ANALYTICAL: BEING CUT DOWN TO SIZE - MINIATURIZATION IN DOCTOR WHO

I am lucky enough to have the entirety of Doctor Who at my disposal. Originally, I owned it all on VHS but converted to DVD. I know I need to make the switch to Blu-Ray, someday, but am scared of the investment!   

But because I have enjoyed the whole show over and over, I like to mix things up a bit. I will pick a specific theme and watch all the stories that use it. Seeing the return of the Master's tissue compressor inspired me to view any stories that involved miniaturization of any sort. As usual, I noticed certain trends in the adventures that used this device and felt I should comment on them in an ANALYTICAL essay.    


Like many fans, I've fallen instantly in love with Sacha Dhawan as the latest version of the Master. I need to see him a bit more before I decide if he's my absolute favorite (to see who that is, start here and follow the countdown: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2017/11/book-of-lists-ranking-masters-part-1.html). I do find that he reminds me a lot of Ainley's Master (which is an actual compliment if you bother to read and follow-through on that link I sent you). Like the Infamous Master of the 80s, he seems more ruthless than most other incarnations. He's quicker to unleash death on innocent victims. He's also much more determined to kill the Doctor. It also looks like he might have that love for disguise, too, since he does assume quite a few different identities during Spyfall.

But the similarity to Ainley that has pleased me the most is the return of the tissue compressor. Yes, Ainley wasn't the first to use such a weapon, but he delighted in using it as frequently as he could. The Dhawan Master seems to have the same penchant for the weapon.

Seeing the tissue compressor back in action got me thinking, in general, about the whole process of miniaturization in Doctor Who and how it gets handled. After an extensive viewing of stories that deal with the subject, I've reached several conclusions about how it works in the Whoniverse. Here is an overview of the Rules of Shrinking on both New and Old Who.


RULE #1: THE PROCESS CAN BE DANGEROUS

A radical change of size for an object or person is bound to have some nasty side effects. While the process can happen with little or no consequence, there are other occasions where we have seen quite a few potential problems that can or have occurred.

When the Master messes with the Block Transfer Computations that are meant to fix the Doctor's Chameleon Circuit in Logopolis, it causes the TARDIS and the Doctor within it to start shrinking. It's interesting to see that the Time Lord seems to undergo some sort of weird paralysis during that shrinking process. Only when sonic cones are applied does this enable the Doctor to stabilize and start trying to repair the TARDIS. So it would seem that becoming completely immobilized can be a nasty side effect to a rapid shrinking process.

According to Into the Dalek, however, he got off pretty lucky. Clara is told in a briefing before she goes into the Miniaturizer on the Aristotle that if she doesn't breathe properly during the shrinking process it could actually make her explode. Leading, of course, to one of the Twelfth Doctor's greatest quotes: "Don't be lasagna".

Naturally enough, the deadliest effect the whole process can have is demonstrated through the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator (TCE, for all those trendy millennials who need to abbreviate everything!). We're not exactly sure why rapid shrinking is so lethal in this context. There has been some implication that a TCE causes its victims to implode rather than explode and the result is a shrunken corpse. But, to the best of my knowledge, this was never actually stated on the show. It's more of a fan theory.

It is interesting to note, however, that the Master does seem to have tweaked his Tissue Compressor again since his mishap on Sarn. Back in the day, his targets were reduced to the size of a doll. But now, they are rendered so tiny that he can fit them in a matchbox. 


RULE #2: IT"S OFTEN TARDIS-RELATED

When you travel in a machine whose interior is in another dimension, this can create complications with size issues. Oftentimes, when characters in the story do shrink, it's because of something that's done through a TARDIS. Planet of Giants, the very first story involving miniaturization happens because the TARDIS doors open while they're still in flight. We've also already mentioned that a problem with the TARDIS' chameleon conversion also has this effect in Logopolis.

Those first two incidents were accidental. But TARDIS technology is also used to intentionally engineer the process. The Doctor uses the dimensional stabilizer from the TARDIS to reduce a clone of himself and Leela to microscopic size during The Invisible Enemy. We can probably safely assume that the dimensional stabilizer Drax is using during The Armageddon Factor comes from his TARDIS.

There are a few unusual TARDIS-related miniaturizations  One happens in Flatline. In this instance, the TARDIS interacting with the Boneless causes only its exterior to shrink. The Doctor gets trapped within because he is still regular size. In The Time Meddler, we see the exact reverse. The Doctor commits a bit of sabotage to the Monk's TARDIS (probably messing with that dimensional stabilizer again) and causes only its interior to shrink. The Monk is now unable to enter his time vessel because of this. 


RULE #3: IT CAN HAVE A PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Stories like Planet of Giants or Carnival of Monsters show miniaturization as being a sort of an unfortunate accident that needs to be reversed as quickly as possible. But this is not always the case. Sometimes, getting your dimensions reduced can actually be useful.

In adventures like Into the Dalek or The Invisible Enemy, it's a legitimate surgical process that allows people to execute solutions to medical problems. While it's something the Doctor jury-rigged in Enemy, it's a common enough process that the Aristotle in Into the Dalek has a sort of standard-issue device to accomplish the process.

Miniaturization is also useful for space efficiency. It gets people and things into places they wouldn't normally fit. The miniscope in Carnival of Monsters uses a compression field so it can be a portable zoo. People get miniaturized in Let's Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song so that they can fit inside the Teselecta and crew it. Drax and the Doctor use their reduction in size to assist them in several ways when they are in the Domain of the Shadow. Most significantly, it gets them to use K9 as a sort of Trojan Horse during a crucial ambush. The Sltheen family from Raxicoricofallapatorian even use a bit of a compression field to fit into their human skin suits when they attempt to ruin the Earth for their own nefarious purposes.

And then, of course, there's weaponry. As we've already mentioned, rapid tissue compression is somehow lethal. We've seen the Master take advantage of this right in his very first story. The next time he used it was in Deadly Assassin. By this point, he'd done it frequently enough in unseen adventures that it came to represent a sort of "calling card" for the Doctor. A way to let him know who he was dealing with even if they hadn't met each other yet in the adventure. Of course, the Ainley Master starts using it all over the place. When an experiment on the TCE backfires just before the events of Planet of Fire, he gets a dose of his own medicine. Fortunately for him, it's a non-lethal dose. He does get reduced in size - but the process doesn't kill him.

Most interestingly, the Doctor seemed to want to use Drax's dimensional stabilizer in Armageddon Factor as a sort non-lethal tissue compressor. When he's being escorted by a Mute to the TARDIS, he wants Drax to shoot the creature not him. Drax, however, misinterprets the Doctor's intentions and thinks he wants to use the device on him so that he can escape the Mute and they can hide together in a crevice. 


RULE #4: THE NORMAL-SIZED WORLD IS NOW QUITE DANGEROUS

We see this idea conveyed most clearly right in the very first adventure to feature miniaturization. As the TARDIS crew navigate their way around in Planet of Giants, Death seems to be waiting for them around every corner. Simple things like a wandering cat or water draining down a sink now represent enormous peril. Even when Barbara briefly touches a kernel of wheat coated in pesticide (and, strangely enough, doesn't want to tell anyone that she has), her life is endangered. 

This gets shown over and over again in other miniaturization stories. The Doctor and Jo dodge a life-threatening pointed metal stick in Carnival of Monsters that Vorg is trying to poke them with. The Master must flee a vengeful Peri trying to swat him with her shoe in Planet of Fire. Drax and the Doctor face a similar crisis in Armageddon Factor when a Mute wants to stomp them out.

In a somewhat strange twist, artificially-created antibodies seem to be a big problem when your size has been reduced. They create all kinds of peril for miniaturized characters during both Let's Kill Hitler and Into the Dalek. A similar obstacle occurs for the Doctor and Leela in The Invisible Enemy but they're real anti-bodies, this time.


RULE #5:  SOMETIMES, IT"S JUST A SIDE STORY

Stories like Planet of Giants, Carnival of Monsters and Flatline make miniaturization their main conceit. Characters have been shrunken down and the whole thrust of the adventure is them trying to get back to normal size. Into the Dalek has a slightly different premise but the idea of being tiny is still the central idea of the story. Planet of Fire is all about miniaturization and an attempt to escape from it but it handles the whole thing in a clever way. We don't realize til the end of Part Three that this is the main thrust of the story. It's also the only time where it's the villain of the story that has been cut down to size rather than someone in the TARDIS crew or even the TARDIS, itself.

But there are many other tales where miniaturization is just a quick side-plot.  The Invisible Enemy and The Armageddon Factor feature the Doctor and a friend being shrunken for only about an episode. Amy and Rory running around in miniature form inside the Tessalecta only represents a portion of the episode. In these instances, this is almost like a more sophisticated capture-and-escape (what's a capture-and-escape? Read here: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2019/11/complete-and-utter-silliness-capture.html). Instead of marking time by having significant characters incarcerated and then trying to break out, they get shrunken down and need to restore themselves to normal size.

The Master using his TCE puts miniaturization even more in the background. In this case, it's really just a quick visual gimmick within the context of a much bigger story about something else. The only time a whole lot of attention ever got paid to the whole process of tissue compression elimination was in Planet of Fire. If we're watching closely enough, we even figure out what the Master's modification to the weapon was. The Tissue Compressor can now work inorganic matter as well.


RULE #6: EVENTUALLY WE NEED RESTORATION

This rule is so obvious that it almost doesn't need mentioning. If the leads in a story find themselves drastically reduced in size, it stands to reason that they need to be returned to their proper dimensions before the tale is over. Doctor Who can't just keep going on with a miniaturized TARDIS crew (although, it might be interesting if they spent a few stories in tiny form before they're restored). Even in the case of the Master in Planet of Fire, he needed to be brought back to normal as the story ended.

It's a bit like when a principal character gets drastically aged (the Doctor in Leisure Hive or Jo in Claws of Axos), things have to be reset to the way they were before the adventure ends If nothing else, it's only fair that the writer who damages the leads should clean up their own mess rather than leave it to the writer of the next story to fix things!

There are, however, exceptions to this rule. The clones of the Doctor and Leela in Invisible Enemy don't get restored. In fact, the Virus uses their escape route and is brought into the macro-universe in their place. Given that these were just clones of the main characters, however, this does no real damage to the format of the show. Which is why the rule doesn't need to be respected in this instance. In fact, having clones of a lead gives a writer the flexibility to do horrible things to them without any real consequence.

The other big exception is when the Master uses the tissue compressor on someone. The victim won't be restored, either. Quite simply because the process actually killed them!




SPECIAL APPENDIX: I DIDN'T MISS ONE

"But Rob," some of you may be saying, "you never mentioned how people got shrunk down and put into a doll house in Night Terrors. Did you forget about that one?"

I'm not entirely sure this is a proper shrinking story. I'm more inclined to think people are just sent to a special dimension that looks like a doll house. There's no actual reduction in size.

This is supported by the idea that the house is populated by dolls that don't behave like real dolls. First off, real dolls don't actually have behavior of any sort. They just lie around immobile til someone does something with them. They certainly don't move of their own accord. They definitely don't turn other people into dolls too when they touch them.

So, yeah, no size reduction, here. Yes there are giant scissors and other objects of that nature. But I'm prone to believing that they really are giant scissors. That the various characters that George sends to that dimension aren't shrunk down. They are sent to a place that's meant to represent the doll house in his cupboard. They all remain regular size, though.

That's my opinion, at least.



And that's everything you'll ever need to know about miniaturization in the Doctor Who Universe. Not sure if anyone really needed such a comprehensive study, but I hope you enjoyed reading about it. ANALYTICAL essays are, pretty much, my favorite style of post to write. For some reason, I especially enjoy tackling such frivolous topics as how the show handles the miniaturization process!   

Anyhow, this is probably all I'll do for January. We'll see you in February. I have some ideas for topics I'd like to handle. Who knows, for sure, if I'll do them, though. I can be as capricious as the TARDIS navigational system!