Planet of the Spiders - Episode 1

The final Jon Pertwee story has arrived and I am going to make this joke many times over the next five episodes when I say that the moment has been prepared for. Hey if you have been following this since the early days then you will know I did this during the previous two regeneration stories. I am going to say straight from the beginning that I don’t like spiders. I seriously don’t and I hate it when people say “oh but they eat flies!” like that’s a perfectly fine excuse. I would quite happily wipe every single spider off the face of the earth. So with potential sitting on the fence issue dealt with, I start to watch Jon Pertwee’s 123^rd episode as the Doctor.

This episode sees the return of Richard Franklin who last we saw of him was allowed to leave UNIT quietly. So quietly we didn’t see him leave and so his return was much appreciated. He seems to have found himself at some retreat where a lot of people meditating in the basement. It takes just over four minutes for a spider to feature when Yates walks into a spiders web. It’s good that they go to the trouble of reminding the viewer of what happened to him and why he has ended up in the retreat. The scene where Yates is talking to Sarah Jane ends up with them swerving off the road avoiding a tractor that appeared from no-where and disappeared instantly.

The Doctor and Brigadier seem to have been watching some talent show. It’s a weird way to start the episode for these two which considering its Pertwee’s last story lacks the impactful start that I would have expected. It was all to introduce Professor Clegg (played by Cyril Shaps) who goes from being a proper clairvoyant and then pretends to be a fraud before being shown as the real deal but doesn’t actually want the ability.

I love it how Lupton would have accepted a journalist coming to the retreat but a female journalist is one step too far. The Master was due to feature in this story but with the death of Roger Delgado meant that Lupton was introduced and from the very moment he appears he seems like there is more to him that the meditation.

Tommy (played by John Kane) is introduced as a simple yet strong person. By the end of his first scene he is holding a squashed flower and looks over it like someone looking over a dead loved one. When he pops up again alongside Sarah Jane and Yates, I found him to be slightly annoying because he seems to be holding the story up and even though its only for a moment, its long enough to bother me.

The Doctor’s journey in this episode isn’t quite what I was expecting because he doesn’t really seem to be involved in the story and even towards the end the involvement with what is going on with Sarah Jane and Yates doesn’t seem very clear. The wedding present that the Doctor gave Jo in ‘The Green Death’ makes a return and it’s the first time that an ex-companion had an involvement in the story. Even though she doesn’t appear on screen her involvement does have detrimental effects on the Doctor and the show.

The ending is very simple yet effective because it’s the titular spider (not including the one Yates bumps into at the beginning of the episode). There are issues with the spiders that will be mentioned in future episodes but as a cliffhanger it’s a good one and the opening episode is very calm and all the building blocks seem to have been put in place. I suspect the story will pick up once the Doctor and Sarah Jane start to interact but I think that that this a promising start to Pertwee’s departing story.