Planet of the Spiders [Classic Doctor Who] – Blue Towel Productions

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually watched anything but the newest episodes. Before that, I was making a respectable run at getting through the original series, most of which I haven’t seen for decades. For various reasons, lately it has felt like it’s time to get back into it. 

Planet of the Spiders

Starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.
Companion:  Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah-Jane Smith
Recurring Characters: Richard Franklin as Mike Yates, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and John Levine as Sgt. Benton

Written by Robert Sloman.  Directed by Barry Letts. Produced by Barry Letts. Script Edited by Terrance Dicks.

Format:  6 episodes, each about 25 minutes long
Originally Aired:  May – June 1974 (Episodes 21-26 of Season 11)

Planet of the Spiders is the Jon Pertwee’s last regular outing as the Doctor–the finale for his version of our favorite Time Lord. More than that, it feels like the end of the whole UNIT era of the show. Even though UNIT appears a few more times in the next couple of seasons, without the Third Doctor, it was never the same.

Spoilers Ahead!

When I was a teenager, taking my early steps into Doctor Who-fandom, I was a big fan of the character of Mike Yates. The guy was dashing and heroic and capable, and I loved his contribution to the whole UNIT family. It was a kind of a bummer that he had his fall from grace in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but that was mitigated by the fact that had his redemption here in Planet of the Spiders. As the years (and decades) have gone by, I’m not as much a fan of Yates as I used to be, though I still enjoy what he adds to the show in this ear. But as I rewatch Planet of the Spiders now, even though this is probably Yates’ most substantial role in any serial, I can’t help but feel disappointed about how underwritten his story is.

It starts off okay, with him trying to find himself at a Buddhist meditation retreat, and discovering some strange goings-on that potentially threaten everybody. He turns to Sarah Jane Smith, who is both a friend and a journalist, because he doesn’t feel comfortable going to the Doctor or UNIT, given his last encounter with both. This all connects well with where we last saw him, and sets up an expectation in the audience (or in me, anyway) to see certain moments play out. I want to see Mike and the Doctor meet and talk awkwardly, and come to a decision about how they are going to relate to each other going forward. I want to see Mike have to face the Brigadier or even Sgt. Benton, and deal with whatever emotions come out of those encounters.

But unfortunately we don’t get any of that. Yates doesn’t have any scenes with the Brigadier or Benton at all, and his first reunion with the Doctor is just skipped over. Presumably it takes place off screen, but by the time we catch up with them, they are together and onto business.

After that, Mike spends most of the rest of the story getting captured or knocked out (or both) various times, before throwing himself into harm’s way to protect guest character Tommy. We get a brief final moment with Sarah Jane, confirming he’s not dead, and that’s it.

There’s no resolution, no real “dealing with” all the things that comes with his presence in the story.

And this is a quality that you get a fair bit with in Planet of the Spiders. Tommy, who I just mentioned, is another case. He’s an intellectually disabled guy who finds himself becoming smarter thanks to the blue crystal that’s so important to the plot, and at the end he buys time for the Doctor to sort a bunch of stuff out by standing in front of a door and taking a bunch of lightning bolts to the chest.

But we never find anything about what happens to him after that, or what it means to him have his disability suddenly taken away.

And then there’s the guys that are shooting him–Barnes, Land and the other dudes. Thanks to the Doctor’s actions, the spiders on their backs fall off and die, but then what? Do they get any sort of comeuppance? Are they even really guilty of very much? What were they even doing there working with Lupton in the first place?

And it’s not like the story didn’t have time for some of these things. Several episodes seem to come in short in the run-time department and thus required lengthy recaps. And episode two is made up almost entirely of a long and ultimately pointless chase sequence.

As the Doctor pursues Lupton, the two men ride around on Bessie, in a helicopter, a hovercraft, a boat, and the Doctor’s crazy flying car (known amongst fans, colloquially, as the “Whomobile”).

But in the end Lupton and his eight-legged companion just teleport away. It’s exciting after a fashion, and it apparently it would have appealed to Jon Pertwee to have such an abundance of vehicles and gadgets, but it barely adds to the story at all. I’d have loved for some of that time to have been used to flesh out some of the other story points I mentioned up above.

Even Professor Clegg, whom the first episode spends so much time with, barely makes a difference to the plot at all.

But ultimately, the story is not about Mike Yates, or Tommy, or Lupton and his cronies. It’s about the Doctor as he comes to a critical point in his life and has to make a choice that will change who he is forever. How does the story hold up when examined through this lens?

Well, better, to be sure. Not perfect, by a long shot; not even great–but the fact that the story is in some way about the Doctor having to face up to something about himself is a very welcome development. This becomes more part of the show in the modern era, but back here in the early days it rarely factored in. The set-up isn’t as good as it could be–the Doctor and K’anpo talk about his “greed for knowledge”, and he talks about having “stolen” the blue crystal, however unwittingly. But these ideas are a bit spurious at best–you really have to squint your brain a bit to see the Doctor’s actions through that interpretation.

But this is balanced out by how well Jon Pertwee plays these emotional tones. There’s a courage to Doctor’s face off with the Great One (“All hail the Great One!”) and a tenderness to the aftermath that I enjoy.

This is the first regeneration story that really pitches the end of a Doctor’s incarnation as a heroic sacrifice, something that from here on in will be standard. It’s a welcome development, and Pertwee’s final scene with Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane is really nice. Indeed, it’s probably the best such “last moment” between dying Doctor and accompanying companion until the Ninth Doctor and Rose, many years later.

There’s a lot of other things one can say about Planet of the Spiders, both good and bad. John Levene doesn’t have a lot to do as Sgt. Benton in this outing, but he still delivers some very good character moments. Levene has a great ad-lib (so I’ve heard) when he comes upon the Doctor, the Brigadier and Professor Clegg and asks if the Doctor is “doing a bit of hair-dressing on the side.” And he has a really nice reaction to being mentioned by Jo Grant in her letter, which feels very real.

I also like the continuity call-back of having the blue crystal which ends up driving a lot of this story being the same one from The Green Death. Jo Grant was such a big part of the Third Doctor’s era, it seems fitting to include her via her letter.

Even though Katy Manning doesn’t appear or anything like that, it helps tie the era together.

The story also drops a lot of tidbits related to the show’s mythology, specifically about the Time Lords and regeneration, but also about the Doctor’s childhood. For the second time in the series (the first being The Time Monster, written by the same people as Planet of the Spiders) he mentions a hermit who used to live halfway up a mountain behind his house. It is implied, though not stated outright, that this is the person as K’anpo, whom the Doctor meets in this story.

Through the conversation with K’anpo we first hear the term “regeneration” to describe the Time Lord’s process of cellular renewal. And we also see for the first time some timey-wimey shenanigans in relation to this, as K’anpo is able to somehow project his future incarnation, Cho-je, into a fully fleshed out person who walks around and acts independently. The regenerated K’anpo is also able to just appear in UNIT headquarters out of nowhere and provide the Doctor with energy to assist his regeneration process.

When you remember all this, you realize that the Watcher in Logopolis and maybe even the more recent “bi-generation” nonsense isn’t as far out there as you thought.

The spiders themselves are a creepy idea, and the image of one of them on Sarah Jane’s back is iconic–but they are transparently artificial in their realisation. Whatever puppeteering they could pull off, it’s just too obvious that they are a bunch of little inanimate props to fully suspend disbelief.

Add to this the fact that though they threaten to do evil and destructive things, we rarely actually see them be particularly evil (instead they spend a lot of their time with internal political bickering) then I cannot call them particular effective monsters.

Also not effective is the CSO (“Colour Separation Overlay”) effect used to show the Doctor and Sarah Jane hanging out on Metebelis 3. But then that effect is always kind of ropey, so I guess it’s par for the course.

Finally, John Dearth puts in quite a good performance as Lupton. He’s intense and a bit crazy and is always convincing in his scenes. It’s just a shame that once he escapes from the extended chase in the second episode, he hardly makes any contribution to the plot, our time given instead to Tommy or to the rebels on Metebelis 3.

I think that’s as good evidence as any that Planet of the Spiders is a story that is just trying to do too many things at the same time, and failing to do most of them well. As such, I’m glad that the final moments of the Doctor’s regeneration are as good as they are.

Other Thoughts

• The story is credited to Robert Sloman, but apparently co-written, uncredited, by Barry Letts. Letts is also the director of this episode, and the producer of the series overall (BBC rules have him credited here only as the director). This marks the only time in the show’s history that it is written, produced and directed by the same person.

• Modern audiences will no doubt notice some troublesome representation in this story, as both K’anpo and Cho-Je are presumably meant to be Tibetan, but are portrayed by white actors. On top of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the character Tommy would not rate highly in the world of disability representation as well. And of course, Buddhism itself, as seen in this story, is entirely connected to space aliens (both good and evil). None of it is mean-spirited, but certainly awkward.

• One of the actors mentioned above, Kevin Lindsay (he plays Cho-Je) was also in the first story of this season (and the most recent Pertwee story before this that I’ve seen), as Linx the Sontaran in The Time Warrior. That is a very different character than Cho-Je, and thus quite some range for Kevin Lindsay!

• Another cast member in this story is Gareth Hunt. He plays Arak, one of the rebel leaders on Metebelis 3, but is probably best known as Mike Gambit, the second lead on The New Avengers.

• Harry Sullivan doesn’t appear in this story, but he does get name-checked…even though the character doesn’t actually get introduced until the next serial (and the next season!) That’s a tight bit of continuity that you can’t even notice until you see the story in retrospect.

• There is something weird going on with the cliffhanger to episode 5 and the recap in episode 6. The recap starts very early and appears like it’s going to be strangely long. But then a whole bunch of new scenes get added into the mix before we get to the cliffhanger moment. It makes for a strange experience when you view these episodes back to back.

• Part of an idea that I had for an extended Five Doctors story (I came up with this back when I was first getting into the show) was that Mike Yates would be there on Gallifrey during the main action of the story. The Third Doctor would encounter him and be guarded with him at first (because of his betrayal) but then be impressed by how much Mike tries to help. This would be used to explain how readily he accepts Mike in Planet of the Spiders, since obviously his appearance here would have to come after his appearance there.