Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Piders Part Six

Sarah starts acting strangely because she has the pider queen on her back. When K'Anpo reveals he has the blue crystal that everybody is after, Sarah pews the Doctor. K'Anpo shouts

"Stay!"

and hypno-eyeses Sarah into standing still, then makes the pider visible to the Doctor, and to us.

"See through my eyes. Look."

he says. He must have strong mind-powers indeed to affect the viewers at home. The Doctor and K'Anpo together try to de-hypno-eyes Sarah, and use the crystal to help them. The pider falls off and vanishes.

It is only now that we get the cliffhanger reprise of the henchmannys (and henchpiders) pewing Tommy - a very unusual change to the normal structure of an episode, to have new material intercut with the old. The henchpiders need more power to overcome Tommy, so get the henchmannys to start up an Om Mani Padme Hum. That's their answer to everything.

In the room K'Anpo celebrates Sarah's liberation (from the pider - I don't mean her Women's Lib, lol) by talking some mystical nonsense.

K'Anpo: "We are all apt to surrender ourselves to domination. Even the strongest of us."

Doctor: "Do you mean me?"

K'Anpo: "Not all spiders sit on the back."

Sarah: "Oh, I don't understand. You're not saying they've taken over the Doctor, are you?"

Doctor: "Oh no, Sarah, no. No, he's talking about my greed."

Sarah: "Greed? You?"

Doctor: "Yes, my greed for knowledge... for information."

He wants information... information... information.

Doctor: "He's saying that all this is basically my fault. If I hadn't taken the crystal in the first place."

The Doctor at last recognises his old teacher, who tells Sarah (and us) he is a Time Lord, who the Doctor didn't recognise straight away because he had regenerated since the Doctor last saw him.

Sarah: "Regenerated?"

Doctor: "Yes. Yes, when a Time Lord's body wears out, he regenerates... becomes new."

K'Anpo: "That is why we can live such a long time."

Sarah: "I see. Well, what about Cho-Je? Is he a Time Lord, too?"

K'Anpo: "In a sense. In another sense, he doesn't exist."

Sarah: "You've lost me."

Doctor: "Me too, I'm afraid."

K'Anpo: "Cho-Je is a projection of my own self."

It is interesting that even the Doctor doesn't know that this kind of "projection" is possible.

K'Anpo asks the Doctor if he knows what to do. The Doctor says no, but he is really in denial - he does know what to do, he just doesn't want to. We get a hint as to what this is when we see a flashback to his meeting with the Great One in the last episode. When K'Anpo tells him there is no other way, the Doctor realises that while he doesn't like it, he has to go along with it. The Doctor takes the crystal and sets out to give it to the Great One, even though going back to the cave of crystals will "destroy" him.

With additional power the henchmannys are able to pew Tommy (and Yates, who tries to help) out of the way. They burst in as K'Anpo teleports the Doctor away, so they pew K'Anpo instead.

The Doctor gets into the TARDIS and takes it to Metebelis 3, where he meets Arak and Tuar and asks them to take him to the caves. Instead they take him to the piders' room, and the Doctor tells the pider council he has to take the crystal to the Great One himself. Lupton (who is also there) tries to take the crystal from the Doctor, but the piders stop him.

Lupton: "Why do you stop me? Everything we've planned, everything we've dreamed of is there in the palm of his hand."

Pider: "We dare not take the crystal. The Great One is all seeing."

Piders: "All praise to the Great One!"

Pider: "The Great One is all knowing."

Piders: "All praise to the Great One!"

Pider: "The Great One is all powerful!"

Piders: "All praise to the Great One!"

The Doctor departs, then Lupton gets angry and calls the piders spiders, which they don't like so they pew him and he goes

So much for Lupton.

Yates and Tommy recover, and Sarah says

"Hey, we thought you'd had it." 

but K'Anpo says

"I'm afraid this old body has 'had it,' Miss Smith."

Cho-Je, who is standing nearby, vanishes, and then K'Anpo regenerates so that he looks like Cho-Je. This confuses Tommy (and maybe also some cats watching this on TV who were unfamiliar with the concept of Time Lord regeneration might also have been confused), so K'Anpo reassures him (and us them) by saying

"No, Tommy. I am K'Anpo."

The Doctor takes the blue crystal to the Great One, who pays him for it by telling him the full extent of her plan:

The Great One: "Give me the crystal, I thirst for it! I ache for it!"

Doctor: "Why is it so important to you?"

The Great One: "You see this web of crystal above my head? It reproduces the pattern of my brain. One perfect crystal and it will be complete. That is the perfect crystal I need."

Doctor: "And then?"

The Great One: "My every thought will resonate within the web, and grow in power until... until... until..."

Doctor: "But you've built a positive feedback circuit. You're trying to increase your mental powers to infinity."

The Great One: "Exactly! I shall be the ruler of the entire universe!"

Doctor: "Now listen to me. Listen! I haven't got much time left. What you're trying to do is impossible. If you complete that circuit, the energy will build up and up until it cannot be contained. You will destroy yourself."

It is unclear if the Doctor is genuinely trying to warn the Great One against trying a plan that cannot succeed, or if this is a double-bluff where he is really daring her to go ahead and try it, like with Davros and the Hand of Omega. It is most likely the former, though, since the Great One was definitely going to being trying her plan anyway.

The crystal flies into position and the Great One has a moment of triumph:

"All praise to the Great One! All praise to me! Bow down before me, planets! Bow down stars! Bow down whole galaxies and worship the Great One! The me, the Great, all-powerful me!"

Then the Doctor's prediction takes effect and she goes

"I hurt! Help me, I am burning! My brain is on fire! Help me! Blargh I am ded!"

The Doctor runs away, while in the room of the piders the piders there are all dying. The two-legs are freed from their hypno-eyes and able to run away. The camera shakes throughout this bit, as though indicating an earthquake, but none of the two-legs seem to be affected by it, which means either it is a psychic quake that only affects the piders, or else none of the actors could be bothered to do any earthquake acting. Given what we have seen of the two-legs so far in this story, it could just as easily be either option.

The Doctor gets into the TARDIS just before the mountain blows up.

The next scene is at UNIT HQ, where Sarah and the Brigadier have been waiting "three weeks" for the Doctor to come back. The Brigadier says

"Oh, that's nothing. One time I didn't see him for months. And what's more, when he did turn up, he had a new face. Could have been a completely different man."

Hmm, I wonder where this is going? They really have laid the groundw-word for the regeneration superbly well in this story.

Sarah has by now found that the best way for her to prove the Doctor isn't ded is for her to predict that he is, an ability that has had a lot of uses in the last couple of stories, and as soon as she does so here the TARDIS materialises. The Doctor comes out and says

"I got lost in the time vortex. The TARDIS brought me home."

then he collapses.

Sarah: "Oh Doctor, why did you have to go back?"

Doctor: "I had to face my fear, Sarah. I had to face my fear. That was more important than just going on living."

Sarah: "Please, don't die."

Doctor: "A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don't cry. While there's life there's..."

There's a little fakeout moment where the Doctor appears to die, but because Sarah is there it is difficult to be taken in by this - we've seen too many instances of the-Sarah-that-cried-the-Doctor's-ded to be fooled this time.

K'Anpo appears and says he will help the Doctor regenerate.

K'Anpo: "I will give the process a little push and the cells will regenerate. He will become a new man."

Brigadier: "Literally?"

K'Anpo: "Of course, he will look quite different."

Brigadier: "Not again."

Lol, the Brigadier is comic relief even at a time like this. K'Anpo disappears and the Doctor regenerates. The final line is the Brigadier's

"Well, here we go again."

and the final shot is the Doctor, changing.

What's so good about Planet of the Piders?

While hardly as good an end to its era as Survival was for the Sylvester McCoy era, Planet of the Piders is a great story and a great sendoff for the third Doctor.

Piders were a great choice for the monster, since it took something that is normally cute and cuddly and which only noms nasty flying things and made them scary by having them be giant, with lightning powers, hypno eyes, and able to nom mannys. This subverted the usual way Doctor Who monsters were designed by taking something from the real world that was already scary to begin with, such as hoovers or policemannys.

The piders are, of course, an allegorical monster - in this case they represent the greed of mannys. Lupton is greedier than most so he gets a more powerful pider than his henchmannys, but the most powerful pider of all, the Great One, is for the Doctor, even if it is too big to go on his back in a literal sense. It may seem strange to us that the Doctor, a goody, is considered greedy ("for knowledge... for information" he tells us) but it makes more sense if we consider the Buddhist philosophy of writer Barry Letts, with all the consequences of the Doctor's actions (even unintended ones such as the death of Professor Shaps or the piders taking over Metebelis 3) rebounding upon him as karma. It might have made even more sense still if the original conception of the Master being a manifestation of the Doctor's subconscious darker side (something like an evil Cho-Je) had made it into the final version of the story.

Buddhism at first looks like a strange fit for Doctor Who, which normally likes to have rational explanations for seemingly magical or religious encounters (even if those explanations are sometimes far-fetched), but here we see this rule is observed, with the 'magic' Om Mani Padme Hum abilities that Lupton, the piders, and K'Anpo make use of revealed to be psychic powers enhanced by the special properties of the Metebelis 3 crystals or (in K'Anpo's case) sufficiently advanced Time Lord enlightenment.

Of course Doctor Who has always had a connection to Buddhism, since the Doctor is a BBC version of Monkey. Like the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, the Doctor travels around solving problems and then moving on to the next adventure, the TARDIS is his cloud, the sonic screwdriver his magic wishing staff. Obviously he's not exactly like Monkey - the Doctor needs no headache sutra to compel him to help others (well... most of the time). And they both know many magic tricks... or science tricks in the Doctor's case. Perhaps the Doctor's exile to Earth is his equivalent of being trapped under a mountain for 500 years (also accomplished with an Om Mani Padme Hum), or perhaps not?

King Monkey, Aware-of-Vacuity, is immortal and indestructible, but the Doctor has to regenerate as the next best thing to ensure his longevity. The regeneration is absolutely key to the theme of this story, and is foreshadowed throughout, beginning subtly - Mike Yates starts the plot when he attends the meditation centre to try to sort himself out or 'renew' himself, then there's Cho-Je's line about the old manny and the new manny.

It gets progressively more obvious over time - Tommy's transformation is a form of regeneration, and then K'Anpo's regeneration makes the process plain so that viewers are fully prepared for the same thing to then happen to the Doctor. The exposition about Time Lord regeneration is also cleverly inserted early on in part six (before we see it 'in action,' so to speak), as the reason why the Doctor didn't recognise K'Anpo straight away.

Logopolis gets a lot of credit for being strongly themed around and building up to its regeneration, but this earlier example is just as good in its own way. It is also the first use of the term "regeneration" in the show to refer to the process of the Doctor changing actors, and it is easy to see why the term stuck and became a core part of the series' mythology.

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

It would be impossible to ignore the fact that this story contains some of the most obvious padding out of any Pertwee Six-Parter, as can be seen concentrated in the 10-minute chase in part two.

This watching through of all the Pertwee era in order that I began back in April 2020, necessarily including all 11 Pertwee Six-Parters, has taught me to value the padding in these stories as being an intrinsic part of them, which in their own way can be as much fun to watch as the main plotlines themselves.

Also, a look at the most recent (at time of writing) episode of Doctor Who broadcast on BBC TV shows the peril of going too far in the opposite direction. Stripping out all padding from the script so that what is left is just the essential story beats, strung together as though without rhyme or reason, results in something like we saw in The Power of the Doctor. This single, 90-minute episode had about six* plots all competing for screen time, all of them raced through at breakneck pace (perhaps so that viewers didn't have time to stop and think about how incoherent they were), any one of which could have formed the basis for a four or six-parter in the olden days. On top of that we had the fanservice of the old Doctors and Companions making their appearances, and then at the end the Doctor regenerated.

Put that next to a story like Planet of the Piders, as padded as it is, and there's no comparison.

Padding can be quiet moments of dialogue between two characters imprisoned for the tenth time this story in between a dramatic moment of revelation and an exciting action scene, or a gratuitous chase scene in between slower-paced scenes of plot-driving dialogue and exposition, or anything in between.

Padding allows time for character development for minor characters (Lupton and Tommy are the ones who benefit most from this in Planet of the Piders) and sometimes, like the Master watching Clangers or the Doctor and Jo discussing a daisy, even main characters.

Padding is what you make of it. We should celebrate padding. We should love padding.

* The Master takes the place of Rasputin and hypno-eyeses the Tsar and Tsarina; the business with the space train and the cybermannys; the Master and the Daleks team up to set a trap for the Doctor; the Master impersonates the Doctor to ruin her reputation; the cybermannys take over UNIT HQ leading to a Die Hard-style situation for our heroes stuck inside it; the Daleks have a hollowed-out volcano lair which new series Companion Graham and old series Companion Ace have to team up to sneak inside and blow up.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Piders Part Five

Lupton once again has to bluff the pider queen that he knows where the blue crystal is, claiming he hid it on Earth. In this he is shown to be more devious than his pider friend, who was on the verge of giving up trying to fool the other piders. This may be more evidence that his role was originally planned to be taken by the Master, who was used to being one step ahead of his alien allies of convenience (except when he wasn't). The queen plans to visit "the Great One" to ask for approval to attack Earth, which leads to the piders chanting

"All praise to the Great One! All praise to the Great One!"

while Lupton makes a face.

Sarah is taken to see the queen of the piders, and after she has been taken from the cell the Doctor escapes using a trick he learned from

"Houdini. Yes, that was it. Harry Houdini."

The queen tells Sarah she wants "only peace with you and all two-legs" and is opposed to the invasion of Earth. The pider isn't very good at lying, and even Sarah can tell she is just being told what the queen thinks she wants to hear in order to enlist Sarah's collaboration. The pider wants the blue crystal, and Sarah extracts major concessions from the queen when making a deal with her, such as freeing all the two-leg slaves - easy concessions for the queen to make when she has no intention of keeping her side of the bargain. Sarah probably even realises this, but doesn't have a lot of choice herself since she doesn't want to be pider noms.

Back on Earth at the meditation centre, Mike Yates offers to team up with Lupton's henchmanny Barnes. Mike Yates teaming up with a baddy? Surely not!

Barnes: "Why should you help?"

Mike: "Because of Sarah Jane Smith, of course. I want her back just as much as you want Lupton."

Barnes: "Yes, yes, of course. But how do I know it's not just some sort of trick?"

Mike: "Oh, for Pete's sake, of course it isn't! Come on, untie me."

Say what you like about Yates, he has Barnes sussed out, and isn't going to waste any clever arguments on him when simply browbeating him will do.

With the queen away, Lupton plots with the other piders, but they disagree about what to do. He tries to force them to agree to his plan, but the combined psychic might of all the pider council overwhelms him and he is forced to say

"I shall obey."

This would have been more powerful it had been the Master, since we would have seen the dramatic irony of him humbled and forced to say what he normally makes other mannys say - his own catchphrase turned against him.

Tommy is beginning to figure out how some of the pieces of the plot which he has come into contact with fit together, with the help of some flashbacks to earlier episodes. He can't understand it all by himself so goes looking for help.

The Doctor hears Sarah calling for help and follows her voice into a cave full of CSO radiation. Then he hears a pider voice calling out

"Stop! If you come any further, Doctor, you will die! Oh, not at once, but gradually every cell in your body will be irretrievably damaged by the crystal rays. And I need you alive."

This pider was just imitating Sarah's voice. The Doctor asks

Doctor: "Who are you?"

Pider: "The new Number Two They call me the Great One."

The Great One also wants the blue crystal.

"You took the one last perfect crystal of power. I searched all time and all space for it. I must have it!"

The Great One starts to use its hypno-eyes on the Doctor to force him to obey her.

"Is that fear I can feel in your mind? You are not accustomed to feeling frightened, are you, Doctor? You are very wise to be afraid of me. Go now. You must hurry back and fetch the crystal. I must have it, don't you understand? I must have it! I must! I must! I must! Go, now. Go! Go! Go, now!"

In trying to Om Mani Padme Hum contact Lupton the henchmannys and Yates end up opening a bridge for the piders to travel along to Earth. The piders cheat by not arriving on the mat but instead arrive secretly behind the mannys.

Tommy has found Cho-Je to help, and has obviously spent the last few scenes telling him the story so far.

Cho-Je: "Tommy, you go and get this crystal, and I will go down to the cellar and see what these naughty chaps are about. Now off you go now."

Tommy: "Yes Cho-Je. Cho-Je?"

Cho-Je: "Yes?"

Tommy: "You don't seem very surprised to find me changed."

Cho-Je: "When everything is new, can anything be a surprise?"

Cho-Je is supposed to be all serene and enlightened (one might even say inscrutable), but his smiling throughout the scene comes across as sinister, like we are about to discover he has been the real baddy all along. This might even be deliberate, so that when he later doesn't turn out to be the baddy all along it counts as a clever twist. Also his calling the baddys "naughty chaps" is hilarious in its understatement.

He runs into the cellar and tells the henchmannys to stop their Om Mani Padme Humming, and immediately after gets pewed by a pider. Then Yates gets pewed as well. Tommy sees what happened and runs to tell K'Anpo.

The Doctor and Sarah meet up, just as Arak and Tuar are trying to rescue Sabor from the cell. Sarah teleports herself and the Doctor to the village where the TARDIS is, explaining this sudden ability away as

"The queen taught me. Nothing to it, really."

Given that he doesn't question this, the Doctor probably just thinks Sarah meant she learned it from the queen of the mannys at some point. They get in the TARDIS and leave.

Instead of getting pewed, the henchmannys each get piders on their backs. For all that this story was happy to proceed leisurely in its first few parts, such as indulging in an irrelevant 10-minute-long chase, it suddenly feels the need to waste no time at all, and so the TARDIS materialises right into the cellar where it is most needed for the current plot.

The Doctor and Sarah see Yates and Cho-Je having sleeps, then the henchmannys attack them. The Doctor has a stone to absorb the lightning attacks, but when Tommy tries to help them escape he gets pewed. He isn't knocked out, though, and is able to help them run away.

Tommy: "We'd better get out of here."

Sarah: "But, Tommy, you're normal... You're just like everybody else."

Tommy: "I sincerely hope not."

Lol, Tommy was already well on his way to being the standout character of this story, and with that wonderful line he easily reaches it. They trap the henchmannys in the cellar and go to see Abbot K'Anpo, who is having sleeps in his chair. Now that's dedication to sleeps - even us cats would have a tough time sleeping all the way through an exciting action scene like the one before this.

K'Anpo is played by George Cormack, last seen by us playing King Dalios in The Time Monster. From almost his first line K'Anpo intimates that he knows the Doctor already, though this is mistaiken for him just being friendly. The Doctor starts telling K'Anpo the story so far - being as we are almost at the end of part five there is rather a lot of it, especially if the Doctor decides to include context such as explaining about how he first got the crystal back in The Green Death.

Tommy stands outside the room as the four henchmannys try to get in. Tommy resists a lightning pew from Barnes and then fights off all of them at once, until they all start to pewpewpew him at the same time.

It is a measure of how strong a character Tommy is, and how much we have come to care for him, that him being in peril here makes for as good a cliffhanger as if it had been the Doctor or Sarah in danger. This is also a helped to be a good cliffhanger by the increase in pace in the latter part of the episode, because now it feels as though events are accelerating towards their conclusion.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Piders Part Four

Thinking the Doctor has been pewed to death, the piders leave. Sarah was disguised and hidden by the two-legs while the fight was going on, so the pider queen leaves with only Sabor as a prisoner.

Tuar and the other two-legs think the Doctor is ded, but Sarah got fooled a few too many times by that in the last story so insists he is still alive:

"Look, look, he moved! He moved his hand!"

Back at the meditation centre, Tommy interrupts Barnes and Lupton's other henchmannys trying to decide what they should do without Lupton around. Barnes asks Tommy if he can read, to which Tommy replies:

"Tommy's learning to read. My mum bought me a book."

This seemingly trivial bit of character detail is cleverly being established here before it becomes more significant to the plot later on.

Lupton meets with the pider queen and pretends, along with his pider friend, that they still have the crystal and have it hidden in a safe place.

Tommy tries reading his book but the crystal begins glowing and sends him to sleep (unless it was just a really boring book, mew). When he wakes up he is able to read faster and better.

The Doctor needs a machine from the TARDIS to get better. Sarah fetches it out but is then met by Lupton and captured. Arak fetches the machine from where Sarah dropped it, thus proving to Tuar and the other two-legs that "Arak is not a coward." He gives it to the Doctor who is able to use it to make himself better. This subplot sidelined the Doctor for a few minutes to allow time for a small amount of character development for Arak and Tuar, but the more interesting subplot is developing back at the meditation centre.

Tommy finds more books to read, and as he reads out loud we see his development, as brought on by the crystal:

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

That's pretty. No, no... that's beautiful."

Of course it is about tigers, because cats are best!

On Metebelis 3, the Doctor gets exposition about the colonists and the piders from Arak while, at the same time, Sarah gets it from her fellow prisoner Sabor, with the scene cutting between them to break up what would otherwise be quite a dump of exposition.

Sabor: "An ordinary eight-legs, he must have been blown by the wind out of that crashed ship up in the mountains. There are blue crystals there. They have strange powers."

Sarah: "Oh, you don't have to tell me that."

Sabor: "Ah, then you must know that these crystals can enlarge the mind. Over the years, these spiders became cleverer and cleverer and larger and larger. By the time man found out, it were too late."

Cut to...

Arak: "...And they've ruled us ever since. A few they take and twist their minds until they become their slaves. The rest of us they rule by fear."

Doctor: "I see."

The Doctor already has a plan. He looks for stones that will make his machine do a high-pitched buzz instead of a medium-pitched buzz, explaining

"Why should the blue crystal be the only mineral on Metebelis 3 with an unusual structure? I'm looking for a stone that will absorb the energy of the spider's attacks."

Armed with the machine and a stone, the Doctor goes to the piders' city where the guard tries to pewpewpew him but the machine stops it. Lupton arrives at the same time as some more guards, but they capture Lupton instead of the Doctor. Yet more guards come and the Doctor gives up when he is outnumbered, saying

"Oh dear, this is getting monotonous."

That's a very risky line of dialogue for the fourth episode of a Pertwee Six-Parter, mew.

The Doctor walks into the room where Sarah and Sabor are being held prisoner and Sarah thinks he has come to rescue them, until he points out that he is a prisoner too.

No two ways about it, that's a shit cliffhanger.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Piders Part Three

"Clever Lupton!"

Tommy sees Lupton teleport into the meditation centre, and presumably concludes he has a teleport bracelet, although when he sees Lupton has the crystal he says

"...Pretty."

We get our first look at the planet of the piders (cla... no, wait, that was me) where there is a room full of piders all chatting exposition at each other:

"This is the secret purpose of the Great One."

"All praise to the Great One!"

"That is why she requires the crystal. We shall return to our rightful home, Earth, as rulers."

So the planet of the piders is really Earth all along? That sounds like it could be a great twist, somebody should use it one day. The piders let Lupton listen in for a bit, but they don't think he is their "friend" because he is a "two-leg," which is their name for mannys. Piders call themselves "eight-legs" because they have eight legs. No doubt they would call cats "four-legs" (which is the best number of legs to have because cats are best), but in that case what would they call doggys?

Lupton has sleeps, and then the pider becomes visible again and goes for a wander. It's lucky Lupton fell asleep lying on his front, otherwise the pider would have been squished.

The Doctor, Sarah and Yates arrive at the meditation centre and ask Cho-Je about Lupton. Cho-Je says

"You cannot believe he was transported here in the winking of an eye."

even though that is exactly what happened, lol. Cho-Je goes on to say

"As we both know, such things are child's play to a master of sorcery, but you cannot believe that Mr Lupton is a sorcerer. We have no magicians here, I do assure you."

The Doctor probably takes issue with this, in much the same way he took issue with Miss Hawthorne claiming everything was done by magic in The Dæmons, but we don't get to see it because the scene cuts to show Barnes waking up Lupton to warn him about the Doctor's arrival. Lupton decides to tell Barnes his backstory and motivation, which is one of the pettiest of all Doctor Who baddys:

Lupton: "Picture me, bright young salesman: salesman of the year; sales manager; sales director. I gave them 25 years of my life, are you with me so far? Then the finance boys moved in: merger; takeover; golden handshake; me out on the streets. I could even have taken that, but when I tried to set up on my own they deliberately, cold bloodedly broke me. I'm still looking for some of the bits."

Barnes: "So you came here to get peace of mind?"

Lupton: "Ha! I came here to get power! Do you think I'm going to let go now when it's in sight: when I can see myself taking over that firm; taking over the country; the entire stinking world. I want to see them grovel; I want to see them breaking their hearts; I want to see them eating dirt."

Unknown to Lupton and Barnes, while they are talking Tommy reaches in through the open window and nicks off with the Metebelis 3 crystal. He takes it to his secret stash of "all Tommy's pretties" in a cupboard.

The pider comes back and forces Lupton to go along with its plan by giving him a sore hed until he agrees, but Lupton soon discovers he can turn the tables on the pider and inflict the same pain on it. The swiftness with which Lupton masters (if you'll pardon the expression) this ability hints at this being left over from the earliest version of the story, where the baddy was meant to be the Master. Planned before Roger Delgado's death to be a final story for the Master, it is easy to imagine him forming an alliance with the piders to get power and so Lupton is the closest thing to the Master in the version of the story that was eventually made.

However, for all that they share the same basic role in the plot, Lupton is quite different from the Master in terms of his character and motivation, and it is hard to imagine a bitter ex-salesmanny being the Doctor's "best enemy." I do think it worth noting that John Dearth also played a Master-like hypno-eyesing baddy who wanted to take over the world when he played the BOSS in the previous season's finale, so he may have been unconsciously filling a Delgado-shaped hole in the show. Lupton and the pider make a truce and agree to help each other seize the power each one wants. Then Lupton realises the crystal is gone.

Tommy tries to give the crystal to Sarah as a "present," but in a classic use of dramatic irony Sarah is more interested in spying on Lupton as he heads back to the cellar, and so doesn't have the time to receive Tommy's present or even to find out that it is the crystal that they've come here to recover. Tommy tells the Doctor and Yates that Sarah and Lupton have gone to the cellar, as Sarah hides and watches Lupton teleport himself away with the power of an Om Mani Padme Hum.

Sarah steps on Lupton's mat, and the Doctor arrives in the cellar just in time to see her get teleported away - this teleporting is shown from Sarah's point of view, so we see the cellar instantaneously transition to Metebelis 3 around her. A similar effect would later be used in Sapphire & Steel, only with less CSO fringing than is visible here, which very much gives the game away as to how the effect was accomplished (although since Barry Letts was the director, CSO is always a safe bet for how any of the SFX was done).

The Doctor decides to go after Sarah in the TARDIS. Yates wants to know how he will be able to find Sarah when he gets there.

Yates: "Yes but, Doctor, a planet's a big place."

Doctor: "Yes, well, I always leave the actual landing to the TARDIS herself. She's no fool, you know."

Yates: "You speak as if she were alive."

Doctor: "Yes. Yes I do, don't I? Goodbye Mike."

Not even for a moment considering taking Yates with him, lol. (Is this the closest the original series of Doctor Who ever got to the 'I only take the best' attitude that pervades the new series' mischaracterisation of the Doctor?)

On Metebelis 3 Sarah is immediately captured by a two-leg who thinks she is "a spy" and taken to a village to get involved in the next bit of plot. The two-legs there are about as far from the grounded, down-to-earth backstory of Lupton as can be, and fit the exact stereotype of studio-bound BBC sci-fi colony-gone-wrong characters, probably the best example of such to be found between Colony in Space and Face of Evil. They divide into two groups - those who think Sarah is a spy W-wording for the piders, and those who don't think that because why the fuck would they?

Sarah: "Who am I supposed to be spying for, the spiders?"

Tuar: "You see? Who but a spy would dare use the forbidden word?"

It's tough to know what is worse in this scene, the acting of some of the villagers or the gratuitous use of CSO for the 'exterior' background. Both are dreadful.

Before they can reach a collective decision about Sarah, she and Arak, one of the two-legs (played by Mike Gambit), have to hide from "the queen of the eight-legs" who has come to get involved in the plot arrest Arak.

A two-leg called Sabor, who is Arak's father, gives himself up in Arak's place. This whole scene is incredibly melodramatic and theatrical (or, to use another word, stagy), and very different in style to all the scenes set on Earth that preceded it. It is also played totally in earnest, which has the effect of making likes like this unintentionally funny:

Sarah: "What's going to happen to him?"

Tuar: "The eight-legs will eat him, of course."

The queen detects Sarah's presence, and Sarah gives herself up so that they do not find Arak as well. The TARDIS materialises in the middle of this scene. The Doctor comes out and talks to the queen:

Doctor: "Greetings, oh most noble queen. May I ask what you intend to do with this young lady?"

Queen: "You do not speak like a two-leg. Where have you come from?"

Doctor: "Both Miss Smith and I come from Earth, your majesty."

Queen: "From Earth? Then you are the one who... No, no, that cannot be."

The queen decides to capture the Doctor as well as Sarah, so sets her guards on him. This results in a fight scene where the Doctor uses Venusian Oojah on the guards until one of them has had enough and pewpewpews him with lightning.

Cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Piders Part Two

The pider pewpewpews one of the mannys with lightning, and then it jumps on Lupton's back and turns invisible. Piders have been known to do that, you know, which adds an extra note of scary realism to the story.

At UNIT HQ the Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton rewind the tape and watch the recording the Doctor's machine made of Professor Clegg's thoughts just before he went

The TV screen shows a camera zooming and cutting in and out on a pider. This clever editing fools the Brigadier into thinking he saw multiple piders.

Lupton tells his henchmanny Barnes that the pider is still on his back.

Lupton: "Our minds are joined together. If I concentrate I can hear it speaking to me."

Pider: "This man is stupid. Send him away."

Lupton: "Very well."

Barnes: "Was it speaking to you then?"

Lupton: "It was."

Barnes: "What did it say?"

Lupton: "It said you looked tired and you should be in bed."

Lol. Once Barnes has gone the pider tells Lupton it has come to get a crystal. He asks "what crystal?" but we already know, due to the Law of Conservation of Narrative Detail, that it must mean the blue crystal from Metebelis 3.

The scene fades from Lupton to the Doctor, who is staring into the crystal. The Brigadier thinks he has been hypno-eyesed, and telephones for help.

"Get me the M.O. quickly. Oh is that you, Sullivan? Get over to the lab straight away."

This "Sullivan" must mean Harry Sullivan, who is being referenced here even though he doesn't actually appear until the next story. Fortunately the Doctor wakes up so it is not necessary for Harry to turn up and be an imbecile just yet, though this is still a superb bit of foreshadowing.

The Brigadier asks the Doctor if he saw any more piders (and was probably wanting to have a go on the crystal himself next), but the Doctor saw something different:

Doctor: "You know, Brigadier, when I was a young man, there was an old hermit who lived half way up a mountain just behind our house. I spent some of the finest hours of my life with that old man."

Brigadier: "What are you talking about?"

Doctor: "And it was from him I first learnt how to look into my mind."

Brigadier: "The crystal, Doctor?"

Doctor: "That's what I'm trying to tell you, Brigadier. When I looked into that crystal, all I could see was the face of my old teacher."

Unless, of course, his old teacher was a pider.

Sarah arrives to tell the Doctor what has been happening in the other plotline. He doesn't really listen to her (in a scene reminiscent of Jo and the Doctor at the beginning of The Green Death) until she mentions the pider, and then he does a double-take when he realises the significance. The Doctor and Sarah swap stories so that they're both aware of each other's plot, the Doctor then tells Sarah about the Metebelis 3 crystals, even expanding on what we found out about it in The Green Death:

Doctor: "It has strange properties, a Metebelis crystal. It can affect the mind."

Sarah: "The mind? You mean it could drive someone mad?"

Doctor: "No, just the opposite usually. It clears the mind and amplifies its power."

Sarah: "But it could be used for evil purposes?"

Doctor: "Oh, yes, of course, if the mind operating it was motivated by evil."

Sarah: "So, if the giant spiders on Metebelis 3 wanted that crystal back..."

Doctor: "But there aren't any giant spiders on Metebelis 3. At least, there weren't any when I was there."

Lupton arrives at UNIT HQ and pewpewpews the first soldier he meets with lightning from his paw, like he's the Evil Emperor from Star Wars.

He gets inside and does the same to Benton, then makes his way to the Doctor's laboratory. He sees the crystal is there, and the pider gives him the power to teleport the crystal into his paw - presumably a cost-saving bit of SFX along the lines of how teleports were first used in Star Trek and Blakes 7, it would have been way too expensive for them to film the sequence of Lupton going all the way into the lab, picking up the crystal and then leaving again.

Sarah says

"You know, this is barmy. Here am I, calmly discussing fabulous planets with blue moons, giant spiders, magic crystals, as if I was talking about pussycats, fish and chips, and the Liverpool docks."

Lol, Sarah mentioned cats. In fact they were the first things she thought about, because cats are best! (Fishy noms only second best.)

Benton has just picked himself up when Lupton come back the other way. This time he just punches Benton, because it is against the rules to use the same method of attack against the same UNIT manny twice in a row.

The Doctor, Sarah and Benton chase Lupton outside. The Brigadier joins in the chase, but Lupton gets away by stealing Josie. The Doctor gets into a tiny helicopter, while the others give chase in Bessie. This is a properly exciting chase sequence, with lots of cutting between the chasers to add to the sense of urgency and (as an additional benefit) disguise the frequent use of stunt doubles as much as possible.

A komedy policemanny in a car sees the chase and joins in. He must think he is Sheriff J. W. Pepper from Live and Let Die. Or maybe it is just the writers who think he is?

They all converge and the Doctor finds that Josie is empty. He and the Brigadier are just about to start searching around for Lupton when the policemanny catches up with them. While they are distracted but this interruption, Lupton steals the helicopter and flies away. The Doctor and Sarah go after him in Josie (the Doctor and Lupton having effectively swapped vehicles just to keep the chase interesting), because it turns out that...

Sarah: "Doctor, we're flying!"

Doctor: "Yes of course we're flying."

Of course! Lol.

The komedy policemanny ends his brief apearance in the show with one of the most outright sitcommy lines evar, delivered in a sitcommy way:

"Panda Three to Control. You'll never believe this, sergeant, but... Oh, nothing to report. Over... I'm coming in. I don't feel very well. Over."

Lupton also does a double-take when he sees he is still being chased, but his feels more like a natural reaction, perhaps because the actor carries more dramatic weight. The helicopter runs out of fuel first and so is forced to land. Lupton soon finds more mannys to variously hit* or pew, and a boat to continue the chase in.

The Doctor pursues in a convenient hovercraft, not using his flying car in order to give Lupton a sporting chance, and when using its ability to go on land as well as water he even drives it over a stunt-tramp at one point. This shortcut allows the Doctor (thanks to more than a little help from his own stunt double) to catch up to Lupton, so the pider says

"I'll get help from Metebelis. Concentrate. Concentrate!"

and teleports Lupton away, leaving a confused Doctor as our cliffhanger.

This is a great chase, but if the pider could teleport Lupton away then that means it was completely unnecessary except as padding. But what padding! At around 10 minutes, it is one of the longest and most easily identifiable sections of raw, unadulterated padding in all of Doctor Who. It is clear that, for his final story, Jon Pertwee wanted a great big chase using as many different vehicles as Barry Letts (producer, director, and co-writer of this story) would let him. And Letts, himself soon to be leaving the show, obviously went 'Fuck it, why not?'

And why not indeed? It's all tremendous fun and proves that, even for padding, longer is better. As is so often the case.

* One of whom is Terry Walsh, who we last saw as recently as The Monster of Peladon. His moment in the spotlight as the Doctor now over, he is back as a stuntmanny getting punched and falling in the water.

Doctor Who Night 2022: Revenge of the Zygons / Terror of the Cybermannys

For this year's Doctor Who Night we watched two consecutive stories from the end of season 12 and the start of season 13.

Revenge of the Cybermannys I have already reviewed here, here, here and here so, as you might imagine, I don't have much more to say about it. Harry Sullivan is still an imbecile.

It is for the cybermannys what Planet of the Daleks or Death to the Daleks are for the Daleks, being full of their greatest hits from their earliest stories (cybermats, a fake plague, a base under siege, an unnecessary and improbable new weakness for the cybermannys to suffer from) as well as a new setting and a few new plot points (the Nerva Beacon and the feuding Vogan factions, respectively) to keep things fresh. Well... a bit fresh. It's not a great story, though neither is it a terrible one.

Terror of the Zygons, on the other paw, is not a story I have reviewed before. It feels like a step up in quality from Revenge of the Cybermannys, which I would put mostly down to the excellent direction, especially for the scenes on location.

The design of the alien Zygons is also great, and it is surprising that they were only used once in the original series of Doctor Who when their look is so memorable. This was probably for the best, given the diminishing returns other monsters suffered from in return stories (I am particularly thinking of the Silurians here), and it is good that they were never crowbarred into more stories where they didn't fit just because the BBC already had the costumes.

The first cliffhanger is a great one (all praise to the great one!) which is due partly to us getting our first proper sight of a Zygon - classic technique - but may be even more due to Sarah's shocking scream. This moment was of course lessened on the original video release when the four-part serial was edited into a single, film-length story and so all the cliffhangers were removed.

No less impressive is the Skarasen monster, despite its resemblance to a massive chihuahua, with all attendant derpiness.

It is of course impossible for me, as a Scottish cat, not to comment on all the appalling Scottish stereotypes evident throughout this story, that frankly border on outright racism at times. The very first line of dialogue includes a mention of haggis, and the final comedic scene between the Duke of Forgill and the Brigadier revolves around the cliché of Scottish meanness.

The only stereotype not in evidence is that of Scottish mannys enjoying alcoholic drinks. But in a story starring Tom Baker this would have been like a pot calling a kettle black... when the pot was black but the kettle wasn't, mew.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Piders Part One

Planet of the Piders is the final story of the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who. It is also the final story of season 11 and, by definition, the last of the Pertwee Six-Parters. Along with Jon Pertwee it starred Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, John Levene as Sergeant Benton, and Richard Franklin as...

Mike Yates. Boo! Hiss! Having not been given a chance to properly redeem himself for his betrayal of his friends at the end of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Yates returns for one final time. Since we last saw him he has been thrown out of UNIT, which seems an odd form of punishment to me - it looks more like they rewarded him for his treachery by making him not have to W-word as a captain any more.

Mike is already busy investigating and getting involved in the plot, and he spies on some suspicious mannys doing some chanting in a basement. We are suddenly in an unexpected crossover with Monkey, because what they are chanting is the Buddha's favourite dirty trick:

"Om!"

"Mani!"

(Not to be confused with "manny.")

"Padme!"

"Hum!"

A glowing bit of SFX appears in front of the mannys, but it vanishes when they get distracted from their chanting by Yates making a noise. 

Meanwhile the Doctor and the Brigadier are indulging in some komedy padding by visiting an old-fashioned variety show. Maybe the Doctor has taken the Brigadier back in time in the TARDIS? Eventually they get to see the reason they are there, an act introduced as

"That mind reader extraordinaire, Professor Herbert Clegg!"

No, not that Klegg.

No, not that Clegg either. Fortunately.

It's this Clegg - as played by the Shapmeister himself, Professor Cyril Shaps, last seen by us back in The Ambassadors OF DEATH. The Doctor is researching "ESP" and would like the Professor's help.

Brigadier: "That's 'Extra Sensory Perception' you know."

Clegg: "Ah, yes, as a matter of actual fact, I did know that."

Brigadier: "Oh really? Well I can't say that I did, until the Doctor explained this morning."

The Brigadier is here to be the one the others explain things to, and as a result comes across as thick here as he ever did. The Professor pretends to only use tricks in his act, but the Doctor recognised that he is really "a very powerful clairvoyant" when he was able to mind-read without any assistance from his, er, assistant. This prompts Clegg to confess:

"Oh, it's happening more and more. I don't want it to! I was quite happy as a performer, Doctor, but I seem to be developing this... this power! Oh, I hate it. I hate it. The things I can make happen..."

He also admits to "psychokinesis" or (as has to be explained to the Brigadier) "moving things by the power of the mind."

He gives the Doctor and the Brigadier a brief demonstration. Psychokinesis? Csokinesis more like.

One of the mannys from the basement is complaining to another manny about the impending arrival of "a woman journalist." Under the law of Conservation of Narrative Detail this can only mean Sarah Jane Smith is on her way. The following scene confirms this when we see her get in a car with Yates. She asks him what's going on, allowing him to give us the exposition:

Sarah: "Look, you'd better start at the beginning. I mean, what are you doing here anyway?"

Mike: "Trying to sort myself out, I suppose, after that Golden Age mess. I mean, like you said, everybody's going on about meditation of one sort or another, so I thought I'd have a crack at it. Then I saw in the paper about these two Tibetans..."

The complaining manny is Lupton, played by John "I am the computer" Dearth, who is obviously the leader of the group. He has gathered them again to do some more chanting. Yates must have told Sarah about them off-screen while we were watching them getting up to something, because when it cuts back to them he says

"Then why be so secretive about it? No, they're up to something. I think they're in touch with some... oh, I don't know, some power. It's definitely a job for UNIT."

He needs Sarah's help because he has been taken off the case by the Brigadier.

A suddenly-appearing tractor makes Yates nearly crash his car. The fact that it isn't there a moment later convinces Sarah that something is going on, where she might have remained dubious based on Yates's word alone. It is clear to us from the scene transitions between the chanting mannys and the car that they are somehow responsible.

Back at UNIT HQ the Doctor has put some headphones (which appear to have been salvaged from Global Chemicals) on the Professor. The Professor is able to tell that the Brigadier was given his watch by "a young lady called Doris." This is presumably the same "Doris" we would eventually meet many years later in Battlefield, where she was Mrs Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

The Doctor then gives the Professor his sonic screwdriver, and by connecting the headphones to "the IRIS machine, or Image Reproduction Integrating System," we are able to see brief scenes from Carnival of Monsters on the TV set. Or maybe the Doctor had just left the DVD of that story in the player?

Sarah and Mike are meeting with Cho-Je, one of the "two Tibetans" from the meditation centre, so he is not one of the chanting baddys we saw earlier. He slips in some heavy foreshadowing of the ending to the story under the disguise of talking some mystical, Monkeyesque nonsense:

Cho-Je: "We can but point a finger along the way. A man must go inside and face his fears and hopes, his hates and his loves, and watch them wither away. Then he will find his true self, which is no self. He will see his true mind, which is no mind."

Sarah: "And that's what meditation's all about?"

Cho-Je: "Yes. The old man must die and the new man will discover, to his inexpressible joy, that he has never existed."

Cho-Je, by the way, is played by Kevin Lindsay, who also played Linx in The Time Warrior, though you might not recognise him because he's wearing even more questionable makeup in this story, on top of doing an accent that you really couldn't get away with these days. Was Burt Kwouk not available?

Sergeant Benton comes into the UNIT laboratory with a parcel for the Doctor. He gives it to the Professor to examine and to test his ability to tell what is inside. The incidental music starts to get ominous as the Professor paws at it, which warns us something is about to happen, but it is only the blue crystal from Metebelis 3 and the scene ends without anything dramatic happening - a clever use of anticlimax designed to wrongfoot us in the lead up to the end of the episode.

Yates and Sarah meet Lupton and his henchmanny. Sarah doesn't realise that they're the baddys and tries to stay to have noms with them, so Yates has to drag her away. He pretends to be scared of Lupton, but really it is a cunning plan to make Lupton think Yates has been scared away when really they are still investigating. He has to explain this plan to Sarah, and she says

"The fiendish cunning of the man."

Pictured: Fiendish Cunning

Climbing back in through the window they meet Tommy, who acts in a very simple way such as liking shiny things and referring to himself in the third person, but who isn't actually a baddy. He only delays Yates and Sarah from getting to the cliffhanger too early. They still end up getting into the basement before the baddys, and are then able to pick a hiding spot. It's at moments like these you can tell this was written by the same writers as were responsible for The Dæmons.

The baddys come in and start chanting. Back at UNIT HQ (the mixing of these scenes suggests they are somehow related, but we don't yet get to find out how), the blue crystal stars to glow in the Professor's paws, and it causes the camera to shake and tilt and things to get blown about and smashed. The Doctor, Brigadier and Benton are blown about too, until the Doctor is able to take the crystal from the Professor, at which point he goes

That isn't the cliffhanger, though, because back at the basement the glowing SFX starts up and, not being interrupted this time, we see it completed when a pider materialises on the baddy's mat.

Just as the Daleks made their appearance at the end of part one of Planet of the Daleks, it is only right and proper that the first part of Planet of the Piders should end this way.

It's the Rebels