inclusion of the Doctor's exile on Earth.  For the next 3 seasons virtually all of the stories were to occur on present day Earth rather than some other planet.

• Watch closely for the scene where the Doctor is hiding from the medical staff in the shower.  Apparently when he regenerated, he also got a free tattoo in with the deal.   :)

• If the character of Hibbert looks at all familiar, that is because he is being played by none other than John Woodnutt.  Woodnutt has appeared frequently in Doctor Who.  His next appearance on the show would be that of the Draconian Emperor in "Frontier in Space."  He would later go on to play the double role of the Zygon commander Broton/the Duke of Forgil in the classic Tom Baker story "Terror of the Zygons."  His final appearance was as counselor Seron in Tom Baker's penultimate "The Keeper of Traken."

• **Omnibus Format**  Unfortunately, this story was originally released in an edited "movie" (or Omnibus) format.  This means that individual episodes have been cut and pasted together into one viewing.  The BBC released Doctor Who videos like this until the early 90's.  Since then they have gone back and issued "re-releases" of virtually all of their omnibus versions.   Unfortunately, the U.S. (i.e. CBS/Fox at first, and then later Warner Home Video) hasn't been eager to follow suite, as they have only done two re-releases "The Brain of Morbius" back in 1997 and  "Terror of the Zygons" in 2000.  Additionally, many stories first released in the late 80's and early 90's are seeing re-release on DVD.  Unedited titles such as "The Ark in Space" and "Robots of Death" are all available now in their unedited formats.

• The U.K. re-released "Spearhead from Space" in its unedited episodic format in 1995.

• An unedited version is available on DVD.

• One alteration made to the DVD but NOT made to the VHS release is the removal of a Fleetwood Mac song overheard during an establishing shot of the plastics factory in episode 1.  When this story came up for release on DVD the royalties for the music rights were too high, and so the music was removed for the DVD version.