Holistic Review: Despite the end-of-an-era feel of celebration tinged with sadness, Planet of the Spiders veers between really good and pretty boring, and never quite lives up to its potential.

My impression of Planet of the Spiders has always been that it was a rather slow story with some interesting ideas sprinkled throughout, but overall nothing to really get excited about. Although I think ultimately I was right, there are a couple of very important reasons for that impression, and I was surprised to find myself enjoying it so much on this re-viewing.

Planet of the Spiders has a lot going for it. First and foremost, for those who care about such things, this story revisits practically everything people love about the Pertwee era. We've got one last hurrah for the Pertwee-era UNIT family, a plethora of gadgets on display, lots of action scenes including plenty of Venusian aikido, the Doctor's oft-discussed hermit-mentor actually paying him a visit, another visit to that elusive Metebelis III, and to cap it all off (or, depending on your perspective, to start it all off), a lovely letter from absent Jo. It even made me, generally not a fan of this era, feel some warm fuzzies. Along with that, we've got a couple of really superb guest characters (in concept if not always in execution), a creepy race of monsters, an effective air of mystery in the beginning, and of course it's Pertwee's final story, which gives it some importance above and beyond mere script issues.

But then, it's also got a lot of things working determinedly to drag it down. There are quite a lot of bland characters, some dodgy acting, lots of padding including one walloping great chase scene, some poor special effects, and a portrayal of Buddhism that doesn't exactly seem to enhance the storyline.

To tackle the last group first: on one level, I can forgive the massive chase scene - we're saying goodbye to Pertwee, he loves gadgets, we should have gadgets in it. And it's nice that we actually get to see Pertwee driving the hovercraft. What I find less easy to excuse is the time devoted to it - from the moment the Doctor jumps onto Bessie until the moment that Lupton vanishes before his eyes, a whole 11 minutes (to the second) elapses! This is nearly equivalent to half of episode 2. As if that weren't bad enough, they then spend almost a further full minute reprising it at the beginning of episode 3. And people say Americans are obsessed with chase scenes! Harrumph. Things start to feel very slow in episode 5, too, when after cavorting about on Metebelis III, we suddenly return to drab old Earth and wander around a bunch of corridors for a while. Yet, despite all this padding, either episode 5 underruns or episode 6 overruns, because a couple of scenes (lasting nearly two minutes) that should come before the episode 5 cliffhanger are taken out, and we don't get to see them until they're re-inserted at the start of episode 6. And there are a couple of episodes that seem to have relatively long reprises.

As for special effects, many of them range from mildly annoying to downright awful. In the former category, we have a whole lot of white lines around people (notable examples being when Sarah is dangled over the edge of the parapet, and when the Doctor ventures into the Great One's crystal cave). About midway along the continuum, the spiders move in a barely-convincing way (mostly just undulating up and down while their legs sort of quiver in place); the spiderweb sleeping bags are clearly roomy enough for Sarah to wiggle around and scoot out of quite comfortably, if she really wanted to; and the assorted webbing is clearly made of stretched-out cotton wool. In the latter category, we have a truly abysmal shot of the Whomobile flying; the spiders turn red when CSOed onto the shot; and the horrible CSO background of Metebelis III, which would have been passable if they had just remembered to move the camera between cuts - as it stands, there's a very jarring moment when the TARDIS suddenly disappears as Arak and Tuar walk onscreen.

I'm not exactly sure what it is about the Buddhism in this episode that doesn't quite click with me. I think it's that it is largely represented by two clichés: meditation being used for an ominous purpose, and a serenely wise monk spouting abstract Zen dialogue. All the talk about the need to face one's fears... I just don't buy it. I do not believe that "greed for knowledge", at least not as practiced by the Doctor, is as serious as the story tries to convince us. He picked up a rock that was just lying around on an apparently uninhabited planet, which accidentally started a whole big brouhaha, and K'anpo wants us to believe that this is some inherent flaw in the Doctor's personality, and he should have known better? Pfffff. These things happen. I don't know, the depiction here just seems very 70s, lots of people sitting around, letting it all hang out, and being mellow; and then, there's also the point that nobody at that retreat actually seems to be very Zen, aside from possibly Moss - the rest are just thugs. And shouldn't Tibetan monks be bald, or nearly so? Cho-je sure is sporting an awful lot of hair. (At least he looks like he could be Tibetan, unlike K'anpo!) The one moment where Buddhism really does work in this story - and maybe this is just my X-Files mentality - is the suggestion that meditation can cause you to uncover dangerous phobias or summon some kind of demonic force (which is why, actually, I grew up being afraid of meditation, and why the 'scary meditation' scenes actually do work for me on some level). Unfortunately, this only gets lip service in the story and has nothing actually to do with the plot; but, on the upside, this will basically form the backbone of Kinda in eight years' time.

So let's talk about actors. Negatives first: most of them are just forgettable, particularly Lupton's cronies and the villagers. They all put in competent performances, but none of them really stands out, although at least Ralph Arliss as Tuar has a striking look. The infamous Jenny Laird as Neska actually isn't as bad as most people make her out to be, aside from one absolutely hilarious delivery that makes her sound like a doddery old woman talking to herself: "I shan't let them take you, I shan't, I shan't." Personally, there's one actor that I think was more miscast, and that's John Dearth as Lupton. It's not that he's bad - he certainly doesn't misdeliver any of his lines as badly as that one of Laird's - but Lupton is an extremely interesting character, and the way Dearth plays him, he comes off as just a ranting villain. He delivers his "threatening" lines in about as unsubtle a fashion as possible (all he needs is a moustache to twirl!), and his delivery of "Failure?" in episode 4 actually is pretty misjudged. Lupton, I think, really needed to be played by someone with some charisma and a nuanced performance. His interaction with the Queen, in particular, along with the scene in which he discusses his past with Barnes, show that his character has a lot of layers, so I just find Dearth's portrayal boring. I have to say that I'm also not very fond of Kevin Lindsay as Cho-je... as a Sontaran he's superb, but as Cho-je I just find him annoying.

But there are plenty of good actors in the mix to make up for it. Ysanne Churchman, Kismet Delgado and Maureen Morris all do an excellent job as the spiders, who have very cool voices, and interesting personalities. In their brief roles, both Cyril Shaps and George Cormack make an impression - Shaps' Clegg is a great character (I love the idea that he's pretending to be a fraud) with lots of potential, who really deserved to live a lot longer, and Cormack's K'anpo embodies the quiet dignity that seems much more befitting a Tibetan monk than Cho-je's slightly creepy grinning and tendency to speak in vague metaphysical riddles. The one who utterly steals the show, though, is John Kane as Tommy, whose performance is one of the story's highlights. Before the crystal heals his mind, Tommy is sweet, easily fascinated and endearingly likeable, despite apparently being willing to steal something pretty if it catches his fancy. He also brings out people's true nature - Sarah comes across as caring and friendly, Lupton and most everyone else reveal their true brutal colors with the appalling way they treat him... and then there's Yates, who actually comes out looking impatient and manipulative. Hmmm. Then, once the crystal reorganizes Tommy's neurons, or whatever it does, Kane ensures that we know we're watching the same old Tommy, but a Tommy who can suddenly see the world with perfect clarity. It's an amazing performance, and one I always enjoy watching. Tommy is, in fact, so extremely likeable that he gets a cliffhanger structured entirely around a threat to his life. How many guest characters can claim that?

In his swansong, Pertwee turns in a very nice performance as the Doctor. He stays remarkably good-tempered throughout, never snapping at anyone who doesn't deserve it; we see the great respect and admiration he has for his old mentor; and his relationship with Sarah seems quite close and caring. His non-enjoyment of the comedian in the beginning is particularly amusing. At the end, his death seems unusually real - the way he grows weaker and weaker, dies in the middle of a sentence, and has his eyes closed by Sarah - and because of it, more affecting. Sarah is still a relatively serious woman at this point, so Sladen doesn't get to display her full range of warmth and bubbliness, but this is still a good episode for her; her journalistic skills are used well in the beginning, she shows off her very sweet nature when she gives Tommy her pin, she comes across as both resourceful and selfless in her interactions with the villagers, and she does some fantastic facial acting as the Queen listens to the Doctor and K'anpo discussing the crystal she so desperately wants. I love her delivery of "I'm frightened!" when the Doctor uses the blue sapphire to free her from the Queen's influence. (The only negative is that Sarah seems surprisingly dense when Mike is trying to get her out of the monastery, even going so far as to cry "Ow!" when he pinches her to stop her talking!) I'm not sure I'm that fond of Sladen's hairstyle, but it looks much better with her fantastic red-striped shirt and jacket. And she doesn't sing half bad, either! The two of them get several good scenes together; I share Sarah's exasperation with the way the Doctor half-heartedly listens to her tale, but she does get a good line out of it ("Half right."), and it's nice to see a continuation of the Pertwee-era "intimate conversation while incarcerated" tradition. The UNIT folks also come off well, particularly Yates, if for no other reason than that he gets to go "undercover" and prove his usefulness and resourcefulness. Benton is likeable as always, and the Brigadier gets to be somewhat commanding and quite amusing.

Not all the special effects are bad, and I'm keen to praise the ones that work. The tray that Professor Clegg causes to float looks pretty good; Sarah's transition to Metebelis III is pretty cool, even if the CSO line around her is painfully obvious; the image of Lupton's head floating before the council of spiders looks great thanks to an effect that blurs the edges; I love the shot of the dangling spider (with legs positioned just so) that zaps the men in the cellar; the explosion of the mountainside at the end looks great; and there's a nice subtle glow around Cho-je when he appears in the UNIT lab. The model of the Great One isn't bad, although I'd love to see what the original, and apparently much scarier, model looked like. I was also impressed by the stuntwork in the action scenes - these stuntmen are really good at their job. There's some good direction from Barry Letts in evidence, too. Aside from the aforementioned scene in which Sarah is transported to Metebelis III, I love the intercutting between the Doctor with Sabor's family, and Sarah with Arak, as they discuss the history of Metebelis III; and also the Queen's death scene - the rapid alternating between shots of Sarah and the crystal is great.

As monsters, the giant spiders overall work great. I've already mentioned how much I love their voices, but their true horror is the way they leap onto people's backs and then cling there with all eight long legs! Ewwww! And the way they curl up when they die is great. I also love the way they react to the word "spider", lots of shuddering and expressions of disgust and furious body language. They're also very interesting characters in their own right. I really like that the spider controlling Lupton understands him because she shares his ambition and his greed, and the two of them have a wonderful scene as they engage in mind-twisting games - Lupton comes across as rather vindictive, whereas the spider just seems sadistic ("Say please!"). The inter-council politics are also very interesting - the queen's position is in jeopardy if anyone even suggests that she may be getting old, and the other spiders are also jockeying for power, such that even one mistake can bring down deadly wrath from one's sisters. (It brings to mind the traditionally vicious female-spider practice of pouncing upon, and eating, the male after mating.) The Great One makes a pleasant change from other telekinetic villains if only because she doesn't use her power to make the Doctor kneel before her. (Instead, she makes him do a little goose-steppy dance! Much cooler.)

I do wonder, though, how they disappear when they jump on people's backs - K'anpo implies that it's all mental ("Look through my eyes"), so they actually are sitting there but people just can't see them. But that doesn't explain how Lupton can sit down in a chair without squashing her. This brings me to one other point about this story - there are quite a lot of plot confusions. I shall now number the remaining ones that occurred to me. Along with the oft-mentioned spider-squashing example (1), people always bring up the fact that (2) after the massive chase scene in episode 2, the spider ends it all by finally suggesting that they simply teleport - which, had she thought of it earlier, they could have done the moment they got the crystal! (3) The whole discussion of the Great One wanting to control the Earth is confusing, too - it's never exactly clear why they want to control the Earth, aside from a brief mention of it being their ancestral home which they deserve to rule, but then in episode six, we suddenly find out that she doesn't want to rule the Earth at all, she wants to mentally control the entire universe. (4) It's also never explained why exactly the spiders think that getting the crystal will help them take over the Earth, unless it was all a ruse by the Great One and they just believed whatever she said. (5) Also, the spiders' energy beams are very erratic. Some people, they merely stun. Others, they kill. Apparently, pure motivations (like compassion or innocence) provide some measure of protection (are the spiders' blasts mentally based?), but Yates is badly stunned on his first hit, whereas Tommy takes a huge number of hits with pretty much no adverse effects. Its effects aren't even consistent on the same person - a blast from one of the guards' weapons nearly kills the Doctor in episode three, but in episode six, a blast from the Queen (via Sarah) barely hurts him at all (are the spiders' blasts different from the weapon blasts? Along with nearly killing the Doctor, the weapons do kill his fellow Time Lord, K'anpo). (6) What exactly is K'anpo doing on Earth? Fine, I can see that he wouldn't have agreed with the Time Lords' policies, but... he's a hermit! As in, lives all by himself off in the wastelands of Gallifrey! What need did he have to go to Earth? (7) K'anpo claims that there's no other way for the Doctor to destroy the Great One than to go to her cavern with the crystal. But, um, there are plenty of other ways! He could have run into the cavern, tossed the crystal at the Great One, and legged it out (she doesn't seem to be mentally restrainig him, or even have felt the need to do so - as long as she had the crystal, she was happy). Or, despite what the Doctor claims to the spiders, he could perfectly well ask one of them to take the crystal to the Great One (he doesn't seem to think they would dare keep it for themselves). Unless K'anpo meant it was the only way for the Doctor to atone for his past mistakes, in which case I guess I can't argue with that. But as portrayed, it looks like the Doctor's effectively resigned himself to committing suicide in order to atone for some perceived prior injustice. (8) It's implied that the Great One has mined every single sapphire out of Metebelis III to construct her crystal web, and of course is missing only the one that the Doctor possesses. So are we to gather from this that there were exactly the right number and type of crystals in the planet to precisely replicate her brain pattern? How likely is that?! That means that no other spider - or, indeed, no other being in the universe - could have done what she did. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time. (9) On a more minor note, how do the little-ish spiders wrap an entire human in webbing? and are their fangs long enough to penetrate it to suck out their victims' juices?

Most disturbing of all to me personally: Metebelis III, the last time we saw it, was blue all over - not just the sapphires, but at the very least there was a blue sun that gave everything on the entire planet a blue tinge. (Now the Doctor claims it was a blue moon, but even if that's the case, we do see Metebelis III at night, and there's nothing especially blue about it.) What happened to all the hostile flora and fauna? Maybe it's a huge planet and the desert is a very different place from where the Doctor landed before, but I'm not convinced.

Minor points:

• The beginning has some nice foreshadowing, with Mike walking into a spider web as he peers into the cellar.

• A shocking bit of (no doubt intentionally) sexist dialogue from Lupton:

  Lupton: "Not only a journalist, but a woman journalist! We do not want her here."

• For all that I whined about the scary-meditation cliché, I really do find both it and the entire creepy monastery to be pretty effective. I guess there's a part of me that really enjoys religious horror, which is combined here with a good dose of conspiracy theory.

• Eek! They put BOSS' headset on Professor Clegg!

• I really like the scene in which Clegg examines the Brigadier's watch - partly because it's very funny to watch the Brigadier hurriedly stop Clegg from revealing what would appear to be fairly intimate details, and partly because I love the fact that he eventually married Doris (who would appear not to be involved with him at this point - maybe they have one of those romantic meeting-again-after-fifteen-years stories).

• I wonder why the sonic screwdriver makes Clegg visualize only Drashigs? If that were the most recent time the Doctor had used it, it would make more sense, but it's gotten plenty of outings since that particular adventure.

• A superb line for John Levene, as Benton notices the Doctor's ESP machine:

  Benton: "Doctor, I - oh, doing a bit of hairdressing on the side, eh?"

  I'm also very amused by the fact that he's fine being relaxed around the Doctor, but would never have said such a thing had he known that the Brigadier was around!

• It's lovely to be reminded of Jo in the form of a package sent to UNIT - and, oh my, whoever wrote the contents of her letter nailed her personality exactly!

• When Sarah and Mike are in the cellar, and she runs into the spider web and flails about, it looks like something falls on the floor, but I can't tell what it is. Either something that Sarah drops (but it doesn't look like she's holding anything) or maybe the spider that built the web (but it's not visible onscreen before Sarah stumbles into the web).

• Why exactly is Clegg killed? Is it because the Doctor breaks the link when he yanks the crystal away? If so, bad Doctor!

• The cliffhanger to episode 1 is really great - perhaps not a huge surprise, given the title of the story, but it does all build up to quite a nice crescendo.

• A funny quote, albeit one delivered with utter sincerity by John Dearth:

  Barnes: "Was it speaking to you then?"
  Lupton: "It was."
  Barnes: "What did it say?"
  Lupton: (trying to get rid of him) "It said you look tired and you should be in bed."

  "It also wants to know if you've called your mother recently, and it says to stop wiping your nose on your sleeve."

• Huh, I never realized until this viewing that Harry gets namechecked in episode 2. That's pretty cool.

• When pursuing Lupton, the Doctor instructs the Brigadier to "take the right fork" and therefore catch up with the Whomobile faster. The Brigadier dutifully does this, and then manages to pull in right behind Lupton when the roads meet again. Yay! But the way these scenes are shot, it looks as though the road Lupton is on has continued to go straight, whereas the Brigadier's turn swung away from the road and then back in toward it - which would surely have been a huge delay!

• The scene of the Doctor running over the tramp in his hovercraft is great! But since they were using Stuart Fell as the tramp anyway, why do they cut between the shot of the hovercraft going over him and the shot of him sitting up? It would have been superb done as a one-shot... the way it's done makes it look like they swapped out a stuntman for the actor, when it was really a stuntman the entire time.

• How exactly does Tommy get up to Lupton's window? The way it's filmed, it looks like he's had to climb up to the second storey.

• When Sarah gets to Metebelis III, the villagers successfully hide her from the guards... by putting a red headscarf on her. To match her eye-popping, attention-grabbing, red striped jacket!

• My favorite scene in this entire story is the one in which the Metebelis sapphire sweeps away the cobwebs in Tommy's mind. His awakening is fantastic in every way - the way he reads his book (first with astonishment, then voraciously, then quietly as the shock sets in) and the way he tries to understand poetry (looking up words in dictionaries, the definitions of which make no more sense to him than the word - which is a very nice realistic touch) in particular. Although it's interesting that his accent seems to change slightly (although, pleasingly, he does very easily slip back into his old way of speaking). It's a wonderful performance by John Kane.

• The Doctor's magic-cure machine seems a little silly, given that we're never told how it works. It looks like it discharges the spiders' energy from his body, but a little explanation wouldn't have been a bad thing. The scenes in which Sarah and Arak attempt to fetch the magic machine, though, are surprisingly tense.

• Every time I hear Tommy reading Blake's "The Tyger", it makes me think of the X-Files episode "Fearful Symmetry". (This isn't necessarily a good thing.)

• When Tommy's picking books to read, he seems to be doing so completely at random - he looks at a spot on the shelf and grabs the first book he sees, without apparently considering the title. (which, of course, is how he gets lumbered with a painful book of poems.)

• Now the truth comes out: Mike Yates is a weak, weak man who can be rendered competely unconscious simply by a blow to the left shoulder.

• The magic-cure machine makes a great sound as the Doctor examines the stones, and although it smacks of a too-convenient solution (again), I think it's at least nicely explained, and it makes sense that the sapphires wouldn't be the only unusual stones on the planet. However, despite the Doctor's instructions to find as many different kinds of pebbles as possible, the villagers appear to have come back with mostly a pile of all the same kind of dull grey stone. And one black rock.

• I like how, when he infiltrates the spiders' mountain base, the Doctor prepares to use Venusian aikido as a means of defense against the guards' energy beams! He also seems remarkably prepared to just abandon his magic-cure machine after it gets knocked out of his hands. Didn't do all that much good, then.

• There's a great tense moment when the guard advances on Sarah with his knife unsheathed, and seems to be ready to stab her - but then just cuts her coccoon open. Phew!

• A great delivery from Lis, as Sarah is being dragged off to meet the spiders - rather than sounding cynical, she sounds genuinely determined!

  Doctor: "Sarah, try and stall them as long as you can."
  Sarah: "You bet, Doctor! I'll do my best to give them all indigestion."

• The Doctor thinks his old friend who taught him escapology is named Harry Hackenschmidt?! I must admit, although I generally find that scene eye-rollingly bad (like he would forget Houdini's name!), that line did make me giggle a little.

• The Great One's dialogue ("Noooooo!") overlaps onto the meditation scene - deliberate, or an example of bad sound editing? Echoes of the Hartnell years, methinks.

• Hmmm. After the attack in the cellar, Yates and Cho-je appear to be almost spooning on the floor. Perhaps they found the spider attack to be especially traumatic, and were in great need of comfort.

• Wince. Sarah, to Tommy: "You're normal!" Clearly pre-PC!

• A very funny exchange at the end of part 5:

  Keaver: "What are we going to do?"
  Barnes: "Be quiet!" (to Tommy) "Stand back, you."

  Yeah, that's a brilliant solution - tell him to move! I'm sure that'll work!

• In the context of this story alone, Cho-je makes very little sense. It's just a good thing Logopolis comes along to (kind of) explain the whole situation to us!

• When Yates is hit by a bolt of energy, he has a slightly delayed reaction before he recoils in pain and falls over. (more the fault of the effects people than Richard Franklin, I feel sure.)

• It's odd that the spider-controlled villagers in the citadel just seem to recover when the Great One is killed, whereas spiders appear and fall off the backs of the men on Earth. Do they have more than one way of controlling people?

• The Doctor seems fine when he goes into the TARDIS - I guess the radiation exposure needed some time to really cripple him, which is why he gets lost in the vortex, so that by the time he reaches Earth, he's in bad shape. But it seems odd to see him stroll into his ship in full health, and then stumble out and die almost immediately. (Although they do talk about how three weeks have passed on Earth in the meantime, so I guess I should be more lenient.)

• Does the explosion in the mountain cavern destroy all the sapphires, I wonder? That would be tragic, since apparently all the sapphires on the planet (or, at least, all the perfect ones) were in there. Come to that, now I wonder if all the sapphires are radioactive? Or was it just some side effect of being lashed together into a massive brain-pattern web?

• Poor death's-doorstep Doctor doesn't get a nice respectable pillow to lay his little head on... no, instead, the Brigadier grabs the nearest seat cushion. Not very dignified!

• Great delivery from Lis:

  Brigadier: "Won't you introduce me to your friend, Miss Smith?"
  Sarah: "Oh, uh, yes, this is the Abbot of - no, it's Cho-je - I mean, it looks like Cho-je but it is really K'anpo Rinpoche. I think."
  Brigadier: "Thank you. That makes everything quite clear."

I guess my feeling about Planet of the Spiders is this: the spiders are great, it's nice to see Metebelis III again, and there's a lot of potential in the use of Buddhist philosophy. If they had stuck to that, made Metebelis III more traditional / interesting, and lost some of the deadwood characters and plot threads, this could have been a really great story. But, as it stands, it fits more into the "fairly enjoyable" category. I probably would put it in my top third favorite Pertwee stories, but in terms of overall favorite stories, it really doesn't come close.