YMMV / Doctor Who S7 E1 "Spearhead from Space"

• Franchise Original Sin: While it remains a fan-favorite, this story introduced a number of traits that would ultimately lead to the show's cancellation at the end of the '80s. Continuity Creep would first rear its head thanks to the plot relying on elements introduced in three different '60s stories (none of which were re-ran at the time), the story would be much grimmer and more violent than many of its predecessors, and the all-film production (the end result of a workers' strike) resulted in an unusually cinematic approach that belied the show's usual low-budget multi-cam nature. While these elements were and still are widely praised for helping refresh the series for a new decade — and any potential Continuity Lockout was avoided by using Liz Shaw as an Audience Surrogate character, allowing new viewers to discover these plot elements at the same time as her — the John Nathan-Turner era's attempts at replicating these successes would ultimately lead to overambitious stories that drew accusations of Seasonal Rot and an irreversible ratings decline.
• Fridge Horror: The Nestene Consciousness' plans were to subvert world governments by creating realistic Auton replicas of world leaders and military staff. Absent a cut line (in which the Doctor coordinated with The BBC to broadcast the high-power UHF frequency that kills Autons), how do we know that all the Autons were reliably snapped up? And could there have been other meteor strikes in, say, the United States? Or the USSR? or Communist China?
• Growing the Beard: The introduction of the Third Doctor coincided with the show's change to both colour production and a noticeable upward shift in its production value, as well as the introduction of more adult storylines.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Doctor initially has some noted dissatisfaction with his new face, a fact that becomes very amusing when Patrick Troughton's return appearances established that his Doctor persistently had something to bicker about with Pertwee's Doctor. Clearly the last vestiges of his old incarnation was dismayed that he had become who he dreaded!
  • The ringing sound emitted by the meteorite which the poacher digs up sounds exactly like somebody's mobile phone.
  • Something about the Combat Auton from its first appearance eerily foreshadows Michael Myers.
  • A character named Dr. Beavis would no doubt provoke a snigger from contemporary viewers.
• Mandela Effect: Many who watched this story on its original broadcast are convinced that they saw the Autons smash the glass of the shop window after coming to life. In reality, the show did not have the budget to do this, so the camera cuts away as they are about to break it, before inserting a sound effect of breaking glass, and doesn't cut back to the Autons until they have broken out.
• Narm: The final attack of the Nestene on the Doctor. After the very effective Auton attack, somehow the Doctor being unconvincingly strangled by fake tentacles (and hamming it up as he is) just seems anticlimactic.
• Retroactive Recognition: Fred Mullins is played by Talfryn Thomas, who would later be best known for playing Private Cheeseman in Dad's Army.
• Signature Scene: The mannequins coming to life and rampaging through the town, which terrified a generation of children.
• Special Effects Failure: In the wax museum, several of the Autons sway and move just slightly long before they actually come to life. (Although one could consider this an unintentional form of Five-Second Foreshadowing, in a sense)
• Uncanny Valley: With a humanoid-shaped body but a blank plastic face with the outline of human features, the Autons owe their creepiness to this.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The whole serial looks unusually good due to being shot on film and being a (relatively) big-budget season opener.
  • The lovely matte painting of the Earth hanging in a deep canvas of stars at the beginning, especially on the Blu-Ray version.
  • The Autons mark one of the times where the inability to create a realistic monster was exploited to create something pants-shittingly scary. 1970s shop window dummies actually did look that creepy.

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