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.
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