Planet Of The Spiders: Ranking - 55

 

Planet Of The Spiders

(Season 11, Dr 3 with Sarah Jane and UNIT, 4/5/1974-8/6/1974, producer: Barry Letts, script editor: Terrance Dicks, writers: Robert Sloman and Barry Letts, director: Barry Letts)

Rank: 55

   'Sarah Jane Smith 

That Earthly Miss 

Was drinking her UNIT grog 

When down came a great spider 

Who was several feet tall and even wider 

And asked if she fancied a snog 

Then the Dr (her parent foster) 

Who thought he had lost her 

Set off to rescue her again 

He fell down to the floor 

Because he couldn't take anymore 

And woke up a new man (again!)'

It's the end #3 - and the moment has not only been prepared for, it's an inevitable consequence of everything that came before. Describing the concept of regeneration to non-fans is difficult at best: after all, what other programme can change its leading man or woman and continue with a whole new character that’s the same yet different? What’s more every regeneration hits differently. Some regenerations feel like a death (1>2, 10>11, 11>12, 12>13), some like a punishment (2>3, 8>War), some are moments of pure and noble sacrifice (4>5, 5>6, 9>10) and, erm, some are just a few fuzzy effects at the start of a scene because they’d just sacked the leading man without filming something in advance (6>7). While there are even better regeneration stories around than ‘Planet Of The Spiders’, in terms of a regeneration its my favourite. This one really isn’t a death so much as a regeneration in the dictionary sense of the word (and its worth remembering that this is the first DW story that actually uses the word – the first is called a ‘renewal’ and the second doesn’t have a name), a transformation as the Doctor faces not his biggest baddest enemy but his deepest darkest fears in a plot that’s propelled by his weaknesses and brought on by nobody more than himself. For starters its the only time to date when the Dr’s been helped on his way by a spiritual guru, given a final ‘push’ by Cho-Je (an amazing performance by Kevin Lindsay; rather fittingly he’s getting some sort of karma of his own for Pertwee blowing him up when he was Sontaron commander Linx in ‘The Tine Warrior’ four stories earlier; no other actor in DW got to play two parts this different to each other until ‘Commander Maxil’ became the 6^th Dr and even they’re superficially more similar than this). It’s perfectly keeping with the end of the ‘Buddhist’ eras of the series as the Doctor becomes a whole new person precisely because of how much he grows, the idea behind the philosophy being that if you can face your darkest phobias and free yourself of them then you can live your live without the crushing weight of fear and become a ‘new man’ starting your life over. Which is pretty accurate for what happens here. What’s left vague though is exactly what this great fear is: if you so wish to see it that way then its alien arachnids from outer space, but more than that its the Dr’s greed and curiosity that’s been putting the people around him in danger since the first DW story; this regeneration in particular has always had a somewhat slapdash approach to safety and of all the Dr’s has one of the biggest egos (he was quite a so and so to Jo sometimes, though Sarah Jane is much more of an equal – especially in this story where she does the sort of investigating the Dr normally would). Jon Pertwee’s Dr was such a heroic and dashing figure that most fans expected him to die in an equally dashing way saving the universe and some fans are sorry he doesn’t, but that’s something he did in every other story – in this adventure he learns to save himself, which is somehow much more satisfying and special. The cause too isn’t some evil monster but a spider – admittedly an alien spider with special powers, but still a spider. There’s a longstanding folk tale that annoying spiders and stealing brings bad luck on the perpetrator: in this story the 3^rd Dr’s done both, with the revelation that his quick trip to Metebelis 3 in ‘The Green Death’ and the blue crystal he brought back for Jo wasn’t as straightforward as it seems. Metebelis is a scary place full of flying insects and huge great arachnids and the Doctor doesn’t so much find the crystal as take it under everyone’s (six pairs of) eyes; Jo, more spiritually aware than most companions, accepted the crystal at first but has since sent it back and when a clairvoyant helping the Dr out at UNIT HQ handles it all he can see are whacking great spiders before it gets nicked by a cult trying to tap into its power. It’s not just the Dr whose going through a karmic renewal though: three stories ago Mike Yates betrayed his pals as part of ‘Operation Golden Age’ that tried to reject the inevitability of change and return to the past complete with dinosaurs. Since then he’s been recovering in (where else?) a Buddhist retreat, where he’s come to make his peace with living in the present, no matter how difficult. Only, by one of those coincidences that makes up a lot of 3^rd Dr plots, the retreat has become over-run with baddies who have been acting most shiftily and he’s called in Sarah Jane to go undercover and report on it (you have to say its notable he doesn’t go straight to the Dr or the Brig who he’s known much longer; then again as Sarah Jane doesn’t have the same lengthy connections they did perhaps the betrayal doesn’t sting quite so much). From there ‘Spiders’ becomes much like every other 3^rd Dr story, which is no bad thing, just with spiders where the aliens would be and DW’s second monastery as a setting rather than the usual home counties invasion (this story has a lot more in common with ‘The Abominable Snowman’ and the idea that mystical disembodied voices aren’t always a force for good than many fans give it credit for). As one last summary of the era but bigger than ever its great: there’s even a whole episode with a chase sequence that in other stories would last for a scene. A lot of fans find it pointless but here it works as one last party piece of the era viewers knew they would probably never get to see again done bigger and better than ever, involving cars, boats, gyroplanes and The Whomobile hovercraft, Pertwee’s own licensed car ‘The Ghost’ partly funded by the BBC in return for featuring in stories and various in-person events (and yes, he was legally allowed to drive it on main roads, though that didn’t stop many policemen down the years asking to see his license for it). It’s a greatest hits record rather than a full story in and of itself: there’s a plot that takes place mostly in a cellar (like ‘The Daemons’), involves a crystal (like ‘The Time Monster’), involves insects (‘The Green Death’) and the humans get turned into hairy beasties (like ‘Inferno’, all season finales), but at the same time ‘Spiders’ has a story that feels distinct from all of them and about something bigger, all about change and gaining symbolic inner wisdom by fighting your inner demons rather than, say, gaining actual victory by fighting your outer demons (and giant maggots and the God Kronos and a parallel world). Less forgivably, there’s a whole bunch of comedy yokels after five years of seeing one or two and more unfortunate stereotypes than you can poke a manglewurzle at. The best scenes of all though have even less to do with the plot and are all character pieces. Pertwee gets lots of great scenes with his co-stars, particularly the Brigadier (and after five years of friction tinged with respect its lovely to see them have time off watching music hall acts while the Dr researches clairvoyancy – this might be the best Dr-Brig scene of them all as they gently tease each other), while Sarah Jane gets to be the eager curious optimist the Dr usually is while he grows sadder and quieter. There’s lots of the spills and thrills everyone associates with this era but also the intellectual and spiritual plot that underlines this era’s best stories too – its only missing Jo and The Master to make it seem like a 3^rd Dr highlights reel. Indeed the script is a replacement for an initial thought of ‘one last showdown’ with The Master that had only reached a vague outline when Roger Delgado died in a car crash. Rather sweetly the production team have his presence in there anyway by hiring his widow Kismet as one of the spider voices, a sweet gesture that brought her some much needed income (the taxi Roger was riding in at the time of his dodgy Turkey film production wasn’t insured so she got none of the compensation you’d expect). Overall its a rather sweet and moving goodbye and by the time the 3^rd Dr wakes up as the 4^th we feel as if we’ve gone on a journey with him, as moving as any across time and space. However there’s a big arachnid shaped hole with this story that prevents it being the absolute masterpiece it deserves to be and that’s the spiders: this era’s biggest weakness tends to be how monsters are realised on screen and while the chief spider might call herself ‘The Great One’ she’s less convincing than almost all the other monsters we’ve had these past five years (it’s probable that spiders were chosen following the success of the giant maggots in the previous season finale but they were a lucky break that looked really good on screen almost by accident; real spiders were vetoed in case they scared the audience for good and the puppets have to talk in time with moving their legs, which are all too visibly worked by strings). Even an all-powerful spider queen seems like small fry compared to past greats the Dr survived: I mean, three years ago he was even defeating the Devil (with a bit of hep from Jo). Hard as everyone tries (and the voices are great!) it still feels slightly anti-climactical as show-downs go. It’s not just a case of six legs bad, two legs good either: another problem are the one-dimensional ‘heavies’ in the Buddhist retreat, who don’t seem to have got the memo about how to blend in inside a retreat full of spiritual enlightenment at all and feel as if they’ve wandered in from a 1920s gangster movie. This is a story about how bad people and behaviours change you so that you’re a different person by the time you survive them, but nobody really learns anything in this story beyond the Dr and Yates. And Tommy, who creates a different kind of a problem - he’s almost unrecognisable by the end of the story, but he’s one of the most troubling incidental characters in all of DW: what in 1974 was greeted as a progressive stance of depicting learning disabilities on screen just seems condescending now, with John Kane switching from ‘backward’ to ‘bright’ from the power of the crystal partway through, as if he’s only now become a ‘real’ person in a way that just feels ‘wrong’ nowadays (good as John Kane is you can still he’s acting). Even that’s handled better than some people say though if you take his character as someone who delivers karma of his own: had the baddies been nice to Tommy or had Sarah Jane been horrible then he wouldn’t have sacrificed himself for her and the Doctor’s sake to set up the final ‘act’ of the story; its just the way they do it, all stutters and gurning, that feels misplaced (it’s an odd juxtaposition that the Barry Letts-Terrance Dicks era is so progressive in so many ways, with its Buddhist and live and let live philosophies, and yet almost casually insults more people than any other; in other words this is one of those ‘greatest hits’ sets that can’t avoid sticking on some rum B-side nobody likes in there nobody likes too). Unusually, too, new-Who covers the same ground better in the sort-of-sequel ‘Turn Left’, where its Donna with the spider on her back (although its really about the Dr again and his absence). These are the reasons why I’ve never loved this story in quite the same way I do fellow regeneration stories like ‘The Tenth Planet’ ‘The War Games’ ‘Logopolis’ ‘Androzani’ or ‘The End Of Time’ (even if its better than the lukewarm material Drs 11-13 got in their finales). However, even that fits somehow: had this story been perfect then it wouldn’t have summed up this era so well (an era when budgets were stretched past breaking point even more than normal) or fitted a plot that’s all about embracing your flaws and not letting them define or defeat you. However daft you find the spiders, however over-long the chase parts and however simple the main plot really is when you take the Metebelis elements out of it, with less sub-plots than normal, the ending is truly moving as a broken Doctor, his cells decaying, dies in the arms of his greatest friends, sure in his convictions and loved and revered by all in stark contrast to the lonely way the 3^rd Dr came to Earth in ‘Spearhead From Space’. And even if you somehow missed the ending and all the symbolism that went on before it then ‘Spiders’ is still a cracking six-legged beast, full of some really clever dialogue, some great performances and (a) very big heart(s) that manage to fit in some of DW’s most moving of all scenes without ever falling into the trap of being fake or maudlin. The whole is a most fitting funeral for the 3^rd Dr’s era that still manages at times to feel like a celebratory party before the show regenerates all over again and takes off to pastures new.

+The 3^rd Dr, even more than the others, is the regeneration that’s always perfectly controlled and where the only thing that usually gets ruffled are his shirt sleeves. So to see him spend so much of his last two episodes being worked as a puppet against his will, controlled by a cackling spider, hits differently to seeing, say, Dr 12 have an emotional outburst or Dr 5 looking defeated in their farewell stories. Pertwee actually looks scared and reveals how much of his Dr really is an acting job not just him (as daft as that sounds) - this is new ground, even in the era’s final hour and without saying a word it makes the stakes running into the last cliffhanger that much higher. Pertwee never gets enough credit for his work in the series – he’s often the best thing in it but rarely more so than here where the script asks one hell of a lot from him but he delivers it all. In the space of three hours he manages to veer from charming and witty in the 1^st episode to his usual action hero, to the more sensitive, vulnerable soul at the end. Practically no one else could have topped this and won an audience over after such a tour de force: thankfully for the longevity of the series Tom Baker, turning up in the final few frames, was one of the few actors who could.

- Sarah starts the story well, as she does all of season 11, a plucky reporter going undercover who stays firm even in the face of scary locals and a psychic tractor running her off the road (don’t ask: its that kind of a story). However after that and with so little room for sub-plots writers Letts and Sloman don’t quite know what to do with her so they have the spiders possess her and rather all too obviously keep her out the way. Sarah Jane will become the most brainwashed/controlled companion of the lot and while she’ll get there in time (her control by Eldrad in her final story ‘The Hand Of Fear’ is chilling) for now being brainwashed just means she’s walking lopsidedly and slurring her speech as if she’s drunk. Normally we’d barely notice and put it down to ‘Dr Who acting’, but this happens to be in the same story where the Dr’s possession is one of the scariest of all.