'Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders' (1974)

This is going to be a shorter post than normal, today was really busy and there's not much left of it! Well, here goes...

'Planet of the Spiders' is another one of those stories where I'd only ever read the book (thank you mobile library at the top of the street...) and never got round to seeing it on TV. To be fair, it's older than I am so the odds of catching it on the telly were never going to be good. These days though...? Give me a payday and I can pretty much watch whatever I want, whenever I want. So I did and 'Planet of the Spiders' ended up being a lot of fun.

At a Tibetan retreat in the English countryside, a group of men are using ancient meditation rituals to tap into a mysterious alien power. They unwittingly create a bridgehead between Earth and Metebelis 3, a planet where the ‘Two Legs’ are oppressed by giant spiders. The creatures are desperate to recover the blue jewel that the Doctor gave to Jo Grant as a wedding gift.

Now the Doctor must risk everything and return to Metebelis 3 to face the awesome power of The Great One, who plans to use the crystal to enslave all of human kind...

I've got to admit, it was only the promise of giant spiders that kept me going through the opening episode which felt like it was just a lot of chanting and the Doctor carrying out experiments into ESP. Oh yes, and a variety show that no-one looked like they were enjoying. When it all clicked though... All of a sudden, I had a story on my hands that was brimming with vigour and purpose. There's a mystery to be solved which turns into a threat to two planets and everything is geared towards countering that threat. A lot of this happens in the English countryside which I love as it makes the alien stuff seem more alien and I don't have to suspend my disbelief too much with dodgy looking sets (those come later and to the show's credit, we don't spend that much time with them).

And when I say 'countering that threat', this involves the Doctor driving pretty much anything with an engine in order to retrieve the alien jewel. Jon Pertwee will always be 'Action Doctor' to me and not only does he know Venusian Akido, he drives hovercraft as well (and microlights). I'm not sure that he absolutely had to drive over that tramp but it happened and the tramp was ok... I had to keep watching, not only to see if the Doctor caught Lupton but also just to see what he got into and drove next.

So loads going on then and after all that, we get giant spiders... Well, they're not that big but they're big enough and the show takes the wise approach of not letting them move that much (they look realistic but they would have looked awful if they'd moved much). They're a worthy foe for the Doctor because half the time, they're possessing humans and you don't even know that they're there until said human starts blasting lightening from their fingers. The 'Great One' (massive spider, basically) really gets into the Doctor's head and lives in the one place where the Doctor will die if he hangs around. So, quite a tricky one for the Doctor to resolve then, unless he makes the ultimate sacrifice that is...

And that's the other great thing about 'Planet of the Spiders', the characterisation that we get. This is Jon Pertwee's last outing as the Doctor and we get to see him deal with the consequences of actions that he took a long time ago. It's pretty powerful as we see the Doctor confront his 'greedy nature' and take steps to right wrongs that came out of that. And if that's not enough, we get Mike Yates on a redemption arc (I still need to see 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs'...) and Sarah Jane Smith being absolutely amazing. I've only seen Sarah Jane in the one 'Classic Who' story ('Genesis of the Daleks') so it was great to see her just getting shit done and being every bit as resourceful as the Doctor, just in different ways. I need to watch more stories with her in them, clearly.

It's pretty clear by now that I love my 'Classic Doctor Who', so do bear that in mind, but there's a lot of the much earlier stuff that I haven't seen and it always surprises me how good it can be. 'Planet of the Spiders' falls very firmly in that camp. Well worth a watch if you get the chance.