Planet of the Spiders Part Three

The one where Sarah is transported to Metebelis III...

Tommy has been lurking around the corridors of the meditation centre throughout the story so far with nothing in particular to do. He seems to live under the stairs, collect shiny things and displays the mental age of someone much younger than his physical self. I guess he must be at the meditation centre to try and develop his mental capacity in some way. John Kane does a great job of making Tommy - a quite formidable physical presence - a gentle, sympathetic, sweet soul, although it's hard not to compare his demeanour, speech pattern and love of "pretties" with Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

What I like about this third episode is the focus on characters such as Tommy, and most particularly on Lupton, who's given a back-story and a reason for being at the meditation centre which is both tragic and slightly unnerving. Lupton was a "bright young salesman, Salesman of the Year, sales manager, sales director". Then the money men came in, and after 25 years of loyal service, a takeover and merger meant Lupton got a golden handshake. And when Lupton tried to set up business on his own, his former employers "deliberately, cold-bloodedly broke me. I'm still looking for some of the bits..."

Gosh, isn't that sad? Such great writing, and a fine performance from John Dearth, who gets to play a physical character at last after his wonderful vocal performance as BOSS in The Green Death. It's a tragic tale, but unnerving too, because as a result of what's happened to him, Lupton wants revenge, and in order to have that revenge, he wants power.

I'm flummoxed as to how writer Robert Sloman (and an uncredited Barry Letts) could produce such a finely crafted moment like this, as well as some truly abysmal moments later in the episode...

Basically, everything that takes place on Metebelis III - which looks absolutely nothing like it did when the Doctor briefly visited in The Green Death episode 1 - is disappointing. Our first glimpse is when Lupton and his spider communicate with the Eight-Legs gathered in their poorly realised "throne room", which is starkly over-lit and has virtually no design aesthetic at all. Designer Rochelle Selwyn decided not to go the obvious route of draping the spiders' domain in cobwebs. Instead, they all sit on awkward blue shelves like they're on some sort of arachnid version of Blankety Blank.

The spider props themselves are very well made though. They're hairy and quiver as if on the verge of jumping on you, which creates a particular unease among arachnophobes watching. The voices - by Ysanne "Alpha Centauri" Churchman, Kismet "wife of Roger" Delgado and Maureen "wife of production manager George Gallaccio" Morris - are also well realised, coming across like spiteful spinsters or witches. They also move well, both via CSO and in physical prop form.

The Giant Spiders of Metebelis III are not from Metebelis III originally, it seems, as their ultimate plan is to conquer Earth and return to their "rightful home". There's more to the story here than we currently know, because the Doctor said that when he last visited Metebelis III, there were no giant spiders. Now there are, they have subjugated the indigenous "two-legs", and plan to use the power of the blue crystals to return to Earth. They need the Doctor's crystal back to enable "full power", which begs the question of whether they were planning this return to Earth when he stole it in The Green Death (if so, that means they were there all along).

The final third of the episode is spent among the people of Metebelis III, and what a disappointing bunch they are. I do like the effect used of Sarah's transportation to the planet, a simple but clever use of CSO to have her in the cellar one moment, and on an alien planet the next. Sarah is taken prisoner by a young, hunky Two-Leg called Tuar, who thinks she is a spy of the Eight-Legs.

The humans are written really poorly, as if by a budding 12-year-old dramatist hoping to impress his teacher. Most of the actors manage to deliver their awful lines with a modicum of conviction - Ralph Arliss and Gareth Hunt in particular - but the older members of the cast fare less well. Geoffrey Morris as Sabor just about gets away with it, but Jenny Laird as Neska is an epic fail. She comes in for a lot of flak from fandom for her lamentable performance, but let's not lose sight of the fact she's given some pretty awful lines to work with. Most of what she's given to say is an effort by Sloman to define what she is in relation to other characters, so she's always referring to Arak as her son, and Sabor as her husband (and as a bonus, Arak refers to Tuar as his brother, so we get the entire family picture).

The script here is written as prose, and pretty purple prose at that. It's just not sayable out loud, and Laird fails to give any truth to the lines at all. Her delivery of "You shan't take him! Sabor, my husband, my love! Why did you do it? Why? Why?" is eye-wateringly poor.

It's such a shame these Metebelis villagers are depicted and portrayed so unimaginatively. They have oodles of facial hair (as the farmers did in Colony in Space), and speak with West Country accents, which in the television language of the 1970s, means they must be "simple folk". They dress like they're from the Middle Ages and fear their oppressors, just as the Bavarian peasants of Hammer films fear the count in his castle. It's lazy, disappointing work from Sloman and Letts, but also script editor Terrance Dicks, who could easily have made the script much better. Perhaps he didn't because it was written by "the boss"?

The Doctor - who hasn't featured very much at all in this episode - materialises the TARDIS slap-bang in the middle of the right village in precisely the right time period at exactly the right moment, demanding that Sarah be released. I love how Pertwee swats aside the guard's staff, then basically causes an all-out brawl with his Venusian karate. The cliffhanger sees the Doctor felled by a lightning bolt, and the moment where he reaches up to the TARDIS door before collapsing in its shadow recalls very similar scenes in The War Games, The Caves of Androzani and The End of Time - all regeneration stories...

First broadcast: May 18th, 1974

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The quivering spider props are really well realised.
The Bad: The appalling dialogue given to the Metebelis villagers, resulting in an embarrassingly poor performance from Jenny Laird. But I blame Sloman, Letts and Dicks for that, first and foremost.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 34
Neck-rub tally: 17 - the Doctor rubs his neck at 11m 40s when discussing whether time is an illusion with Cho-je.

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Four; Part Five; Part Six

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/planet-of-spiders.html

Planet of the Spiders is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Planet-Spiders-DVD/dp/B004P9MUK0