Actually, Pertwee's comedy cleaning lady comes in The Green Death near the end of his run
Does it? *doh* - shows how long it is since I saw either. I always remember fan wisdom saying Pertwee started out playing things for laughs, but my memory is that Spearhead is much more dominated by the introduction of UNIT than by Pertwee's performance and UNIT was really a lot more serious (or at least action-oriented and macho), at least in inception, than a lot of the Troughton stuff had been.
I find it hard to see this as qualitatively greatly different from New Earth or Smith and Jones. The Cassandra body-swap sequences are not greatly different in comedic tone to the "through the window" pantomime we have here.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-27 11:51 am (UTC)Does it? *doh* - shows how long it is since I saw either. I always remember fan wisdom saying Pertwee started out playing things for laughs, but my memory is that Spearhead is much more dominated by the introduction of UNIT than by Pertwee's performance and UNIT was really a lot more serious (or at least action-oriented and macho), at least in inception, than a lot of the Troughton stuff had been.
I find it hard to see this as qualitatively greatly different from New Earth or Smith and Jones. The Cassandra body-swap sequences are not greatly different in comedic tone to the "through the window" pantomime we have here.