Planet of the Spiders

First thing that has to be said is how good was the title sequence from Pertwee's final season of Doctor Who?

And, of course, it got even better the next series with the TARDIS finally making an appearance in the titles, but more on that later.

Planet of the Spiders brings the curtain down on the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who. Some commentators have said, perhaps somewhat cruelly, that the serails production code - ZZZ - is appropriate. I wouldn't go that far, but I would suggest that it suffers from the same problem most six parters suffer from: it's about two episodes too long. Also, I think Barry Letts was trying to be George Lucas about 25 years too early with the amount of blue screen in the show. Metebelis III looked really convincing when we briefly saw it in The Green Death twelve months earlier, but here you can tell it's a studio set. And the spider's citadel is badly let down by bad lighting (a fault designer Rochelle Selwyn admits to on the documentary accompanying the disc. She did make her thoughts known to the lighting director which was subsequently ignored to the productions detriment).

However, there are some good things. All the UNIT crew are as good as ever, with Richard Franklin being the stand out. John Kane's sensitive portrayal of Tommy is excellent along with Kevin Lindsay as the gleeful Cho-je and George Cormack as the Doctor's old mentor K'anpo. The spiders themselves are well realized with the Great One being very convincing (a great example of when Chromakey does work!) with great vocal talents from Ysanne Churchman, Kismet Delgado and Maureen Morris. Otherwise the rest of the cast are forgettable.

But this is Pertwee's swansong and I have to say he isn't too bad. His final scene is very moving, especially if one think of recent events in the real world with the sad passings of both Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen.

But the regeneration itself is rubbish!

So, Planet of the Spiders: not as bad as most people suggest, but not great either. But the series best years were just around the corner.