Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders

Part One
 

“Ah! Doing a bit of hairdressing on the side?”

We start with an unexpected sight- Mike Yates may no longer be part of UNIT, but he’s back. It’s also unusual, and refreshing, to see the Doctor and the Brig watching some kind of variety show, even if it’s not entirely recreational.

Yates has infiltrated himself into a hippyish group of Buddhists whose general appearance is absolutely as ‘70s as it’s possible to get. Clothes, hair, moustaches: all look like something from a contemporary parody of the decade, but there they are.

It’s great to see Cyril Shaps again, playing another nervous character, this time someone with psychic powers. We hear than the Brig has been involved with someone called Doris, and get to see some clips from Carnival of Monsters, something which is always to be welcomed. It’s also nice to get a letter from Jo telling us how she’s been getting on. She’s returned that blue crystal, though, for reasons which seem ominous.

We get an interesting speech from the lama, Cho-Je , about becoming a “new man" only to realise you’ve “never existed”. It’s almost as if something’s being foreshadowed in Buddhist terms. I wonder what?

Suddenly Cyril Shaps is dead- and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s pretty much entirely the Doctor’s fault, collateral damage from his desire to satisfy his curiosity. Again, foreshadowing.

It’s a great big spider…

Part Two

“Of course we’re flying!”

Spiders which jump on your back, turn invisible yet exert control… a brilliant idea, and one I’m sure we won’t ever be seeing again in the future, such as, for example, in thirty-four years time.

This is actually the last full on UNIT episode of the Pertwee years, and although there’s no real marking of this fact it’s not a bad way to go. The Brig’s hair may be a bit long (I’m one to talk, mind…) but there’s some good stuff, especially a nice line from Benton about how “I’m expendable and you’re not.” And the Brig’s on the phone to a medical officer called “Sullivan”- who he?

We get another mention of the Doctor’s hermit guru from halfway up that mountain, again foreshadowing later events. But basically this is a chase, involving land, sea, air, Bessie and the Doctor’s fantastic flying new car. And I like it- it’s fun, it’s appropriate as a celebration, so who cares if the plot is not advanced one iota, especially as Lupton just teleports away at the end?

Oh, and towards the end, we get our final comedy tramp of the Pertwee era. Not that there were really all that many of them in the end.

Part Three

“You are cleverer than the Two-Legs on Metebelis 3!”

Now there are loads of spiders, and after last week’s high jinks the plot is heating up. We get to hear enough of Lupton’s history to establish that he’s a nutter. I love the scene where both he and the spider attack each others’ minds in turn.

It’s a shock when Sarah is suddenly transported to Metebelis 3, the fabled planet which has been gradually seeded, Bad Wolf style, throughout the last couple of years. Things have changed since the Doctor was last here in The Green Death- it’s now inhabited by human colonists with Mummerset accents who are under the tyrannical rule of the mysterious spiders. Sarah’s quite extraordinarily brave at being suddenly transported to another planet and a bit of extreme peril- she’s quite clearly great by this point.

Interesting to have the Doctor explain to Yates something that’s always bugged me a bit- how come the TARDIS always lands at the right place on a given planet?

Part Four

“Oh dear. This is getting monotonous.”

The above quote most definitely does not sum up my feelings on this story- I think it’s great so far!

We get some nicely and economically sketched details of society on Metebelis 3. It may be a fairly generic Doctor Who trope, a society oppressed by monstrous rulers, but it’s only a minor subplot here. Incidentally, the Metebelis 3 colonists look every bit as uber-70s as the Buddhist group on Earth.

Tommy has a good look at the crystal and goes all Flowers For Algernon, a subtle hint of what’s happened to the spiders on Metebelis 3- they’re Earth spiders made larger and cleverer by the crystals, a big plot bombshell- and just how significant the crystal will turn out to be.

Sarah risks her life for the Doctor by going to get the machine for him, while the Doctor suddenly looks very old whilst lying there. Still, once cured he briefly reverts to some of the old Season Eight style rudeness by loudly waking his hosts at the crack of dawn.

The Doctor gets straight to work. This is good stuff!

Part Five

“Much as I admire your stoic acceptance of the inevitable, I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up for a moment.”

This is a very long reprise indeed, but the effect is that both Sarah and the Doctor end up in the “web”, waiting to be eaten. The Doctor escapes, but his confrontation with the Great One- all the more effective for being unseen- is deeply effective as the Doctor himself is clearly very frightened indeed. The story’s themes are starting to come together nicely; the Great One says to the Doctor “You are proud, little man.”

There’s a nice bit with our heroes about to leave Metebelis 3, as the Doctor briefly panics that he’s lost the key only for Sarah to calmly reveal that she has it. There’s also a nice touch with Tommy; Sarah suggests he might be “normal”, and he replies “I sincerely hope not.”

And then the crux of the whole story arrives as the Doctor and Sarah finally meet the mysterious K’anpo. (Incidentally, for future reference, the Doctor speaks fluent Tibetan.) It becomes clear that the Doctor is the cause of everything that’s going wrong, just because he found that crystal on Metebelis 3: “Found?” “Well, perhaps ‘stole’ might be a better word.”

Part Six

“Not all spiders sit on the back.”

Not only is the reprise very long, it also has scenes fitted around it which weren’t there last episode, which is sort of cheating. But it’s exciting stuff from beginning to end, one of the finest individual episodes yet. K’anpo reveals who he really is- the old Time Lord hermit who tutored the Doctor all those years ago. It seems he’s “regenerated” (the first use of the word- it gave me a thrill!) and that Cho-Je doesn’t technically exist at all but is some kind of avatar, some kind of “projection” of his next life. I’m sure there are Buddhist allusions here that I’m not getting, but it’s cool nonetheless.

The Doctor must face his fear and atone for what he’s done. There a real sense of inevitable doom as he sets off for Metebelis 3. Meanwhile, K’anpo is hurt after being attacked, and “regenerates” into Cho-Je. Cool!

The Great One is huge, and looks very impressive indeed. She’s overreached herself though, and the crystal is too much for her, just as K’anpo thought it would be. All the spiders are killed, but the Doctor’s been fatally affected by the radiation…

UNIT HQ. Three months later, and the TARDIS has finally brought the Doctor “home”- it’s fitting that this Doctor, having got over his exile, is now ready to admit just how attached he’s become to this one place and time. K’anpo gives the process a push and the Doctor’s face change. It may not be that visually impressive, but in context it’s a huge dramatic moment. Wow.

Well, that was great. I’m sure most of the Buddhist stuff went over my head, but it was a perfect framework for this Doctor’s swansong in a story which was truly about him as a character. 5/5.

The season as a whole scores 4.2/5, giving it fourth place so far. It’s been a season of four 5/5s and one 1/5, a strange combination!

Doctor Who: The Green Death

Part One

“This fellow’s bright green, apparently. And dead.”

We get an immediate sense that this story is going to have significantly better dialogue than the last from Stevens’ Chamberlain spiel at the start. Slightly less impressive is the bizarre use of CSO for descending down a mine shaft, but this is good, and it’s also good to see UNIT again, especially the Brig. I would mention Jo dressing as Peter Davison, but I’m sure everyone else has by now so I won’t.

Interesting that the Doctor feels the need to establish his detachment from UNIT by briefly gallivanting off to Metebelis 3 for a bit of slapstick. Now his exile is over he clearly feels less attached to his old UNIT surroundings. Still, he says he’ll follow in a bit.

There’s an interesting parallel here with Jo, of course, who’s also feeling less attached to her circumstances than she was, as we’ve seen in recent stories. It was implied as early as Frontier in Space that she wouldn’t be travelling in the TARDIS again so it comes as no surprise to see her spurn a trip to the now-fabled Metebelis 3 for a more Earthly, and more serious, concern. The Doctor, freed from his exile, is more carefree than he’s been for ages while Jo, who’s clearly been following the environmental catastrophe in South Wales for some time, is moving in the opposite direction.

It’s a nice piece of foreshadowing that the Doctor and Jo don’t even listen to each other, and Jo also demonstrates her ties to UNIT are loosening. All this is clear to the Doctor: “So- the fledgling flies the coop”. There’s also an irony here; the Doctor, giddy with his new-found freedom, is neglecting his responsibilities for a pleasure journey, even if he does propose to follow on later. And while the Doctor engages in some slapstick on Metebelis 3, it’s actually Jo who’s the more Doctorish in her attitude.

There’s another symbolic parallel, of course, as she disrupts Professor Jones’ experiment, just as she did the Doctor’s back in Terror of the Autons. This pretty much tells us how she’s ultimately going to end up, right in the first episode.

Part Two

“I’m quite spry for my age, actually.”

Some interesting developments- Stevens has a “Boss”; Yates is mentioned so he’s definitely recovered from that explosion in The Time Monster- but although the plots moving along nicely there’s also some witty dialogue (“unauthorised footsteps”!) and of course we get to see the giant maggots. And this is the first time we hear the Doctor speak of Venusian Aikido, not Venusian Karate.

Part Three

“In the whole history of the world, there’s never been anybody just like Bert. And there’ll never be another…"

It’s a great relief to see that the Brig is back to his best after the unfortunate events of The Three Doctors. His confrontation with Stevens is a delight: “Are you threatening me, Mr Stevens?” “Yes, I think perhaps I am.” But Stevens has friends in high places, extending right to the prime minister, although I notice this is quietly dropped in later episodes. And the PM’s a Jeremy. Thorpe, presumably? Lock up your dogs...

There’s a bit of a Mad Men moment, reminding us just how long ago 1973 was, where the Brig and Stevens both drink whisky in the middle of the day as though it were tea or coffee. And a rather shocking Life on Mars moment, where the Boss causes Fell to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. You wouldn’t see that in a family programme these days.

The dinner party scene is fascinating. Jo is clearly getting closer to the Prof and distancing herself from the Doctor. It’s Jones who comforts her when she finds out Bert’s dead. And they’re clearly about to sleep together when the Doctor quite deliberately whisks the Prof away to the laboratory. That’s excellent writing. Can this really be the same people who wrote The Dæmons and The Time Monster?

Part Four

“Well, I’m not such a dunderhead as you all seem to think!”

We see Benton for the first time in ages, and then Stevens’ man from the ministry turns out to be none other than… Mike Yates. I’d forgotten all about that- it came as a genuine shock. The Brigadier is no fool in this story.

I love BOSS’s dialogue, especially as it could easily have been a generic baddie. But it has a real personality and wit, and a knowledge of philosophy and music. And what makes the Nietzschean allusions so great is that they so clearly go right over “little Superman” Stevens’ head. The final reveal that it is in fact a computer (of charmingly antique design and filling a whole room) makes this even more impressive- we could have got another WOTAN but instead we get this great character.

Oh yes, and we get a Pertwee comedy turn as a milkman and a tea lady. Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any better.

Part Five

“Today Llanfairfach, tomorrow the world, eh?”

I love the fact that BOSS doesn’t want to personally take over the world, just maximise the profits of Global Chemicals by any means possible. Come to think of it, the character of BOSS is almost certainly intended as a statement on Big Corporations on the part of the writers.

The Doctor’s reaction to interrogation, by now something of a Pertwee era standard, is great, as per usual. Some great lines from the Doctor: “Freedom from freedom?”

More good stuff here, and I love it that Jo gets to repair the communicator in another indication of how far she’s come. On the other hand we get more gratuitous use of CSO (this story’s most glaring fault) as the Doctor drives through the slag heap.

Oh, and naturally, the delirious Cliff chooses to murmur “serendipity” rather than “it’s the fungus” or something.

Part Six

“Don’t worry Doctor, I’ll look after her.”

I’m really enjoying this story, so just this once I’m willing to overlook the fly. It’s pretty poor though. Fortunately, everything else rocks. I love the way BOSS quotes Oscar Wilde and discusses Wagner and Tchaikovsky. He has a real personality and wit yet is also strangely childlike. It’s quite effective to see him suffer pain while dying.

Jo’s extended leaving scene is great and entirely fitting, from Cliff’s clumsy proposal to the Doctor, too upset to stay, walking out of the party and driving off, if not literally into the sunset.

Fantastic, 5/5. Great story, great dialogue, great performances and particularly great treatment of the regulars in a story where it’s essential. For some reason Letts and Sloman, usually disappointing so far, really pull it out of the bag with this one.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed Season 10 really rather a lot. In fact, with an average of 4/5 it’s in joint first place with Seasons 5 and 7.