DOCTOR WHO: PLANET OF THE SPIDERS, Man … Spiders, Man

“PLANET OF THE SPIDERS” – Season 11, Serial 5, Story 74 – Written by Robert Sloman and Barry Letts (uncredited); Directed by Barry Letts – It’s the end of the journey for the Third Doctor as he finally makes it to Metebelis 3, only to find that it’s not really a great place to visit. There are spiders in charge and they’re big and nasty and female and they want their blue crystal back that the Doctor took and gave to Jo Grant as a wedding gift. Lucky for the story, Jo has conveniently sent it back. Because The Amazonians Think It’s Creepy. And They Were Right.

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What Jon Pertwee does better than any other Doctor is elevate the material he’s given. I find the scripts in this era of the program are rather mundane, formulaic, and predictable, but Pertwee brings such enthusiasm and charm to his performances that he’s able to make the stories better than they are on the page.

Such is the case with PLANET OF THE SPIDERS. The script by Robert Sloman (and reportedly heavily reworked by an uncredited Barry Letts) is rather average and clunky at times (you’d think after 11 full seasons the writers and producers would have figured out how to properly arrange a 6-episode serial), and the fact that we know it’s the final Pertwee serial tinges everything with a very real sense of sadness, but there’s Old Man Pertwee sitting in the middle of it, doing his darnedest to wrest every bit of joy and drama and emotion out of it.

According to the various bonus features on the DVD and the knowledge that’s crept out over the years, SPIDERS was the love child of Barry Letts, who not only reworked the script but sat in the director’s chair. Letts displays some real love for not only Pertwee but the history of the show in SPIDERS. There’s all sorts of Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the serial:

1. We get a mention of departed Companion Jo Grant. It’s so important that Jo gets a mention here (an appearance would have been even better, of course) because it’s the chemistry between Katy Manning and Jon Pertwee that’s really makes the Third Doctor’s run special. She sends a letter and returns the blue crystal the Doctor took from Metebelis 3, saying that the natives in the Amazon where she and her husband are afraid of it. Even though it’s just a letter, it’s so nice to hear Jo’s “voice” again in the program, and you can see that the Doctor, the Brigadier, and Sergeant Benton are touched by her returned presence to UNIT headquarters.

2. The Doctor talks again about the hermit he spent time with back on Gallifrey, which is nice not only for the nod to continuity, but helps to cloak the issue with a bit of nostalgia.

3. Another Time Lord! Who just so happens to be that hermit from Gallifrey! Who also regenerates! And this is the first time we hear the phrase “regeneration!” (And why am I writing like I’m Tom DeFalco!!?!??!?!?!???)

4. The second and last appearance of the Whomobile. And this time, it flies. Take that, Bessie.

5. The return of Mike Yates. After his villainous turn in INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS, Mike is offered a chance at redemption here as he’s uncovered strange goings-on at a Buddhist meditation center.

6. The Brig’s lady friend has a name, and it’s Doris.

7. There’s a shout out to future Companion Harry Sullivan.

Beyond all the little touches and flourishes, there’s a decent story here about a bad guy named Lupton who’s in league with a spider from Metebelis 3. The spiders want to take over the Earth because originally they were Earth spiders who went to Metebelis and got bigger and smarter. They use Lupton, he uses them, there’s some political intrigue among the Council of Spiders. Really, though, the plot is just sort of there to push people back and forth, allowing Mike to go out as a good guy, and the Doctor to have his final moments before shuffling off to his fourth regeneration.

In watching the bonus features on the DVD, they talk about how important it was to prepare kids for the regeneration, and while that does force the story to get a bit clunky at times, it works more than not because it’s all new to Sarah, too.

The serial is at its best when its showing the less-honorable side of the Doctor. K’anpo Rimpoche, the other Time Lord in the episode and the hermit, makes the Doctor realize that he was wrong to take that blue crystal from Metebelis 3 and that he’s ultimately responsible for putting all these events into motion. The Doctor knows that returning to Metebelis means his death, but he still goes, knowing that he K’anpo is right and that he must face the consequences of his actions. The Doctor delivers the crystal back to the Great One, which helps her powers increase so much that she ends up killing herself and all the other spiders.

And the Doctor.

Irradiated past the point of healing, the Doctor stumbles back into the TARDIS, reappearing back at UNIT HQ three weeks later. The Brig and Sarah are in the lab when the Doctor stumbles out, falls down, and turns into Tom Baker.

I have real love and affection for the Jon Pertwee era (including the best classic titles/theme mix) that stems from the characters far more than the stories. There really isn’t very many memorable stories in this run, but there are a whole host of memorable actors and their characters: Pertwee’s Doctor, of course, but also his nemesis, Roger Delgado’s Master, the Companion troika of Caroline John’s Liz Shaw, Katy Manning’s Jo Grant, Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith, and the UNIT boys of Richard Franklin’s Mike Yates, John Levene’s Sergeant Benton, and especially Nicholas Courtney’s Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart.

More than anything, though, my lasting memory of the Pertwee era is the man himself, giving a mischievous smile to the Brig or Jo or Sarah Jane. It was usually a knowing smile that made the Doctor seem both experienced and boyish.

Thanks for everything, Jon.

DOCTOR WHO: THE MONSTER OF PELADON Uses Up the Year’s Quota for Bad Rubber Suited Monsters

“THE MONSTER OF PELADON” – Season 11, Serial 4, Story 73 – Written by Brian Hayles; Directed by Lennie Mayne – The Third Doctor ends up back on Peladon 50 years after his last visit. This time he’s got Sarah in tow to help him navigate the political shenanigans. It’s a battle of political wills until the Ice Warriors show up, then it’s a battle against, well, the Ice Warriors. Because Teaming Up Is Easy To Do When You’re Being Invaded.

It’s serials like THE MONSTER OF PELADON that make me happy I claim that I write “reactions” more than I write “reviews.” Yes, I know that I’m making a distinction no one else probably cares about, but it makes me feel a bit better when I get to nonsense like this horrific serial and just say little more than 5 words and then move on. Here’s the five words:

MONSTER OF PELADON is awful.

It’s a sequel to THE CURSE OF PELADON, which was equal parts daft and goofily awesome. While the narrative made little sense (people just did random things because the script needed them to do random things in a given moment), Brian Hayles’ script managed to ring a fair amount of purposeful weirdness with the aliens-in-rubber suits as political ambassadors. In large part, the serial worked because the chemistry between the Doctor and Jo was so great that it make watching all the silly and stupid stuff worthwhile just to enjoy the moments of sweetness and humor between Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning.

None of that is here this time around.

We’ve got much of the same, dumb narrative elements – a weak ruler, a pointlessly stubborn adviser, a political situation with the Federation. Heck, we’ve even got Alpha Centauri and some Ice Warriors back. This time around, we get the addition of some miners with really bad hair.

It’s just dreadful.

The miners want to protest, the Queen is ineffective, the political adviser opposes the Doctor in the most obstinate and ridiculous manner possible.

And then the Ice Warriors show up to impose martial law and take over and …

Dreadful.

Just dreadful.

Why they chose to make a sequel to CURSE OF PELADON is beyond me and it’s a true shame that Pertwee’s penultimate serial is such a clunker. What made PELADON 1 enjoyable was all of the great Pertwee/Manning interaction, and there’s nothing in PELADON 2 to match. They really don’t even try to give the Doctor and Sarah Jane much interaction, as the Doctor chumps Sarah Jane off with Alpha Centauri.

Like PELADON 1, the background issue here is that Peladon is still a traditional culture struggling to embrace new ideas, but PELADON 2 does nothing impressive with it. Instead, we get a bit where Sarah Jane teaches the Queen about women’s liberation that feels incredibly forced. More show, less tell would be nice.

Have I mentioned that it’s all rather dreadful? There’s nothing in PELADON 2 that makes me want to recommend it to anyone. Truly one of the most boring DOCTOR WHO serials I’ve watched, THE MONSTER OF PELADON clunks around for six boring episodes before the Doctor and Sarah have the good sense to get back in the TARDIS and get the heck off that rock.

DOCTOR WHO: DEATH TO THE DALEKS and One of the Universe’s 700 Wonders

“DEATH TO THE DALEKS” – Season 11, Serial 3, Story 72 – Written by Terry Nation; Directed by Michael E. Briant – The Third Doctor and Sarah are on their way to have some fun in the sun when the power cuts off in the TARDIS. They exit to find themselves on Not Tatooine But Could Be, where they get embroiled in a hoo-hah between the native Exxilons, some Space Marines, and the Daleks. The latter two are looking for parrinium, which can only be found here and is the only mineral that can stop a plague and save billions of lives. Not that any of that matters. Because The Doctor And The Daleks (And The Space Marines) All Have To Work Together To Get Off This Crazy Rock.

Oh, what could have been.

DEATH TO THE DALEKS is a completely infuriating serial to watch because it has, at its core, one of the all-time great ideas in DOCTOR WHO history: the Doctor and the Daleks have to work together to face down a common threat.

It could be absolutely brilliant. At the very least, it should be a tremendous amount of fun to watch these two hated enemies uncomfortably work together. It should be, but it isn’t. Playing to the formula of the time, DEATH TO THE DALEKS takes this brilliant idea and jams it into a semi-enjoyable story about competing factions, the need for a rare mineral, and the mystery of why the power has been cut.

The big crime is that you could practically replace the Daleks with anyone – the Cybermen, the Sontarans, an army of Candymen - and I’m not convinced this serial would be any different, at all. In fact, I think having the Daleks in this serial instead of someone new actually hurts DEATH because from the moment the Daleks show up, the Doctor is all, “Don’t trust them. They’re evil. They’ll betray you,” which robs the story of any sense of mystery or tension.

That’s not to suggest that DEATH is an awful serial, just that it’s sort of a slightly-subpar-middle-of-the-road serial. For all of the limp tension and failure to take advantage of the Doctor/Dalek Team-Up idea, DEATH isn’t wholly a waste of time. There’s some nice Doctor-Sarah Jane moments, and-

Wait, let’s get to Sarah Jane. Sometimes I get the sense that Terry Nation wrote these Dalek serials at a typewriter that magically transported him back to 1963. Much of Sarah Jane’s sense of independence and fight that was present in THE TIME WARRIOR and INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS is missing from the script here. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the script literally says “SIDEKICK GIRL” instead of “SARAH JANE.”) You can literally see where Elisabeth Sladen (with, one hopes, help from Jon Pertwee and Michael Briant) insert little moments of her independence into Sarah Jane.

It’s hard to watch SJS play all frightened and stereotypically “girly” after watching her assert herself in the previous two serials. It’s no fun to watch her beg the Doctor not to go anywhere while she jumps back in the TARDIS to change out of her swimsuit when all that’s really happened is the TARDIS loses power someplace cold and foggy.

The Doctor, of course, does wander off, getting captured by the Exxilons, and then escaping to end up with the Space Marines. When he’s with the Space Marines (who are really more like the Space Scientists), we get all the plot stuff – they’re trapped here without power, they need the parrinium, the Exxilons are meanies. The Doctor is just starting to wrap his mind around all of this when the Daleks shows up.

They do their “Exterminate” bit except their weapons are rendered useless by the same energy dampening field that’s effecting everything else. It’s kinda funny, and everyone realizes right away that a temporary team-up might be in their best interests, but then Nation doesn’t do anything with it. Everyone is quickly imprisoned by the Exxilons (where they see the natives have captured Sarah Jane Smith) and the Daleks are instantly trying to work a side deal that works to their advantage.

Blah blah blah.

Because it’s four episodes instead of six, the plot moves forward quick enough that I was able to find some enjoyment in all of this; it might be formulaic, but it moves relatively quickly. The Daleks prove themselves capable at adapting as a Dalek raiding party arrives to attack the Exxilons, allowing the Doctor and Sarah Jane to run into the underground tunnels. Down there, the Doctor meets a monster and Sarah Jane makes friends with Bellal, an Exxilon that lives beneath the surface because he doesn’t agree with the ways of the surface folk.

The back story here is that the Exxilons built this amazing city (one of the 700 Wonders of the Universe, according to the Doctor) and fitted it with a brain. (Yup, a brain. A computer brain, not a brain in a jar.) Once the city got its brain up and running, it decided it didn’t need the Exxilons, so it killed most of them. Even though Bellal makes all nice with Sarah Jane, she’s instructed by the Doctor to go help the captured Space Marines. (After the Daleks attacked, they made all the survivors their slaves.) The Doctor and Bellal go into the city, which is populated by a series of booby traps that would make Choose Your Own Adventure proud, and they have to battle this big super computer in some not-very-interesting challenges. While this is happening, Sarah Jane is pulling a bait-and-switch with the parrinium the Daleks have collected from the slave labor force.

The serial ends with a bunch of things blowing up. One of the Space Marines sacrifices himself to blow up the Dalek ship. The Exxilon city blows up.

And that’s it. There’s some nice moments in DEATH TO THE DALEKS but on the whole this is just a very average, very bland story. I’m a bit surprised that the BBC still hasn’t released this serial on DVD (it’s out on VHS and a DVD release is apparently scheduled for 2012 sometime) since it stars the Daleks, but maybe they figure if they hold this DVD out they’ll sell more copies by creating a buzz over the release of a Pertwee/Dalek serial.

I won’t be buying it, but I wouldn’t object to you buying it for me.