TEXT: By Louis Marks 5:15pm - 5:40pm [SCENE_BREAK] 1, INT: TARDIS CONSOLE ROOM (The four members of the TARDIS crew are standing around the console recovering from their visit to 1794 Paris. The air is full of expectation about where they will end up next. The Doctor walks around the console flicking switches.) DOCTOR: We're approaching a planet. IAN: Which one? DOCTOR: We shall soon see. (Barbara snatches her hand away from where she was leaning on the console.) BARBARA: Ow. DOCTOR: What's the matter my dear? BARBARA: I burnt myself on the console. DOCTOR: Oh, something overheating here. Just as well we're landing? Er, Susan, check the fault locator please. SUSAN: Yes Grandfather. BARBARA: We're not going to blow up or anything are we? DOCTOR: Oh no no no, of course not. It's just, well, there we were in the late eighteenth century and I tried another frequency to sidestep the ship back into the middle of the twentieth century. (Susan walks over to the adjoining cupboard-like fault locator, and reads from a dial.) SUSAN: There's something on QR18, Grandfather. And A14D. (Susan spins around in horror and a siren immediately begins to sound.) SUSAN: YELLOW STANDBY! GRANDFATHER, THE DOORS, THEY'RE OPENING! (In the main Console Room the doors begin to swing open a crack, revealing a slice of foreboding nothingness outside. The Doctor immediately galvanises into action.) DOCTOR: What's happening... Unbelievable! Chesterton close the doors please! We haven't materialised properly! Quickly! IAN: What do you mean close the doors? DOCTOR: Don't argue dear boy it's an emergency, close the doors! Quick! Use force! (Ian leaps towards the doors, but it is too much for him and he struggles to keep the gap from widen
SUMMARY:
The doors of the TARDIS open of their own accord just before it materialises, running out of control. On emerging, the travelers find the ship has been reduced in size and they are now only about an inch tall. As tiny people, they stumble across a plot by a ruthless businessman,Forester, and his misguided scientist colleague, Smithers, to launch a new insecticide, DN6 - a product so destructive that it would kill not only those insects harmful to agriculture but also those vital to it. Forester is willing to commit murder to ensure the success of his business, as civil servant Arnold Farrow discovers to his cost. The criminals are brought to justice when the Doctor and his friends - hampered by the fact that Barbara is ill from the insecticide - tamper with the telephone in Smithers' laboratory, fuelling the suspicions of the local exchange operator, Hilda Rowse, who sends her police constable husband Bert to investigate.