Dr Who And The Giant Plants Of Norwich

Dr Who And The Giant Plants Of Norwich

The Complete And Utter History Of Dr WHO? (Part Ten)

The second Seasoning of 'Dockter Who' begans with a story that had been hanging around for some time. One of Sidney 'Proctor' Neman's original ideals was for a story called 'Dr Who And The Miniaturists' in which Dr Who's TARDIS was to be shrunken and attacked by a giant mouse that was really small but looked big as it was close up. This story (also known as 'Dr Whom And The Giant Rat Of Sue's Mattress') was had a go at by various writers but they all gave it up as a bad job as no-one could find enough magnifying glasses to put in front of the cameras so that people at home could actually see what was going on.

Enter Lewis Marxks. He was a multi-talented writer, producer, player of the harp and owner of a disturbing false moustache and cigar. Having been to Oxford (to buy a tie) he worked out that you did not really need to make Dr Who and the regular cast small, you could just make a big sink and a giant seed packet or something and the general public would probably be fooled anyway.

Episode One of this story ('Land Of The Giant People') was broadcasted on 31st October, which also happened to be Hallowe'en that year. This began a long-standing tradition whereby each new series of 'Doctro Who' would always start with Episode One of a story, so as not to confuse peoples of the universe.

The villain in this story was a villainous businessman played by Alvin Tillyvernas who was best known as playing both leads in the popular show about those popular comedy writers 'Sid Hills and 'Doc' Dick Green'. There was also a policeman in the story, but it is not the same policeman as in last seasoning's first episode as he has a different helmet if you look closely.

A challenge for the production team was a scene where schoolteacher Ewen 'Johnny' Chess were attacked by some giant matchsticks, which had to be made by gluing lots of little matchsticks together in the right order. At first they thought it was difficult to find so many used matchsticks, but thankfully Jack Hargreaves was smoking his pipe in the canteen at the time, so it was achieved within about ten minutes.

Episode Four ('From An Urge To Live Again') was deemed too slow to broadcast as the videotape had been accidentally set at 33 rpm rather than the usual 45 rpm, so it was edited togther with Episode Three ('Escaping To A Dangerous Crisis') to get it over and done with. Doctor Who makes a seed go little and then it ends. There was also something about Doctor Who's telly being bust, I think. That was probably a metaphor for people who did not pay their licence fee as the BBC detectorist men would come round with a giant hammer and smash the screen if you refused to cough up.

Thus ended Doctor's Who adventures up a giant's plughole but waiting in the wings was an very old Emney... As the old saying goes: The Invasion Of The Earth Had Beginned!

(Next week, that is)

Next Episode:

"Well, I can't see anything..."

(By Andrew Trowbridge)