One of the earliest ideas for Doctor Who involved the shrinking of the TARDIS crew and it is a staple of science fiction.

From pint sized to truly microscopic, the series has returned to play with the concept a number of times.

With Marvel’s Ant-Man currently in cinemas, we present our rundown of the situations where the Doctor and his friends have encountered that shrinking feeling…

 

‘Into the Dalek’

Mistaken for the wrong sort of Doctor, Capaldi’s second outing involved the use of a molecular nanoscaler to make him small enough to enter a Dalek travel machine.

Small enough to discern what had made this one turn “good”, it also put the members of the team at risk from lethal antibodies as they got a closer understanding of what drives the hate of the Doctor’s greatest adversaries.

 

‘The Invisible Enemy’

Reduced to microscopic size, clones of both the Fourth Doctor and Leela are despatched into the Time Lord’s own brain to track down the Nucleus of the Swarm, the source of a malign infection with delusions of grandeur.

With ambition that outstripped the show’s budget, the clones do not return to full size but instead the Nucleus is realised as a full-sized monster, looking rather like a giant prawn. All together now, “Contact has been made!”

 

‘Carnival of Monsters’

Arriving on what at first seems to be a sailing ship on the Indian Ocean, the Third Doctor and Jo Grant find themselves trapped in a world where events keep repeating themselves.

It transpires they are inside a miniscope, reduced in size by a compression field and at the mercy of an inept showman called Vorg who has brought the miniscope to provide entertainment to the people of Inter Minor.

 

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