Planet of the Spiders (TV story)

Planet of the Spiders was the fifth and final story of Season 11 of Doctor Who. It marked the final appearance of Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor and the first appearance (uncredited) of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. Mike Yates also makes his final appearance outside of cameos and Dimensions in Time.

Synopsis
The blue crystal that the Doctor took from Metebelis III in a previous adventure is desperately sought by the Eight Legs, a race of mutated spiders, as the final element in their plan for universal domination. With help from an old mentor, the Doctor realises the only way to foil the plot is to make the ultimate sacrifice. The Doctor must risk death to return to the cave of the Great One and save the universe.

Part one
In the English countryside, Mike Yates, discharged from UNIT and recuperating at a rural Buddhist meditation centre, is concerned about a small group who meet secretly in the basement; he suspects they may be attempting to summon something evil through their meditation. Meanwhile, the Doctor is researching psychic energy and enlists the assistance of a clairvoyant, Professor Herbert Clegg.

His experiments backfire when Clegg's fixation on the Metebelis crystal (which Jo Grant had recently returned to the Doctor) leads to his seeing giant spiders, and he dies of a fright-induced heart attack. Mike enlists the assistance of Sarah Jane, whose initial scepticism is erased after they are nearly run off the road by a hallucinatory tractor. Sneaking into the basement they see the group, led by Lupton, summon a giant spider (similar to the ones Clegg saw) into existence...

Part two
The giant spider melds with Lupton, and together they infiltrate UNIT and steal the blue crystal, leading to a lengthy chase involving the Whomobile, a small helicopter, a hovercraft, and a speedboat. The Doctor finally catches up to Lupton's boat, but when he jumps on board, Lupton vanishes...

Part three
Lupton re-appears at the meditation centre, secretly observed by the simple-minded handyman Tommy, who later steals the crystal to add to his collection of 'pretties'. The Doctor and Sarah Jane investigate the meditation centre. Exploring the basement Sarah steps on Lupton's mandala and is transported to Metebelis III, where a small group of humans are held in bondage by the giant spiders, who refer to themselves as the Eight Legs. The Doctor follows in his TARDIS to rescue Sarah Jane, but is incapacitated by the Eight Legs' human guards...

Part four
On Metebelis III, the Doctor lingers in a coma. Tommy's brain is healed when he looks deep into the crystal. Lupton becomes embroiled in a plot led by his spider host against the Eight Leg Queen. The Doctor recovers thanks to a machine Sarah retrieved for him from the TARDIS. In doing so however, she is captured by the Eight Legs. Thrown into a cell with a man named Sabor, Sarah learns the history of Metebilis 3: the humans are descendants of survivors of a crashed spaceship, and the Eight Legs were common spiders onboard that became mutated by radiation from the blue crystals. The Doctor finds a type of stone which nullifies the effects of the Eight Legs' energy rays, which the humans will use in their rebellion. The Doctor attempts to rescue Sarah Jane, but is captured again by the Eight Legs as well...

Part five
The Doctor escapes from his cocoon, and reaches the mouth of the cave of the Great One, who warns him not to enter due to the lethal radiation within. She orders him to return the blue crystal that he stole, and humiliates him by forcing him to march in a circle like a tin soldier via her psychic power. The Doctor is too overcome by fear to face her, and escapes with Sarah Jane back to Earth in the TARDIS. They meet the leader of the meditation centre, the Abbott K'anpo Rimpoche. Meanwhile Lupton's followers, possessed by the Eight Legs, fire telekinetic force at Tommy, the only person standing in the way of their taking the crystal...

Part six
Sarah Jane is revealed to be under the control of the Queen, which explains how she and the Doctor escaped so easily. With the blue crystal, which Tommy had given to K'anpo, the Doctor is able to free her mind. The Doctor is astounded to discover an old friend; K'anpo is his former mentor, a fellow renegade Time Lord now enjoying peaceful exile on Earth. The attack of Lupton's followers is repulsed with the help of Tommy, but K'anpo is injured and forced to regenerate by merging with his assistant, Cho Je, who was a projection of K'anpo's own conscience.

The Doctor realises his greed for knowledge and his theft of the crystal has set all these events into motion, and that he must face his fear and probable death by returning it. He pilots the TARDIS to Metebelis III and enters the cave to confront the Great One, an enormous spider, who desires the blue crystal to complete a crystalline web that will amplify her psychic power to infinity.

However, once the crystal is in place, the web overloads and destroys both her and the Eight Legs. The Doctor receives a lethal dose of radiation from the cave, and barely manages to escape in the TARDIS. He eventually arrives at UNIT (after being gone, from their perspective, for three weeks), collapses on the floor, and appears to die. As Sarah weeps, K'Anpo/Cho-Je appears and with a little 'push', induces the Doctor's regeneration into his fourth incarnation.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
 * The Doctor - Tom Baker (uncredited at the end of Part 6.)
 * Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
 * Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
 * Mike Yates - Richard Franklin
 * Sergeant John Benton - John Levene
 * Professor Clegg - Cyril Shaps
 * Lupton - John Dearth
 * Barnes - Christopher Burgess
 * Moss - Terence Lodge
 * Land - Carl Forgione
 * Keaver - Andrew Staines
 * Cho Je - Kevin Lindsay
 * Tommy - John Kane
 * Policeman - Chubby Oates
 * Soldier - Pat Gorman
 * Man with Boat - Terry Walsh
 * Hopkins - Michael Pinder
 * Tramp - Stuart Fell
 * Spider Voices - Ysanne Churchman, Kismet Delgado, Maureen Morris
 * Arak - Gareth Hunt
 * Sabor - Geoffrey Morris
 * Neska - Jenny Laird
 * Rega - Joanna Monro
 * Tuar - Ralph Arliss
 * Guard Captains - Walter Randall, Max Faulkner
 * K'anpo Rimpoche - George Cormack

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Graeme Harper
 * Costumes - L. Rowland Warne
 * Designer - Rochelle Selwyn
 * Film Cameraman - Fred Hamilton
 * Film Editor - Bob Rymer
 * Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
 * Make-Up - Deanne Turner
 * Producer - Barry Letts
 * Production Assistant - Marion McDougall
 * Production Unit Manager - George Gallaccio
 * Script Editor - Terrance Dicks
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Ralph Walton
 * Studio Sound - John Holmes
 * Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Bernard Wilkie

The Doctor

 * The Doctor is familiar with Tibetan customs.

Crystals

 * The Doctor receives a package from Jo Grant containing his Metebelis crystal, which he picked up during his previous visit to Metebelis III.

Foods and beverages

 * The Doctor likens Sergeant Benton's coffee-making skills to those of Mrs. Samuel Pepys.
 * Lupton offers Sarah tea.

Individuals

 * The Doctor mentions being taught in the ways of escapology by Harry Houdini.
 * Mike Yates refers to the last time he encountered Sarah as "that business with the dinosaurs".
 * The Brigadier's watch was given to him 11 years ago in Brighton by Doris.
 * The Brigadier phones Sullivan, the UNIT Medical Officer.

Periodicals

 * Sarah has worked for Metropolitan magazine.

Story notes

 * This is the first time the term "regeneration" is mentioned on screen.
 * This is the first time we see someone other than the Doctor regenerate (K'anpo Rimpoche).
 * This story features a large chase scene featuring: Bessie, the Whomobile, a police car, a gyrocopter, a hovercraft and a boat.
 * Tom Baker is uncredited in the conclusion of Planet of the Spiders, when Jon Pertwee transforms into Tom Baker. Since no regeneration was shown at the end of The War Games, this marked the first time since William Hartnell changed into Patrick Troughton in 1966's The Tenth Planet that an on-screen hand-over of the role had occurred. Significantly, therefore, it was the first end-of-season regeneration to show the incoming actor.
 * Parts of this story were recorded at the same time as parts of Robot. This not only meant that Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker were literally playing the Doctor at the same time, but also that Elisabeth Sladen — and to a lesser extent, Nicholas Courtney and John Levene — were having to rush back and forth between the two productions.
 * The Time Beetle featured in DW: Turn Left shares some similarities with the Eight Legs: it too is a giant-sized insectoid that can latch onto a victim's back, becoming invisible to disguise its presence at the same time.

Ratings

 * Part 1 - 10.1 million viewers
 * Part 2 - 8.9 million viewers
 * Part 3 - 8.8 million viewers
 * Part 4 - 8.2 million viewers
 * Part 5 - 9.2 million viewers
 * Part 6 - 8.9 million viewers

Myths

 * Roger Delgado's Master was originally to have been written out in Planet of the Spiders, and after the actor's death the story was revised to incorporate Lupton in place of the Master.
 * It is true that had Delgado not died, he would have been written out in the final story of season eleven. He had informed Barry Letts that he would only appear as the Master in one more story during the filming of Frontier in Space. Letts agreed to the request, seeing it as an opportunity to dramatically end Season 11. He asked writer Robert Sloman to help him write a story which would at last define the relationship of the Doctor and the Master, before having the Master sacrifice himself to save the Doctor. Sloman delivered at least an initial round of scripts, called The Final Game, before Delgado's death forced the complete suspension of the story line. Planet of the Spiders was a wholly different story, save perhaps for Barry Letts' desire to incorporate certain Buddhist philosophies.


 * A frequent corollary to the above is that The Final Game would have also incorporated the regeneration of the Third Doctor.
 * Sloman had delivered scripts to Letts two weeks prior to Delgado's death on 18 June 1973. Pertwee didn't announce his retirement until after his request for a raise was denied in December 1973. The first scripts of The Final Game could not logically have included any elements pertaining to the Doctor's regeneration, because writer Robert Sloman didn't know Pertwee was going to leave.

Filming locations

 * Tidmarsh Manor, Tidmarsh, Berkshire
 * Bloomfieldhatch Lane, Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire
 * Membury Airfield, Membury, Wiltshire
 * River Severn, Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire
 * Mortimer Station, Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire
 * Mereoak Lane, Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire
 * Le Marchant Barracks, London Road, Devizes, Wiltshire
 * BBC Television Centre (TC1, TC6, TC8), Shepherd's Bush, London

Production errors

 * The Doctor's flying car is a different colour in the studio (gold rather than silver).

Continuity

 * Jo Grant sends the Doctor a package containing the blue Metebelis crystal (DW: The Green Death), which the spiders covet, making this serial a sequel of sorts to The Green Death. This is also one of the first times - possibly the first - that a past companion has played a role in a later story, although Jo does not actually appear in the story (she does, however, appear in the novelisation).
 * Mike Yates refers to his last appearance in DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
 * The Doctor previously mentioned the hermit who lived behind his house in DW: The Time Monster.
 * EDA: Interference - Book Two presents an alternate regeneration sequence.
 * The Eight Legs returned in ST: Return of the Spiders, BFA The Eight Truths and BFA Worldwide Web.
 * The Fifth Doctor in the ST: Light at the End of the Tunnel tries to fight off his phobia of spiders when he goes inside a large pipe, making this story as a reference.
 * The Eighth Doctor still has a phobia of spiders in EDA: The Scarlet Empress.
 * Professor Clegg divines that the Brigadier's wristwatch was given to him eleven years earlier in a hotel room by a woman named Doris, prompting a somewhat embarrassed reaction from him. In DW: Battlefield, the retired Brigadier is married to a woman named Doris.
 * In the story, K'anpo Rimpoche regenerates from a Caucasian to an Asian (character, not actor). The next time a Time Lord would change ethnicity (on screen) would be in DW: Let's Kill Hitler.

For the Doctor and Sarah Jane

 * This story occurs after ST: An Overture Too Early.
 * ST: Ancient Whispers takes place during Episode 6 of this story.
 * This story occurs before DW: Robot.

For the Brigadier

 * This story occurs after DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
 * This story occurs before DW: Robot.

Video release
This story was released on VHS as per follows:

Region 2: April 1991

Region 4: September 1991

Region 1: May 1994

DVD release
This story was released as Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders.

Released: Region 2: (This dvd was released on the same day that we found out about Elisabeth Sladen's death) 18th April 2011

Region 1: 10th May 2011

Region 4: 2nd June 2011

Special Features:
 * Commentary by Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, Richard Franklin, Barry Letts, and Terrance Dicks.
 * The Final Curtain documentary
 * John Kane Remembers featurette
 * Directing Who With Barry Letts documentary
 * Now and Then featurette
 * Planet of the Spiders 102 minute omnibus
 * Omnibus trailer
 * Photo Gallery
 * PDF: Radio Times Listings