Spearhead From Space - Production

Production

The working title of the serial was Facsimile, and was based on a story that Robert Holmes wrote for the 1965 film Invasion, which featured an alien crashing in the woods near a rural hospital, where a medical examination reveals his alien nature. The hospital is later visited by other aliens, seeking a fugitive criminal. Some of the exact lines of dialogue used by human doctors to describe the physiology of the injured alien were re-used.

Industrial action by certain elements of BBC staff meant that this serial was filmed almost entirely on location, with the majority being undertaken at BBC Wood Norton and the pub in nearby Radford. Lacking videotaped studio material, this also meant that it was the only story, to date (excluding the TV movie), to be shot entirely on film (other stories in the original series intercut material from either source as required or, especially in the last four years when film was eschewed even on location, were entirely on tape).

The change to colour production also necessitated changes to the program's opening titles. Designer Bernard Lodge, who had produced the previous sets of titles used up until Spearhead from Space, originally intended to produce a new set using the same 'howlaround' technique that he had for the previous titles. Tests showed, however, that the technique did not produce satisfactory results when used with colour equipment and so the final set were produced in black and white before being manually tinted. These were completed in August 1969, a month before work began on the serial.

The new titles also introduced a new logo for the series. Unlike the logos used for the First and Second Doctor's eras, which used a generic typeface, the new logo was an attempt at being more stylized, particularly in the presentation of the initial "D" in Doctor and the "H" in "Who." This logo would be used until the final episode of The Green Death in 1973, but would make an unexpected return in 1996 when it was adopted as the logo for the US-produced 1996 TV movie. It subsequently became the official logo of the Eighth Doctor, and of the franchise itself, being used on original novels, Video releases (1996–2003) & DVD releases, and Big Finish Productions audio plays. As of 2007 it continues to be the official logo of the 1963-1989 series and Big Finish's Doctor Who productions, while a new logo was introduced to symbolize the 2005-2010 series and again for the most recent (post-2010) series.

The story was repeated in its entirety on Friday evenings on BBC1 in July 1971. It became the first ever broadcast of Doctor Who outside of its typical Saturday evening slot. The story was later repeated on BBC2 in 1999.