“My friends just can't understand this new me.”

Watching Spearhead from Space at the BFI earlier this month two paradoxical things struck me. The first was that it seemed more like The War Games than I’d ever previously though it to be. Now, perhaps the reason for this was that some of the artificial distinctions between the two stories, those created by one being “the first colour story!” and the other being in black and white, and how we as a fandom think about that landmark were erased to The War Games in Colour¹. But I don’t really know.²

I do know that seeing it on the big screen had a role in this reassessment. The mono-focus demanded by a cinema environment meant I noticed just how similarly the Doctor is written in the two stories - despite being played by different actors - while better sound really brought home how alike Dudley Simpson’s two scores for the serials are. This should not be a surprise, not really. These stories were made a few weeks apart, their writing overlapped and people like writer / script editor Terrance Dicks and producer Derrick Sherwin worked on both. But it was a surprise, because of the extent to which we tend to think, as a fandom, of Spearhead as a fresh start.