Right so its time for another post on here and this one will be on another classic Doctor Who story from the Jon Pertwee era, which was Pertwee's last story, Planet of the Spiders. So let's give this one a closer look.....
So a bit about the story as it begins with Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) who has now since been discharged from his post with UNIT and is a now a civilian and attends a Tibetan meditation centre in rural England. Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) pays a visit to the centre and along with Mike they uncover some strange things going on there organised by one of the resident's, Lupton (John Death) along some of his fellow residents. Meanwhile the Doctor (Pertwee) has developed an interest in psychic ability as he attends a magic show with the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) he later invites one of the show's performers, Professor Clegg (Cyril Shaps) to UNIT where he reveals that Clegg has actual clairvoyant powers. At the centre Mike and Sarah witness Lupton and the others perform an incantation which conjures up a large spider, which leaps on to Lupton's back and disappears and then it manifests itself in Lupton's head and tells him to seek a blue crystal. The blue crystal in question turns out to be in the hands of the Doctor who recieved it back from Jo Grant (his former companion who left UNIT after the events of The Green Death). However things go badly wrong during the Doctor's experimentation with Clegg who takes a hold of the crystal during Lupton's incantation and he suffers a fatal heart attack after seeing the image of the spiders.
Afterward Sarah returns to UNIT where she tells the Doctor of her findings at the centre, however Lupton then sneaks in and steals the blue crystal from the Doctor's lab and a big chase ensues outside where Lupton eventually escapes being teleported by the spider back to the centre. The spider then tells Lupton that it is from the planet Metebelis 3, which is where the blue crystal originated and the spider intends to plot against some of its sister spiders back there. The Doctor then goes back to the centre with Sarah and they meet with the deputy abot, Cho-Je (Kevin Lindsay) and tell him that something strange is going on. Meanwhile the crystal is taken by Tommy (John Kane) who is a simple-minded handyman but his mind is soon improved by the power of the crystal. Sarah then manages to follow Lupton to Metebelis 3 via teleportation where she meets with the humans who live who are slaves to the spiders there who rule the planet and she is captured by the spiders. And from here the Doctor follows Sarah to Metebelis 3 and must try and find a way to rescue her and also help out the human slaves from their fates at the hands of the spiders that rule them.
As the swansong to the Pertwee era of the show, Planet of the Spiders is a very entertaining one and overall its a good send off for the third doctor. The story is also well noted for introducing the concept of regeneration as up to this point it had not been given a proper name, but here the Doctor explains that "when a Time Lord's body becomes worn out, it can regenerate and become new". The story was also known for featuring one of Pertwee's favourite vehicles in the show, the Whomobile, which was essentially a hovercraft and Pertwee was no stranger to having fun with it! And the story also makes reference to Harry Sullivan, who would of course later become the Fourth Doctor's companion in Tom Baker's debut story "Robot" but at this stage Sullivan's character is merely mentioned and doesn't actually appear in the story.
Performance wise the story is pretty good and it features a nice final performance from Jon Pertwee in his regular role as the Doctor and he has plenty of good scenes in the story. As a few examples for starters there is the scene where he meets with the clairvoyant, Professor Clegg and reveals to him that "You made a couple of mistakes last night, Professor. You gave the answer before your assistant had uttered a word". Then there is the scene where the Doctor makes a rare reference to his past and that when he looked into the blue crystal "You know when I was a young man, there was an old hermit who lived half way up a mountain just behind our house. I spent some of the finest hours of my life with that old man. And it was from him I first learned how to look into my own mind". And the Brigadier pushes the Doctor re: the crystal and what he saw and the Doctor says "When I looked into that crystal, all I could see was the face of my old teacher". Another good scene comes when the Doctor arrives on Metebelis 3 and he fights with the spider's slave guards and he zapped by a beam from one of the guards, which causes him to fall into an almost coma like state. And the Doctor later manages to muster enough energy to tell Sarah there is a tool on the TARDIS that can revive him but she is captured by the guards before she can take it to the Doctor. So one of the human salves, Arak (Gareth Hunt) takes it to the Doctor, who weakly uses it on himself and he then gasps with relief aftetward feeling a bit better "Thank you! Thank you very much!". Another good scene from Pertwee comes when the Doctor is captured by the guards and placed in a spider web cloth covering his body, but he somehow manages to wriggle free from it. And as one of the captives, Sabor says "what are you doing??" the Doctor replies "Compress the muscles. Its a little trick I learned from an old friend of mine. Harry, er what was his name??? Hopkins. Er no, that's not right. Hetherington, not that's not right either. It wasn't an English name. Hackenschmidt! No but I know it began with an H!" and he finally remembers "Houdini! Yes that was it. Harry Houdini!" and he finally frees himself and get's up. And last of all there is the Doctor's poignant pre-regeneration scene where he weakly tells Sarah after suffering a heavy dose of radiation on Metebelis 3 that "I had to face my fear, Sarah. I had to face my fear". And as Sarah sobs the Doctor gently says his last lines "Don't cry. While there's life there's...." before seemingly passing on.
Elisabeth Sladen is great once again in her role as Sarah Jane Smith and she has some good moments as well such as the scene where Sarah is wrapped in the spider webs as well and she sees the Doctor enter the cell and she says with relief "Doctor! You're alive. I knew you'd come!" but the Doctor points to the two guards behind him and she sighs saying "Oh, Doctor!". Richard Franklin is also good in his role as Mike Yates, who by this time is no longer an officer with UNIT and he uncovers the strange goings on at the meditation centre. Franklin also has some good moments and amusing lines such as the scene where Mike and Sarah quietly watch a group in mid-meditation and Sarah asks what are they meditating about and Mike quietly replies "Not about anything. They're just meditating, watching" and Sarah asks what are they watching and Mike says "They're mentally watching their tummies go up and down as they breathe".
John Dearth also puts in a good effort as the story's secondary villain, the greedy and ambitious Lupton who both does the spiders amoral bidding but also tries to use them for his own selfish ends. Dearth has some good scenes as well such as the scene where the spider tries to control his mind using some mental power to torment his mind and Lupton gasps saying "What did you do to my mind?! It felt like red-hot needles! Was it this that you did? Or no. Was it this?!" and he glares at the spider who twists in agony as well pleading to stop. And spider meekly says "You are cleverer than the two-legs on Metebelis 3" and Lupton arrogantly says "I'm cleverer than most of them on Earth!".
Gareth Hunt even though his role is nothing great he still fares pretty well in his part of Arak, the leader of the group of human slaves on Metebelis 3 and he is easily the best perfomer out of the lot of them. However it has to be said that Ralph Arlis is the real weak link in the cast here as his performance as the whiny human slave, Tuar, is pretty crap who is always impatient to attack the spiders (or "eight-legs" as the humans call them and the spiders call the humans "two-legs"). And Arliss's worst line comes when Arak sneaks out to try and get the Doctor's equipment that will revive him and one of the other slaves, Rega (Joanna Munro) says to him "Arak is not a coward" and Tuar smiles and says "No, he's not".
Nicholas Courtney also appears somewhat a bit more briefly in this story and as ever is fine as the Brigadier and he also has some good moments such as the scene near the start where the Doctor and the Brig attend the magic show. And the Brigadier watches a female dancer and later applauds enthusiastically after she has finished and he says to the Doctor "Extraordinary muscular control. Very fit that girl! I must adapt some of those movements as exercises for the men!". And Nick also provides the story's last line as the Brigadier and Sarah watch the Doctor regenerate into his fourth incarnation and the Brigadier says "Well, here we go again!".
And the lastly in this paragraph there are Ysanne Churchman, Kismet Delgado (the wife of the late Roger Delgado who played the Master) and Maureen Morris who are pretty decent in their voice over roles as the spiders from Metebelis 3. Kevin Lindsay also provides a nice performance as the deputy abot at the centre, Cho-Je who has some good moments in the story as well such as the scene where Tommy who's mind is cleared and improved by the crystal seems surprised that Cho-Je hadn't noticed he changed and Cho-Je smiles saying "When everything is new, can anything be a surprise?". Then there is George Cormack as the abot, K'anpo who turns out to be the Doctor's old teacher and he tells Sarah "We are all apt to surrender ourselves to domination. Even the strongest of us." and the Doctor turns surprised saying to K'anpo "Do you mean me?" and K'anpo replies "Not all spiders sit on the back".
And last of all there is John Kane who provides probably the best performance of the supporting cast as the simple-minded and well meaning Tommy, who's mind is improved by the power of the crystal. And his best scene comes when the crystal clears his mind as he initially attempts and struggles to read a simple children's ryhme book, he then later reads the ryhmes word perfect and becomes increasingly excited by his new ability. And in the next scene he goes to the library and reads from a book and says "Ah that's pretty!" as Tommy previously used to say but then thinks and says "No, its beautiful". And Kane also has one of the best lines in the story when Sarah sees that Tommy's mind has been improved by the crystal she says "Tommy, you are just like everyone else!" and Tommy says "I sincerely hope not!".
Direction wise, Barry Letts does a good job with the story as it was one of the handful of stories he directed for the show during the Pertwee era and he paces the story not too badly and allows for the usual mix of fun, action and drama. The story also features a pretty good score by its regular composer, Dudley Simpson who by this time had started to move away from his more electronic compisitions and now onto using more traditional orchestral instruments for his scores.
As for flaws..... well Planet of the Spiders sure isn't the perfect Doctor Who story as for starters it suffers that problem that alot of six part stories did in the show in that it is just a bit too long and it feels pretty padded out in certain scenes and again it would have benefited more from being a four parter than six. The sub-plot involving the humans as slaves on Metebelis 3 is also pretty tedious overall and the characters are pretty dull and who would have thought that humans would have been upstaged by arachnids! And while Lupton makes for a pretty good character it has to be said that his subordinates let the side down as all they do mostly is stand around arguing with one another most of the time, which again drags the story down during their scenes.
And further to my point about the story being padded out it has to be said that most of episode two is a case in point where the Doctor engages in a very lengthy chase going after Lupton by different methods of travel such as car, boat, gyrocopter and the Whomobile, which overall is pretty tedious and could easily have been trimmed. And it has to be said in regards to that whole sequence that at the end of it Lupton ends up being teleported away by the spider back to the centre and that begs the question: why didn't the spider and Lupton do that in the first place????!!! And if they did it would have made the story that bit tauter and we wouldn't needed to have bothered with all that pointless chasing about! However I think that was in part due to the fact that Pertwee loved using the show's different transport gadgets, especially the Whomobile so they obviously must have worked all that in just so he could use it.
But all that aside Planet of the Spiders still remains a pleasant and enjoyable send-off for the Jon Pertwee era of the show, which would pave way for one of the show's most definitive potrayals of the Doctor with Tom Baker taking over the mantle of the Time Lord.
And on that note I shall leave you there and say goodnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment