Barry Letts, “Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders” (1974)
Centuries after the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) visits the planet Metebelis 3 to souvenir a blue crystal (in previous “The Green Death” adventure), a spaceship of human colonists crash-lands on the planet, and the survivors are stranded there. Some spiders from that spaceship come into contact with the crystals in the mountains there and their exposure causes them to grow in size and mental ability, to the extent that they are able to enslave the humans and use them and their animals for food. Though the spiders and humans are technically ruled by the Queen Spider, their real controller is the Great One, a gigantic arachnid dwelling deep within the Blue Mountain who has come to realise that she needs the blue crystal taken by the Doctor, to realise her dreams of expanding her mental and psychic powers, and of dominating the universe with them.
Meanwhile, the former UNIT captain Mike Yates (Richard Yates) has gone to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in rural England for meditation therapy. He contacts Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and asks her to investigate a meditation group led by Lupton (John Dearth), a resident there. Yates and Sarah witness the meditation group performing a ritual that conjures into being a giant spider, which later takes control of Lupton. Sarah reports back to the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) at UNIT headquarters, the Doctor himself conducting experiments on human psychic ability using his blue crystal. The two compare their observations and discover the presence of giant spiders in their comparisons. Unbeknownst to them, Lupton has arrived at UNIT under guidance from his spider. He manages to steal the crystal and makes off with it, with the Doctor, Sarah and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and his men in pursuit. After a long chase, Lupton is teleported by the spider back to the monastery. However, it isn’t long before the crystal is stolen again, this time by Tommy (John Kane), the monastery’s handyman with learning difficulties.
The plot then goes into another, more complicated chase as Lupton and his spider teleport to Metebelis 3, with Sarah following them after accidentally stepping on a prayer mandala, and the Doctor travelling after her in the TARDIS. Sarah is captured by the spiders and after being held in a cocoon, is released and put under the Queen Spider’s control. The Doctor meets with the descendants of the spaceship travellers and helps them to organise a rebellion against the spiders. He is captured by the spiders’ human minions and meets with the Great One, who allows him and Sarah to return to Earth to retrieve the crystal. Back at the monastery, the Doctor and Sarah discover that Tommy, whose mind has been healed by exposure to the crystal, has given it to the abbot K’anpo Rimpoche (George Cormack). The abbot uses the crystal to break the Queen Spider’s control over Sarah and the creature dies. He then advises the Doctor to return the crystal to Metebelis 3 and give it to the Great One. Lupton’s meditation group summons a group of spiders who promptly take control of the men, and they fight Tommy to gain access to the abbot. The Doctor takes the crystal and flees in the TARDIS back to Metebelis 3.
There’s a lot of unnecessary filler in this six-part story, the first chase scene in Part 2 being the most annoying and, from an environmental viewpoint, wasteful of fuel. For a serial that had been strong on environmentalism for its past five seasons, producer / director Letts should have cut this chase scene out. This is one of several paradoxes in the story that make its internal logic inconsistent, both within itself and against the entire Doctor Who ethos so far. Parts 2 to 6 begin with overly long recapitulations of previous events leading up to the cliffhangers that ended their respective preceding parts. Various characters in the story – the magician with the psychic talents, the human slaves on Metebelis 3 – turn out to be superfluous to the overall plot. So much of what also appears here – for example, the Tibetan Buddhist ideas and concepts of reincarnation, the telekinesis, as well as the rebellion subplot with the humans on Metebelis 3 – is done in a very hurried and superficial way. The Tibetan Buddhist elements especially are misused in a way that potentially causes offense to the people from whose culture these elements have been cherry-picked.
The story’s saving grace is that the Doctor willingly returns the crystal to Metebelis 3 and faces the consequences of having taken it; in this, he proves himself selfless and heroic, even though he must face certain death. Unfortunately, the dialogue the scriptwriters force him to utter completely misrepresents his motives in stealing the cyrstal in the first place; he is keen on exploring and experiencing the wonders of the universe and to share those wonders with his fellow soul travellers, especially those like Sarah (and before her, Jo) who physically travel with him. Suggesting that he is “greedy for knowledge” implies selfishness and a desire for power over others: the exact attributes of his ultimate nemesis the Great One.
Of course, in atoning for his crime, the Doctor dies and regenerates into his next incarnation. And thus ends a distinctive period in the history of “Doctor Who” in which the Doctor was forced by his own species to live among humans and assist them with their problems – and in doing so, to learn a few lessons about pride and humility (even if imperfectly), and the limits of what he is able to do and achieve. For viewers, this is a period in which scientific and technical knowledge and the associated rational mindset come to the fore, along with the awareness of what and how much humans can achieve with this knowledge, and the damage that the use of science and technology can also cause if not applied with care for others and the environment. Nearly all stories in this period of Jon Pertwee’s tenure as the Doctor treat their audiences as though viewers are familiar with the social and political issues facing Britain during the early 1970s, even though children and their parents remain the target audience. Perhaps for the first time in its history, “Doctor Who” became a show that both adults and children, with or without one another, could really enjoy at different levels of understanding.
The cultural influences brought to bear on the stories featured, and on key characters themselves, are manifold: science fiction and spy films of the time, on television and at the cinemas, and fads such as Westernised Buddhism, the New Age and the paranormal all had an impact on the show along with satirical pot-shots at British politics and bureaucracy. Even the Doctor himself becomes a superhero, complete with cape, the martial arts skills and the souped-up vehicles to match. In this narrative structure, and with a heroic character stereotype in place for the Doctor, the show’s Golden Age had begun and would continue with Pertwee’s successor Tom Baker.