Story #9 "Planet Of Giants"

Season

2

Writer

Louis Marks

Book/CD

 X

Episodes

3

Director

Mervyn Pinfield

Vid

 X

Story code

I

Producer

Verity Lambert / Mervyn Pinfield

DVD

Episode Details

Episode

DR MM:SS

TX dd/mm/yy

RPT TX dd/mm/yy

In BBC Archive

1

23:15

31/10/1964

Y

2

23:40

07/11/1964

Y

Cast Details

Regular Cast

William Hartnell (First Doctor) , Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman) , Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright) , William Russell (Ian Chesterton)

Guest Cast

Alan Tilvern (Forester) / Frank Crawshaw (Farrow) / Reginald Barratt (Smithers) / Rosemary Johnson (Hilda) / Fred Ferris (Bert.)

Synopsis

Returning to Earth, the crew find themselves trapped in a jungle with monstrous creatures pursuing them. Soon they realize that they have become miniaturized and are indeed on Earth. In their miniature state, they discover dangerous experiments with a totally lethal insecticide are being performed but they seem powerless to stop them.

Notes

1. The first television story since An Unearthly Child to be set in modern day England.
2. All 3 episodes exist in 16mm telerecordings.
3. Negative film prints of all 3 episodes were recovered in 1978.
4. Arabic prints of all 3 episodes are also held by the BBC.
5. The story went by the working title Death in the Afternoon.
6. Originally filmed as a 4 part story it was later compressed to 3 episodes at the request of Donald Wilson, BBC Head of Serials. Episode 3 was originally entitled Crisis and episode 4 was entitled The Urge to Live. The material filmed for these 2 episodes has not been retained by the BBC and it appears unlikely that it will ever be recovered.
7. The story was originally developed under the title The Miniscules which was originally intended to form episodes 2,3 and 4 of the show, following on from An Unearthly Child.
8. The story was filmed as part of the first bloc of stories but a decision was made to hold it over as the opener for the second series.
9. This story sees the debut of Dudley Simpson, the show's most prolific creator of incidental music.
10. This story appears to be influenced by stories such as; Gulliver's Travels (1726), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and Silent Spring (1962).
11. A few years later, an American science fiction series called Land of the Giants would replicate the general concept of this storyline.