OPENING the second season of the show in the autumn of1964, this was originally scheduled to be a four-part adventure for the First Doctor (William Hartnell).

Instead, it was decreed that the story would be better as a three-parter and therefore episodes three and four were amalgamated.

During materialisation, the TARDIS doors open and while everything seems to be normal, it appears that the Doctor, with companions Susan (Carole Ann Ford), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian (William Russell) have landed on a planet of giants.

After witnessing a murder, they realise that they are on earth and it is they who have shrunk.

They become involved in a plot to sell an insecticide that can kill everything on the planet and they must somehow stop it.

However, with giant cats, drainpipes and Barbara being infected by the chemicals, it seems that the Doctor and his friends are helpless.

It has to be said that some of the effects are quite spectacular for their time – in fact some of them just might have ended up being utilised in Irwin Allen’s US show Land of the Giants a few years later.

There’s a slight change to the extras because, as the producer explains, only two of the cast have survived and only one of the production staff.

This means that there is no ‘making of’ documentary and they have decided to reconstruct episodes three and four as they were originally perceived.

Thus was done – as explained in another extra – by getting the surviving cast members, William Russell and Carole Ann Ford, the original scripts and some talented people who impersonated the remaining cast; and recreating the soundtrack matching it with other footage and CGI techniques.

The result is quite interesting.

Other extras include interviews with Carole Ann Ford and original Who producer Verity Lambert.

It is overall an intriguing story and well worth seeing again after 48 years.

BBCDVD 3479.