Escape To Danger No.47

Back in the days when various tweedy pipe-smoking BBC chaps were discussing ideas for a new television series called Doctor Who, it was determined that there should be a mixture of storylines concerning themselves with the past, the future, and what was described as "sideways".

 

Nowadays we are familiar with the term "historical stories", where the Doctor couldn't be seen to muck about with history. We also have no problem with stories either set in Earth's future or on other worlds in any historical period (where nobody seems to care what the Doctor messes around with).

 

But "sideways"?

 

One plotline that kept cropping up was one called "The Miniscules", which was at one point in line for being the first broadcast story (back when Ian was known as Cliff, Susan was Biddy, and Barbara had the excellent pornstar name of Lola McGovern).

 

"The Miniscules" hung around the wildly oscillating first season schedule for long enough that, like some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, it eventually entered production as "Planet of Giants". (Which is set on a planet, but without any giants. Spoiler. Sorry).

 

But sideways? Well, quite frankly it is, and in one of those weird ways that Proper Who only did every once in a while, and was all the better for it.

 

There's some interesting stuff going on in Serial J, albeit in a very low-key manner. (Famously not enough to warrant four episodes of laboratory sink action, though). There's the sideways irony that the Coal Hill teachers are finally back in their own time period but decidedly unable to return home, and the unexpected anti-capitalist and environmental themes which would have made Barry Letts cream his pants.

(Trivia fans should also delight in the fact that it was the first monochrome Who VHS release to receive vidFIRE treatment. How did the primitive message boards of 2002 cope?).  

 

 

Anyway, despite being almost accidentally held over to launch Who's second season (and unfairly overshadowed by events of the following serial), "Planet of Giants" has utterly amazing sets and is all rather fun in a weird sort of... sideways way.

 

While the distinct lack of publicity photos in the 1980s has been more than compensated for in recent decades, I do think that the Serial J image above has survived all the Johnny-Come-Lately shots, and must surely be hardwired in my brain by now...