Who Review: Planet of the Spiders

Shaken by the events of “Invasion of the Dinosaurs,” Mike Yates has gone to a Tibetan meditation center in the English countryside to find peace of mind. While there, he observes some strange goings on. He invites Sarah Jane Smith to investigate with him, tempting her with the idea that it might be a good story for the magazine she writes for. While there, they see a group of men, led by a former salesman named Lupton, perform a chant which conjures a giant spider. Meanwhile, back at U.N.I.T. HQ, the Doctor is conducting experiments into clairvoyance and precognition when a package arrives. It’s the blue crystal he took from Metebelis Three and gave to Jo Grant as a wedding gift (see “The Green Death”). It seems the Amazonian natives are scared of the crystal, so she has returned it. But this crystal has incredible power, and the current inhabitants of Metebelis Three want it back. Their plans for global domination depend upon it, and keeping the crystal from them will come at a very high cost for the Doctor…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

For the Third Doctor’s last story, the production team pulled out all the stops and gave Jon Pertwee the opportunity to fight, fly, drive, play with gadgets, and hang out with familiar faces. For the action-adventure Doctor, this was the perfect story on which to exit the series. It was ostensibly written by Robert Sloman, but as with other Robert Sloman stories, it was actually written largely by producer Barry Letts, with Sloman contributing.

The serial starts with references back to “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” as Mike Yates talks about the business with the “Golden Age” and him pulling a gun on the Brigadier. We get another Who back-reference, when the Doctor hands Clegg the clairvoyant his sonic screwdriver, he has visions of drashigs from “Carnival of Monsters.” The last major back-reference is the appearance of the Metebelis crystal from “The Green Death,” which becomes central to the story’s plot.

Let’s deal with the story’s weak points. First, and most prominent, has to be the chase scene, which has the Doctor in Bessie, the Whomobile, a gyrocopter, and a hovercraft. It’s all padding, though in this instance, perhaps somewhat forgivable to indulge Jon Pertwee and his love of such things one last time. And if you’re not convinced that the chase was completely pointless, the fact that, in the end, the spiders transport Lupton from his boat back to the meditation center, demonstrates it conclusively. The spiders could have done that before the chase even started!

There’s some very good acting, and some really not-very-good-at-all acting too, mostly on the part of the “two-legs” on Metebelis Three–especially Neska. They don’t seem to be putting much effort into making their characters believable, which becomes even more obvious when they are in scenes with Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane), who is acting her heart out.

And then there are the spiders. It’s notoriously difficult to make convincing model spiders, especially when they have to move. Even if you get them to look authentic, the moment you have to make them scuttle across a floor, all sense of reality is lost–unless you use computer animation, which wasn’t available to the Doctor Who team in 1974. What we have here is a valiant effort that maybe looked realistic to kids in 1974, but unfortunately doesn’t hold up today.

During the course of the story there are some flashback scenes which drip with hoakiness. The one with Tommy, especially. In all honesty, I don’t think these were necessary at all, but clearly the producers felt the audience wouldn’t remember key plot points over the space of a few weeks, so they needed the flashback voice-over “cellar… cellar… cellar… Lupton in the cellar… Lupton in the cellar…”

Lastly, there were a couple of times things were introduced into the story out of left field to save the day. The first was the Doctor’s machine that we had never seen before, and now suddenly revives him, and helps him identify stones that can counteract the spider zaps. The second was the fact that The Great One was actually planning to use the crystal to complete a circuit that would enable her to rule the universe. But completing the circuit produces an unhealthy amount of positive feedback that kills her and all the spiders… and blows up their mountain dwelling, of course. This development was dropped in at the end, having never been talked about before, which was a bit deus ex machina for me.

The two major positives about the story, and two of the main reasons you should watch it, are the story itself, and the acting from the main cast. Yes, there’s padding, and some questionable moments as noted above. But on the whole, it’s a good, coherent story, and a fitting end to the Third Doctor’s tenure. We are introduced to the concept of “regeneration” through K’anpo’s death, which prepares us for the Doctor’s own transformation. And both Lupton and Tommy’s story arcs are developed well.

As for the main cast acting, Lupton is quintessentially duplicitous and self-serving, deliciously played by John Dearth. Tommy, the simple-minded man who stares into the crystal and becomes enlightened, is brought to life by John Kane in a very convincing performance. It’s a shame they didn’t cast ethnically Asian actors for K’anpo and Cho-Je, but given the production team were deliberately casting people Jon Pertwee had worked with before in Doctor Who, the choices were understandable. Kevin Lindsay (Cho-Je) previously played the Sontaran, Linx, while George Cormack (K’anpo) had played King Dalios in “The Time Monster.”

The regeneration scene is, perhaps, the crowning moment of the story. Beautifully acted with no incidental music, Elisabeth Sladen and Jon Pertwee give it their all. The only disappointing part is the actual regeneration itself, which is a simple cross-fade from Jon Pertwee to Tom Baker. It hardly lives up to all that preceded it.

In short, I would call this a must-see story. Yes, it has its failings, but it’s fun, and dramatic, and really sums up the Third Doctor’s era.