Planet of the Spiders

Jo Grant has sent the Doctor a package from the depths of the Amazon jungle: the blue sapphire from Metebelis III which was her wedding gift. The crystal is making the natives nervous and she has to get rid or the entire expedition she and her husband, Cliff, are on will be off. But once back in the Doctor's hands the crystal becomes the object of desire of another party - the giant spiders (known as the Eight Legs) of Metebelis III. The spiders have created a bridgehead at a meditation centre where Mike Yates is attempting to recover from his own mental breakdown, and a group of men led by the angry and scheming Lupton become the human agents of the spiders. In his fight to keep the crystal out of the hands of his enemies, the Doctor will journey back to Metebelis III and engage in a confrontation that will cost him his life.

Does anyone actually like spiders? I'm not a particular fan myself but I'm not a full on arachnaphobe either. Still my own experiences with spiders are with the smaller ones and the odd big brown one in my garden, and not with giant ones that like to leap on people's backs. Friends of mine have said that this story was the one that stoked their lifelong dislike of the creatures, so hurrah for Doctor Who for using wobbly rubber props to strike fear into hearts! The rationale behind these giants is the conditions on Metebelis III would have allowed for their mutation into bigger creatures and for accelerated brain development, allowing them to evolve and take control of the human colonists there and enslave them. And eat the odd one. So now it's not just spiders overrunning the place, it's organized spiders with a Queen running the show, and someone else called the Great One (all praise to the Great One) running everything else.

Poor Yates; here he is trying to get his head back where it should be and there's another alien threat getting in the way. But disgraced and discarded by UNIT, he can hardly show up at the door and tell them what he has found. Good thing he has a good rapport with Sarah Jane Smith, and he can get her to tell UNIT for him. It's strange how their friendship developed like this; must be some background stories we aren't aware of. Is there a relationship here? Has Mike transferred his feelings for Jo onto Sarah? Is Sarah impressed by Mike's flashy sports car (must have been a generous severance package from UNIT) or does she just feel for him now that she has seen what adventuring with the Doctor can be like. Mike isn't exactly in PTSD land though, at least not in the sense of how it is perceived today; he's been sent packing and left to his own devices without a proper care plan, just meditation as his own attempt to get things right for himself.

The Doctor isn't aware of his own imminent regeneration at all, no matter how much retconning is done on this one they can't make it happen. There's no sense of finality in the background until the last two episodes; firstly when the Doctor realizes that going into the cave of the Great One (a massive HUGE spider - all praise to the Great One) will irradiate him beyond hope of recovery, and the second most obvious and least subtle is when he meets fellow Time Lord K'anpo Ripoche who regenerates himself just because he is old, much like the Doctor did in The Tenth Planet. K'anpo's regeneration is different though; there is a projection of his future self running around, a Tibetan monk named Cho-je, and the regeneration process absorbs Cho-je into K'anpo. Exactly why K'anpo is there though, is never really explained, unless he was there to guide the Doctor as he had in their old days on Gallifrey when he lived up the hill behind the Doctor's house.

That part is what's referred to as a fan-wank.

I often wonder how well Lupton would have fared without the aid of the spiders. He's not at the retreat to gain any kind of peace of mind, he's a bitter man there to focus his fury at the world and get revenge on the people who pushed him out of his job. That's a dangerous enough motivation right there but without a weapon of sorts (in America this man would just go to the gun shoppe and mow down kindergarteners as his outlet) Lupton would have been pretty ineffective and would have died angrily under the care of the NHS. The involvement with the spiders, though, shows that Lupton can learn fast and he has some capacity for learning to use his own latent mental powers. Who knows, maybe he might have become a credible threat over time. But he's a good driver and pilot it seems - stealing cars and helicopters and boats in a dreadfully long chase scene which eats up most of the second episode, fun as it is.

Despite this being the last outing for the third Doctor, the episode doesn't get to wallow in it and maintains a sense of fun the whole time even as things get desperate and nasty. Benton making jokes about hairdressing. The Brigadier's past love, Doris, getting a mention much to the Doctor's amusement. It's only once the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS in the last few minutes of the final episode that it becomes alarmingly evident that it's over for him, and it will be time to say goodbye to the third Doctor. He goes out with dignity right to the end, and with the Brigadier and Sarah watching, he regenerates.

NEXT EPISODE: SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL