s02 e09 Planet of the Giants

In which the TARDIS crew gets shrunk down to tiny size and must make their way across a lawn filled with hostile insects while in no way inspiring later films.

Review:
Surprisingly, not even the fact that the episode contains an environmental message inspired by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring can stop this from being ridiculously good fun.

Important Firsts:

• First episode set on entirely on contemporary Earth.
• First episode involving a miniaturized Doctor.

Musings:

• No but seriously, I'm not kidding about the Silent Spring thing. The writer had just finished reading Silent Spring, and the whole reason he miniaturized the crew was so that they could come face to face with the dangers of insecticide.
• Originally this story was four segments long, but the last two were spliced into one to make for a faster-paced conclusion.
• This essentially left a one-segment hole in the production schedule, which was later filled with the one-shot story Mission to the Unknown, which is unique among Doctor Who stories in that it involved none of the regular cast.
• Originally, the pilot episode of the series was supposed to involve the TARDIS crew being miniaturized. This was back when the TARDIS was conceived of as less of a time and space machine than as a general purpose mystery-box.
• The TARDIS doors open on their own in the middle of the time vortex, and Susan turns into some sort of pointer.
• I think for the exterior TARDIS shots, they are actually using their usual miniature model in someone's backyard instead of on a set at the same scale.
• The TARDIS scanner blows up because it tries to display something too big for its frame.  I'm glad my television doesn't work like that.
• The sets look awesome.
• Susan makes a friend
• Actually, though, the ant is dead, as are all the insects the crew encounters.  That anti-pesticide message is starting to seep through.
• Ironically, it's Susan who first figures out that they have been miniaturized.  Ian prefers to cling to the notion that they are, in fact, on a planet of giants.
• Susan is really starting to annoy me less as she becomes more and more competent. 
• The explanation given for the shrinking is that when the TARDIS doors opened in mid flight, the "space pressure caused us to reduce"
• Um.
• Ian gets separated at 13:10 when he climbs inside a matchbox and gets picked up by kind of an awesome man.
• OH SHIT THERE'S A CAT.
• Some long conversation about the dangers of insecticide between a nice scientist and a weasely pesticide manufacturer...
• ...who proceeds to murder the scientist with a gun.
• The TARDIS crew feels the reverberation of the gun as a big explosion, like an ancient cannon going off.  
• The scientist falls to the ground, spilling Ian and allowing him to escape.
• The crew is reunited by the body of the dead scientist. 
• The crew decides to make haste back to the ship...
• but OH SHIT THERE'S THE CAT.
• Ian takes refuge in a briefcase and gets carried.  You think he would learn.
• Some more yammering about pesticides between the local giants.
• The Doctor and Susan climb up the inside of a rusty drainpipe.  I'm pretty impressed that the Doctor manages this, although he just barely makes it.
• A line in Neil Gaiman's "The Doctor's Wife" implies that the Doctor left Gallifrey about 700 years ago, meaning that he was about 200 years old.  Given that Susan is only 16, he must not have been wandering around too long.  I'm thinking the Doctor acts around 75 or so in human terms, implying that Time Lords age about one third as fast as humans within a given regeneration.  On the other hand, the Eleventh Doctor is seen 200 years older in "The Impossible Astronaut" without seeming to have aged a day.  It could be that only the first regeneration ages normally, which would make sense since they do start as children and age to adulthood the first time around.  I dunno. 
• Barbara also makes a friend, although this one is alive.
• Ian and Barbara reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaalllyyyyyyy need to bone, and I really need a new running joke.
• Barbara fondles some pesticide-covered wheat granules.  I get the feeling this will come back and bite them in the ass.
• Once she realizes what she's done, Barbara decides that it's a good idea not to tell anyone.
• Ian and Barbara make a ladder out of paperclips.  Great fun.
• The Doctor and Susan emerge from a sink. 
• Barbara starts to die from the insecticide.  She still doesn't tell the rest of the crew. Eventually they get suspicious of her passing out every couple seconds.
• Finally, the TARDIS crew manages to phone a kindly old couple by stamping around on a telephone.  They set events in motion leading to the apprehension of Evil Pesticide Man.
• The elderly man comes to investigate, and gets a gun pulled on him. 
• The TARDIS crew lights a match by running it at a matchbox like a battering ram.
• In turn, they light a gas jet and direct it at an aerosol can.
• The resulting explosion blinds Evil Pesticide Man and saves the day! Great fun!
• Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor works out a way to grow everyone back to normal size.  Doing so astronomically reduces the relative amount of pesticide in Barbara's system, and the day is saved!
• In the cliffhanger, the TARDIS takes off on its own.
• BECAUSE NEXT EPISODE HAS DALEKS.
• No for real though: "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" is a big deal, and I'm super excited to watch it again.