The Third Doctor's Regeneration Was Totally Unnecessary
Planet of the Spiders is maximum Jon Pertwee — with James Bond action, creepy aliens, and the Brigadier — but did the Doctor make a critical error?
Plot Summary
The Doctor must face certain death to stop a race of giant mutant spiders from conquering all of time and space with their psychic abilities.
Notable for:
Jon Pertwee’s final story (until The Five Doctors)
First time the act of a Time Lord changing appearance is called regeneration.
Originally, this story was going to be the final Master story, killing off the character when he sacrificed himself to save the Doctor. Roger Delgado’s death obviously prevented this. The story of Planet of the Spiders has nothing to do with that Master story, which had the title The Final Game.
Barry Letts played an unusually large role in the making of this story, acting as director, producer, and writer. He’s only credited with director, though, since the BBC would not allow both a producer and director credit, and they had rules for writers, too.
“Sullivan,” as UNIT’s medical officer, is mentioned.
Kismet Delgado, widow of Roger Delgado, voiced one of the spiders.
For the Great One, the team apparently created a five-foot spider with red eyes and an inflatable bladder that made it look like it was breathing, but Barry Letts felt it was too frightening(!), so used the Queen Spider prop instead.
Flowers for Algernon is an obvious influence on Tommy’s storyline.
We finally meet the Doctor’s buddhist (and/or Time Lord equivalent philosophy) mentor, who he first described in The Time Monster.
The K’Anpo to Cho-je regeneration is kinda-sorty echoed by the Watcher in Logopolis.
“Here we go again,” was an ad-lib by Nicholas Courtney.
Tom Baker is uncredited.
Pete commentary:
The idea that giant spiders evolved from a crashed spacecraft and got super-smart is random, yet cool. Spiders are creepy already, and the idea of them ruling over us is frightening and disgusting on a bunch of levels. It’s too bad the idea is limited by what they could do on a ’70s shoestring BBC budget. It would be incredible to see more creepy-crawliness, and more web-spinning — which is mostly alluded to here.
There’s definitely a NuWho ethos to this one, in the sense that Sarah is clearly still living her life, even though she’s also traveling with the Doctor — she really does seem to be on a credible assignment for Metropolitan magazine, not just doing a favor for Mike. That echoes the relationships Amy and Clara had with their Doctors.
The Great One’s plan is on the level of the Master and Daleks: With the power of the Metebelis crystals, she will be able to project her will through space and time to infinity, essentially mind-controlling the entire universe. It sounds totally insane and impossible, so it fits there would be some kind of feedback loop that would short-circuit the whole thing and kill her once the power reached a certain level. It’s strange, then, that none of the spiders realize this. Lupton never quite gets a chance, but you get the sense he would be more measured in his use of the crystal, probably just using it to conquer Earth, then possibly slowly expand.
Speaking of, the Doctor seems to be still very active with UNIT, essentially on assignment with the Brigadier, with an entirely new car/hovercraft (why build it if you didn’t think you’d be on Earth for a long while?), and nothing is made of the Doctor buggering off to Exxillon and Peladon and the 13th century for most of the season. It’s going to take a regeneration for the Doctor to quit this lifestyle.
The Doctor and the Brig have a hell of a bromance in this one. They have a night out, then the Doctor razzes him about the the girlfriend that gave him the watch. It’s great they get to have some fun banter before Pertwee peaces out.
Why does the psychic guy try to fool the Doctor in the first place? He became psychic faker, realized he was a real psychic, but then wanted to keep that a secret — even though presumably his ability would make him famous and incredibly sought-after? This guy is either super introverted or the worst marketer ever.
So telepathy and telekinesis (psychokinesis) lie dormant in everyone? This is begging for more development.
Signs of the times:
Cho-je is played by a white man. Not sure if it would be better or worse if they actually went full-on yellowface like they did in Talons of Weng-Chiang. Sadly, we don’t have yellowface bingo: we still have Mavic Chen to deal with.
Lupton refers to Sarah Jane as a “woman journalist.” Cho-je doesn’t even berate him for it.
Mike and Sarah Jane express skepticism and even ridicule at the whole idea of meditation, which is now recognized as a very smart and healthy mental exercise.
Tommy is an interesting take. I don’t think Doctor Who has ever depicted the mentally handicapped at all before or since. He is “healed” by the Metebelis crystal, implying his condition is a disability, which might be controversial today.
Benton gets to open the mail and make coffee. Good job, isn’t it, Benton?
Even though they couldn’t give Delgado a proper send-off, it’s nice that they’re able to give one to Mike Yates. He’s somewhat redeemed in this story, even though he never gets a scene with his old UNIT mates. Richard Franklin has good chemistry with Lis Sladen as a couple of chums and fellow investigators. If she never went adventuring with the Doctor after this, I could see an “Avengers Lite” show emerging from that.
Whoever wrote Jo’s letter nails her voice. Guessing this was Letts.
The spider teleporting the crystal out of the lab seems a little convenient, but you get a sense of the limits of this trick. The spider even says at one point she needs the help of her sisters to teleport Lupton a great distance.
The Bond-themed chase is impressive for the show at the time, with great music. However, there’s no way they could do full-on Bond effects on Doctor Who’s budget, and there’s sadly nothing so singularly cool that justifies the whole exercise. “Clever” Lupton’s teleport kind of works, as does Pertwee’s jump to the boat. But the flying car is never convincing (although the mini helicopter is ok).
Hovercraft were apparently all the rage in the late ’70s. I also rewatched Moonraker around the same time I was watching this, and there’s a hovercraft in that, too.
Credit: The Black Archive Lupton turning the tables on the spider’s psychic blast is one of the better moments. It seems to be foreshadowing him becoming the prime villain but sadly his role just peters out after they get to Metebelis.
There is so much bad editing/retreading in the cliffhangers. The cliffhanger from part 5 to 6 is even recut so things happen out of sequence in the reprise. Also, why wouldn’t the reveal of Sarah as the Spider Queen be the cliffhanger?
For all the effects that just don’t quite come together in this story, the cellar fading away around Sarah as the Doctor approaches her, instantly replaced by the horizon on Metebelis is REALLY cool, and probably the best way they could have handled the transition to the adventure taking place mostly there. It should have been the cliffhanger.
Why doesn’t Tommy just march over to the circle where the four men are chanting and break it? C’mon, Tommy, we’ve already established these guys do not work out — just start busting them up.
The villagers on Metebelis are some of the most bland and unmemorable guest parts in the history of the show. I know one guy went on to do the New Avengers or something, but the old lady is horrible, and everybody else just looks and acts wooden.
That said, I like that the villagers’ rebellion just fails. It’s in keeping with how pathetic they are.
Houdini mention! When was that “long, hot summer,” Doctor?
Sarah being taken over by the Queen is one of the few subplots that actually works, mostly because Lis Sladen plays it perfectly, as always.
K’Anpo regenerating into Cho-je is arguably the first Time Lord “race switch.”
When the villagers are freed from the spiders’ mental control, and all the spiders are disoriented, why not kill them all? Just start hammering on them. (Presumably they all die when the spiders’ city is destroyed.)
Why aren’t the invisible spiders crushed when people with them on their backs fall down, sit down, etc.? Headcanon: The spiders are still nimble and simply crawl to the person’s front, shoulders, etc. You can’t see them doing it, so who says they didn’t?
Cho-je perfectly sums up what regeneration feels like for Time Lords: “The Old Man must die, and the New Man will discover to his inexpressible joy that he has never existed!” This is probably realized best with Whittaker: “Oh, brilliant!” but there are definitely other moments that echo the idea (like Davison: “However I feel like, it’s absolutely splendid!”)
The Doctor explains more about how the TARDIS works: He tells it the general location (in this case, Metebelis 3) but leaves the precise landing spot to the TARDIS. This is a cheat to ensure the Doctor can land exactly in the village where Sarah is despite having no idea where exactly it is. Somehow the TARDIS just “knows,” which also avoids a time-wasting scene where he would materialize in orbit (or whatever), do a scan, then zero in on her. Taken to its logical conclusion, and you have “I always took you where you needed to go.” It also explains how he gets back at the end, and it’s smart to have it happen not exactly bang on target (a few weeks later).
Pertwee’s final scenes are superb. The Third Doctor’s behavior here is in total contrast to his freshly regenerated shenanigans in Spearhead from Space. In his first adventure, he stole his clothes and a car, was disinterested in helping UNIT, and almost chickened out in the middle of the adventure. Here, he admits he was a thief, and chooses to atone and face certain death to save Sarah, the people on Metebelis, and the Earth by taking on the Great One her lair. “While there’s life, there’s hope,” is an excellent line to cap all this, as well as a run by the comic actor who went against expectation to play the role earnestly, and did it brilliantly.
What did Pete’s family think?
Grace thought the chanting sounded like “om nom nom” and asked, “Are they hungry?” She definitely thought Cho-je was eerie and weird.
Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete
Why did the Randomizer take us here? The Girl Who Waited sees Amy wait a long, long time for the Doctor, and Sarah has to wait a few weeks here. Also, both stories underscore the Doctor’s recklessness, and a need to account for it: Planet shows the consequence of just taking the Metebelis crystal as though it belongs to him, and Waited shows how pulling his friends along into danger can really be a problem for them. Finally, is the Doctor guilty of genocide here? All the mutant spiders are killed, right? Paging the Valeyard…
What if the evil plot had succeeded? The Great One’s evil plot DOES succeed, and since it doesn’t seem to be physically possible to wield the power of the crystal (at least in the way she does, at the center of a amplification lattice of crystals, a “web”) without creating a “positive feedback circuit,” she would die in any variation of that plot.
Lupton’s plot is more interesting, partly because he’s a more interesting character. He is content with killing the spiders (or making them slaves) and conquering the Earth. That would create what this story sadly lacks — a head-to-head confrontation between Lupton and the Doctor. This really SHOULD have been the ending, since the Great One stuff is predictable and unsatisfying (what was the Doctor going to do if there WASN’T a “positive feedback circuit?”). The Doctor taking down an empowered, emboldened Lupton, beginning his rampage on Earth, sounds like a way better end.
Where's the Clara splinter? Sarah is a film director, shooting a scene in the West Country at a train station. But the station needs to look like it’s in Mortimer (where the scene was shot). The crew is on break when Sarah arrives, which is why you don’t see them.
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Wish I could give this a Dalek, but it’s a Lady Cassandra. That chase, the additions to lore, and Pertwee’s performance are all great to watch, but the story is hopelessly padded, and terribly edited. A must-see, but you won’t be coming back to it much.
Chris commentary:
Let's talk about how little coffee the Doctor must have had. He's never been to the planet of the coffeeshops, has he?
TOMMY CAN YOU HEAR ME … nobody would not have been thinking of the album/movie
Also it's the most interesting subplot. What happened to Tommy
Um, what was the act the Doctor and the Brig saw?
The hovercraft ep is a real stain on Barry Letts' legacy … and a sign that nobody cared about having one at the time
Also, did you think this was going to get people into Buddhism?
The "meditation is weird" aspect has not aged well
Also JUSTICE FOR SPIDERS
Four Two Questions to Doomsday - Chris
Where's the Clara splinter? She's stopping the doctor drinking too much coffee
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Hayter-Zarbi hybrid