Doctor Who “Spearhead From Space Part 3”

So, how dangerous can a bunch of living manikins be?

As it turns out, plenty.  One of the guys from the doll factory gets chased around a bit by one.  Its hand opens up to show it’s got some kind of gun or missile launcher in there, and while the doll factory man does get clear during the first encounter, when a manikin, possibly the same one, finds him later, it kills the guy with a first shot and completely vaporizes the body with a second.  Also, it threatens an old lady whose husband had one of those meteor things in his shed.

Don’t let your husbands keep weird things in the shed, ladies.

Oh, and it turns out being made of living plastic with nothing that looks like a vital organ makes a being effectively bulletproof.

Not that these things are subtle.  Well, one is.  More on that one in a minute.

See, the manikins are more or less of secondary importance for this serial as it is mostly about setting up the show’s new status quo with the Third Doctor.  As such, we see him toiling away in that UNIT lab with Liz, tricking her into getting the TARDIS key from the Brigadier when he says he has some advanced equipment inside, and then trying to disappear into time and space only for the TARDIS to smoke a bit and not go anywhere.  Yeah, the Brigadier isn’t happy about that, but the Doctor actually thought he could go around his punishment from the looks of things.

I’m guessing we won’t be seeing the inside of the TARDIS all that much in the near future.

However, UNIT is on the case, getting information from that Seeley guy who keeps weird meteorites in his shed about stuff, and I got to thinking that man was the English equivalent of a redneck, and that doll factory guy before he gets killed when a manikin easily rips through a tent flap.  And that would mean they need to bring in a general, someone who outranks the Brigadier, and that guy is a bit surprised to find to his horror someone at his door.  It’s another manikin, and this one has the general’s face.

See, I told you one was being subtle.