Doctor Who - Documentary s11e11 Episode Script

NARRATOR: Over the first five years of the 1970s, Doctor Who was reinvented.
Reinvented by these three men.
In 1969, they had inherited a show that was losing viewers and facing the axe, but the creative team of producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks, together with their charismatic Doctor, Jon Pertwee, had revived the ratings and restored the show to the status of appointment TV.
But five years is a long time in television.
We felt that we'd given our all to Doctor Who, that ideas were coming in from writers and we were thinking, "We've done that," but of course, we hadn't.
You know, another producer and script editor would have said, "Oh, that's a great idea!" and something different would have come out of it.
What Barry wanted to do was direct.
You know, he was a director, and that's the most important, and in a sense the most enjoyable job in television.
And I thought, "Well, it's really time for me to move on, too.
"If I don't get another producing job," and I didn't particularly want to, "I'll go back to directing," which was my first love.
Now, I didn't have a particular desire to leave Doctor Who at that time, but with Jon going and Barry going, you know, I felt if I stayed on, I'd be a, kind of, embarrassing spare part.
NARRATOR: For much of Jon Pertwee's tenure, viewers had been treated to a nourishing diet of Earth-based adventures with the Doctor, his companions, and the ever-reliable UNIT troops defending the Home Counties against a string of alien invasions.
As the show's ratings began to climb, Pertwee was joined by Katy Manning as Jo Grant, along with UNITregulars Nicholas Courtney,John Levene and Richard Franklin, creating one of the happiest companies on television.
Even the villainous Master, played by Roger Delgado, was part of the family.
But by 1973, a wind of change was blowing.
In late June, viewers saw Katy Manning leave the show after three happy years.
And in that same week, a tragedy struck.
I think the significant thing, really, was Roger Delgado's death.
Because that, obviously, was a terrible shock to everybody.
Once you lose one-sixth of a very tight team, it is bound to rock the boat.
Roger had been killed and I was very upset about that.
And I wouldn't want to really have worked with any other actor playing the Master.
Barry was leaving, as I say, and Terrance Dicks was leaving and it seemed to be the end of an era.
He took Barry and me aside on location one day and just announced, you know, that he would like to leave fairly soon.
At the end of the season, perhaps.
You know, there was plenty of notice.
It wasn't a snap decision.
Two reasons he wanted to leave.
One, he felt that if he didn't leave, he would never get another job in his life because he would be too much labelled as Doctor Who I did realise that I'd stamped myself with this Doctor Who image and I was probably never going to get out of it.
But mostly because he felt that an era was coming to an end.
Katy had left, and though he got on very well with Liz, she was a new member of the family, so to speak.
We were using UNIT far less, his good friend Nick Courtney wasn't around, and he felt that the family was breaking up.
But I thought I'd stay on for another season and I said to my old friend Shaun Sutton, "I will stay on another season, but if you pay me a little more money.
" And he said, "I'm terribly sorry to see you go.
" (LAUGHING) I said, "Surely, you're going to discuss this "with the rest of your directors, aren't you?" And he said, "No, we have a budget and that's it, "and anything more than that we can't do.
So, bye.
" And I left.
Later on, I heard that he'd gone to Shaun Sutton, who was a friend of his, and Head of Drama by this time, and said, "Look, I'd like to go on being Doctor Who, "but I really need more money, you see.
" I can't remember what he was being paid.
He said that Shaun said, "Oh, no, we couldn't afford it on the budget.
" Now, that's absolute nonsense.
If would be nothing to do with Shaun, it would be my business, if I decided I wanted him to stay and wanted to give him more money, and I haven't got enough in the budget, then I would go to my executive producer, who would be, by that time, Bill Slater, who had taken over from Ronnie Marsh as head of the department, and say I want more money because I've got to pay my star more money.
You know, or else, I would have said, "No, I don't think so," you know.
It would have been up to me, as producer.
It was all nonsense.
He definitely went because the family was breaking up.
NARRATOR: Whatever the reasons for Jon Pertwee's departure, the team now had to devise a suitable finale.
But before the news of Pertwee's departure and Roger Delgado's death, Barry Letts had had a rather different story in mind.
Roger came to me and said he wanted to leave, so I reluctantly said, "Okay.
" I said, "Well, how do you want to leave? "Do you want us to just not use you any more so that you can come up "in another story later on if you want to, "or do you want to go out with a great big bang? "You know, so that it hits the headlines.
" He said, "Ooh! Let's have a great big bang," you know.
And it's one of those great what-ifs, because it would have been so fantastic for Roger Delgado to have that kind of finale.
Work was Really very early work was I cannot remember that we got very far with it, or very specific, but we had a sort of general idea, in which the Doctor and the Master would be grappling with some mighty problem.
The original plan was a, sort of, Holmes-Moriarty Reichenbach Fall finale, in which, I believe, the Master would die saving the Doctor's life.
It still makes my heart skip a beat.
We decided that it would be on a cataclysmic scale that the Master would be trying to take over the universe, rather than the galaxy or the Earth, and that he would instigate an enormous explosion by getting something wrong with the meddling with time and so on, which would kill him off.
But, the twist in the tale was that we would leave it ambiguous as to whether he was killed because of the Doctor stopping him carrying out his nefarious plan, or because, when it came to it, the Master found himself in the position that if he pressed the button, the Doctor would be killed and he would be saved, and he couldn't bring himself to do it because they had originally been very good friends, as has been intimated several times, but especially in "The Sea Devils".
It's a wonderful idea, and actually when I wrote my Pertwee book for the BBC, they wouldn't actually let me kill him, which was what I was trying to do, but I was able to finish him off for the present to give it that sort of flavour, and actually that was directly inspired by reading about that potential script and the sort of Holmes and Moriarty nature of it.
I think someone or other worked out the theory that they were brothers.
But the most we'd ever said was that they had been friends at the academy.
A lot of people said, "Why on earth is it that you seem to be incapable "of knocking off the Master?" Or equally vice-versa, why he seems to be incapable of killing you.
And Roger came up with a terribly good idea.
He said, "We wouldn't kill each other, would we? "After all, we're brothers.
" The thing about being the brother continues, doesn't it? I think it's in Planet of Fire that Anthony Ainley's Master says, "Won't you show mercy to your own" Flatmate! Who knows! We don't know what he's going to say, But I mean, I like the fact it's never been answered, nor should it be.
They could easily be brothers, which would explain the idiocy of my putting pieces of wire across with a bomb on the end of it and Roger going "Aha! Wire!" and cutting the wire, because otherwise it was stupid.
I mean, two brilliant, sort of, genius mathematicians and villains incapable of knocking each other off was stupid.
So I think his theory was good.
We didn't want to.
It never got too detailed, and then, of course, everybody was shattered by the announcement that Roger had been killed on location.
And so the whole thing was abandoned.
Obviously it had to be.
And it was after that that Jon decided he wanted to leave, and so Bob and I wrote Jon's last one instead.
NARRATOR: All three of the serials credited to Robert Sloman were, in fact, written in partnership with Barry Letts.
Although they were a collaboration, Barry, I think, was always the dominant one, was always the biggest influence.
And of, course, Barry had always, ever since I'd known him, Barry had been heavily into Buddhism and spiritualism and that kind of thing.
NARRATOR: With his five years on the series drawing to a close, Barry decided to indulge himself and drew on a personal fascination as the basis for Jon Pertwee's final story.
At that time, I was obsessed by Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism.
So I was very keen that we should get it into the show in some way.
I used to tease him about it all the time, you see, but this was a great opportunity, I mean, you see, the whole show, you know, is absolutely, er riddled, if that's the word, with Buddhist theology and philosophy.
I talked to Bob about it, Bob Sloman, and he was very happy.
And we made it a Buddhist meditation centre.
That's all Barry, you know, that's stuff from Barry's interests and beliefs coming out in the show.
And I didn't mind, as long as it worked in story terms.
You know, which it does, I think.
NARRATOR: Barry Letts even went to the trouble of preparing a six-page glossary to familiarise the production team with Buddhist terminology.
Now, I knew practically nothing about Tibetan Buddhism, and in fact, with one exception, the Buddhism that's talked about is far more like Zen than it is like Tibetan Buddhism.
I know who you are now.
You were always a little slow on the uptake, my boy.
It's been a long, long time.
Also, it was nice to be able to refer back to the scene in The Time Monster when the Doctor talked about his mentor.
Ah, well, that's another story.
I'll tell you about it one day.
So, we made the head of the monastery.
K'anpo was his name.
The mentor that had been such an influence on the Doctor when he was a younger man.
It's a rather lovely example of how they were threading things through.
But of course, the actor who plays him, was also present in a similar sort of role.
The actor, George Cormack, I think his name was, also played a very old man in The Time Monster.
And I remember his saying to somebody, "It's a curious thing," he said, "Whenever Barry wants somebody to be 500 years old, he asks me.
" (LAUGHS) We are all apt to surrender ourselves to domination.
Even the strongest of us.
The idea of the Doctor brought down by his own hubris is fantastic.
I personally felt that the Doctor's speech about facing his greed and his fears Do you mean me? was really nonsense, you know.
No, he's talking about my greed.
SARAH: Greed? You? (SCOFFING) Yes, my greed for knowledge, for information.
It's Barry's Buddhism coming out again, you know, that everybody must look into his own soul and face his own deficiencies, you see.
Doctor hasn't got any deficiencies.
He's perfect, you know.
He's the perfect hero.
But Barry wanted to put that in.
You know, and I didn't feel strongly enough to argue against it.
He's saying that all this is basically my fault.
It struck me as incongruous when I heard it.
I thought, "This isn't true.
" You know.
This isn't like Jon.
He isn't greedy.
It isn't like the Doctor.
Probably like Jon, but it certainly wasn't like the Doctor.
Well, this package, sir.
It's just arrived by express post.
-I thought it may be urgent.
-Well, for the Doctor or for me? Well, that's just it.
It's addressed to the Doctor, or Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, or Captain Yates, or Sergeant Benton.
-It's from South America, sir.
-DOCTOR: What, from Jo? I reckon so.
I thought of Katy sending back the crystal from the Amazon.
I mean, in fact, I remember I did the book of that show, I think, some years later.
I guess I remember reading the book and somehow, as often is the way, I think I remember seeing the bit in the Amazon with Cliff and Jo where she sends the crystal back and then being very disappointed when it wasn't done, when I finally saw it again, but a reference back to Jo was very thrilling.
Why would she send it back? Well, it's got mystic powers and the natives up the Amazon are frightened of it, you see.
So that's how the crystal gets back.
"We haven't found our toadstool yet, "and we're not likely to if I don't get rid of this crystal.
"You see, the Indian porters say it's bad magic.
"Like it goes or they go.
" And then there's the whole business of Mike Yates, who's left in disgrace, getting on to something suspicious at the lamasery and coming back to see the Doctor.
NARRATOR: Richard Franklin, a semi-regular for the past three years, was also moving on from the series.
I went up to North Yorkshire to do my first bit of official directing, which was an area I wanted to get into.
And I was actually directing the county youth theatre for East Yorkshire the East Riding of Yorkshire, and it was purely logistics.
I couldn't get to London to do all the work that Doctor Who wanted me to do.
There was a question of how we should lose him, and we had a show coming up in which it would be useful to have him turn traitor, which is what happens immediately before this.
NARRATOR: A couple of stories earlier, in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
Mike Yates had appeared to turn traitor, falling under the spell of the villainous perpetrators of Operation Golden Age.
When he drifts towards an alternative way of thinking in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, which is a fantastic twist that he's actually a sort of baddie, although misguided.
I remember it being a terrible shock.
YATES: Put it down, sir.
He gets brainwashed by the bad guys and turns into a villain and leaves UNIT more or less in disgrace.
What about Captain Yates? Extended sick leave and a chance to resign quietly.
Best I could do.
Poor Mike.
I think the powers that be had thought they were going to blow me up and get rid of Mike Yates at that point.
But of course, they realised that there would have been a national outcry had that happened, so they decided not to blow me up but I had thought that was going to be my last story.
And then, Planet of the Spiders came along, which actually, in fact, from my point of view, was probably some of the best filming that I've had.
It was a very, very good story for me.
-Oh, come on, Mike.
Out with it.
-Hmm? What is it all about? I told you.
It's a great story for that magazine of yours.
They could then bring him back and redeem him only a few stories later, but you felt enough time had passed.
It was my idea that Okay, what happened to him after he left UNIT? Well, he was always a rather sort of, intellectual character, you know, for an army officer.
Slightly, you know, not quite, sort of, standard.
And so, perhaps he would have gone off to find some kind of salvation, you see.
Barry wanted to get on to the meditation centre.
So, we worked out that Captain Yates had gone there to, kind of, save his soul, you know, and find himself again, and then become aware that something strange was going on.
And loyally reported it back to UNIT.
So, that gave us a good link into the story.
NARRATOR: Planet of the Spiders was very much Barry Letts' baby.
Not only was he the producer and the co-writer, he also chose to direct the serial.
In fact, it remains the only instance in Doctor Who's history when a writer has directed his own script.
What I really wanted to do was to follow in the footsteps of Shaun Sutton, who was the director that I'd worked with most.
He also used to write shows, so he would have something where he was, in effect, the auteur, you know.
He'd written it, he produced it and he directed it.
That's what I wanted to do.
I think he actually had it in his contract that he was to be allowed to direct one show a season.
And with this being, you know, a big spectacular, and Jon's farewell, and indeed Barry's farewell, I suppose, you know, I think that was one he was particularly keen to do.
I knew I was going to leave eventually, you know, and I thought I'd got to seize my chance while I had the power to do it.
And at that time, nobody knew that I was writing it.
It was officially a Bob Sloman script, so nobody said I couldn't.
NARRATOR: Not for the first time, Barry Letts and Robert Sloman drew on an everyday household fear to provide the story's monstrous hook.
TERRANCE: A lot of people are scared of spiders, you know.
I think one of the reasons the spiders work is that it's a familiar thing which is exaggerated into monstrous proportions, you know.
If you're scared of little penny-sized spiders, how are you going to react to a giant one? (CHUCKLES) Arachnophobia, obviously, one of the biggest, one of the primal terrors we have.
I'm surprised the show hadn't, sort of, tapped into it before.
But I think they do it very cleverly.
It's not about, you know, people jumping on to tables and shrieking.
(EXCLAIMS) They're really rather brilliantly realised.
I certainly remember being very frightened of them appearing on people's backs.
Lizzie had been so brave, too, 'cause you know she has arachnophobia.
She has a terror of spiders.
Good grief.
So, we started with a spider about that big.
I brought it in and said, "Look.
" She went, "Aah!" And I said, "Look at it.
Just look.
Look.
"'Cause they're going to get bigger tomorrow.
" And each day we brought a bigger spider in, until eventually, we got one about that big and just hung it on her back and got a picture of her with it, being absolutely terrified of this thing.
I'm frightened! We had to do it, because if we hadn't, on the day, I knew damn well that she would just freak.
We would never have got the shot in.
So, we trained her every day with phoney spiders.
(CRIES OUT) Doctor! I know they had a hell of a lot of trouble with the spiders, you know, making them convincing and getting them to but I though they did pretty well with them, actually.
I mean, I watched it with one of my children.
He was very impressed by the spiders.
No.
No, that cannot be.
There was a big Queen Spider, a number of, sort of, courtiers, as it were, that had to be animated.
There were some dummy ones, sort of, the extras in the back that just wriggled a bit.
Stick them on a bit of nylon line.
And there was the Great One, which was supposed to be an enormous spider, but frankly, it was just the Queen Spider redressed.
The more senior assistant, Ian Scoones, he loved doing that sort of thing, and in fact, he kept the Queen Spider, the Great One, to himself, and did all the animatronics, as we'd now call it.
I don't think the term had been coined then.
And in order not for the spider web strings to the puppet spiders to get tangled, visual effects used to hang them on the back of the scenery.
And I always remember sitting in the studio one day and just watching somebody like Lots of people used to walk through the studio, see what was going on, and I watched this fellow walk through the studios and he came around the back of the scenery and he saw all these huge two-foot spiders, albeit they were only puppets, And he went Like most things in effects, you have things set, but things change right up to the last minute, even when you're in the studio, going in to the studio.
Now, we knew there was going to be a certain number of spiders, the ones in the background, the ones in the foreground, that would be marionettes, the Queen Spider and the Great One.
And that was it.
We had about That adds up probably to about 40, 45 spiders, plus the Great One.
But we get into studio, and all of a sudden, Bernard, as the designer, gets asked for "Oh, can we have a spider that would just scurry across the floor by itself?" And you think, "Ah, now I wish they'd asked for that in the first place, "'cause we've got spiders that will work from down below with that "Some spiders will work from strings, spiders that would twitch.
" None of them would work straight by themselves on the floor.
So, anyway, Bernard, sort of, looks at me as, sort of, "You're the mechanical guy, go and build a mechanical spider.
" And literally, it was built in a couple of days, 'cause the studios are probably two or three days long, so it was probably known at the beginning of that first filming session.
"Oh, we're gonna need one "by the end of tomorrow.
" And I went back up to the workshop, and I built Boris.
And why is he called Boris? After the Who song Boris the Spider.
It sort of stuck.
But all he had to do was run across the floor and then disappear.
There was one slight problem I realised when I got to the studio.
I could turn him on.
Couldn't turn him off.
So, it was a case of turn him on, and then he ran across the floor towards the wall, and then it was a case of waiting for, "Cut," before the whole thing piled into the wall, legs akimbo.
And I literally slid across the wall to flip the switch so he didn't damage himself 'cause there was bound to be a second take.
But it worked.
And he still works today, strangely enough.
New set of batteries, he'll work.
NARRATOR: With the eight-legs taking centre-stage for so much of the story, the production team faced an obvious logistical problem.
The script required humans to have conversations with spiders.
So, you couldn't keep the spiders on the floor and have a human, because it would be absolutely impossible to shoot such a In that scenario.
So the spiders, the only answer was to bring the spiders up to a level where you could get a shot of a spider and a human having a conversation.
QUEEN SPIDER: The crystal is still on Earth.
Do not attempt to deny it.
Why should I deny it? I know where the crystal is hidden.
I told you, but I didn't say it was hidden on Metebelis.
The decision was not to do a set that was covered in cobwebs.
It would have been awfully difficult for the cameras and actors to move around in something that was covered with cobwebs, so instead, I went for a, kind of, cobweb shape painted on the floor, and lines across the set, but What that set, above all the rest of them in the whole of that particular Doctor Who needed was some really imaginative, dramatic lighting.
And it didn't get it.
QUEEN SPIDER: Rise, child.
You have no reason to fear me.
I am your friend.
You have a funny way of treating your friends, then.
QUEEN SPIDER: You are impertinent! You want the citadel of the eight-legs to be this complete cobweb-swathed cocoon and it's actually rather like a, sort of, Blue Peter plinth with some dead spiders on it.
And that upsets me to this day, as long ago as it is.
And not that I just sat there and thought, "Oh, dear" I did go, sort of, in to the lighting gallery and make my feelings known, but it didn't seem to do a lot, unfortunately, and when I see those scenes, I cringe and think, "Oh, no, it's just lit like a light entertainment show, not a drama.
" In the cellar, we had used a cobweb gun, and it's quite amazing how much the television camera actually hides, how difficult it is on camera to get what I call "tattiness", or cobwebs.
I mean, if you actually walked into that set, masses and masses of cobwebs using a cobweb gun, but looking at it now, watching it, they hardly register, these cobwebs.
The nasty business at the meditation centre, asterisk, was a very spooky place for it all to happen.
It seems somehow very possible.
MEN: (CHANTING) Om.
Om.
Om.
Om.
Given that we saw a lot of the regulars in their uniform, there was something about the ordinariness of the jumpers and flared trousers and beards of those people, which made it look like, you know, the people who went to my local library or community centre.
There was something quite spooky about that.
MEN: (CHANTING) Om Mani Padme Hum.
The whole, "Om mani padme hum" thing, well, as a kid, I had no idea what it was.
It was just mystical.
It was just different.
It was spooky in itself.
(CHANTING INTENSIFIES) And then, invoking the spiders, and them appearing like that, made it a tremendous impact.
I found it very, very, very affecting as a kid.
ROCHELLE: The actual village was interesting, because the problem with putting a set on the studio floor was always disguising the fact that it was a studio floor.
It's a great shame that Metebelis 3 isn't just another quarry, really.
It would be great if they were much more on location.
In fact, oddly enough, it suits it better than most.
They have mutton soup, as I remember, and they're, sort of, farmers.
They've got sheepskin and big Jason King 'taches.
They could be quite a nice rural little community.
They could have filmed it in one of those little Iron-Age villages they occasionally went to.
We've been told Metebelis 3 is this rather beautiful place, with a blue sun, and we've obviously seen a slightly different version of it a year before.
It's very, very studio-bound.
It's a terrible shame.
We did have a raised level, so that helped that the actual ground There were going to be shots of the ground because of the fight.
(ALL SCREAMING) I wanted it to look different, so I remember getting about seven I think about seven or eight different kinds of materials like little glass chippings.
It probably wasn't very comfortable to fall on.
Glass chippings, cork jiggings, different-coloured things, and there were, in fact, on that floor, about six or seven different materials of different colours thrown on to try and give it an otherworldly look to it.
Doing exteriors in the studio always presented, obviously, a problem of its own kind, but I actually loved doing exteriors in the studio and trying to get the whole feeling of distance and everything.
NARRATOR: As in several Doctor Who serials of the time, much of the scenery in Planet of the Spiders was created through the miracle of CSO, colour separation overlay.
Barry was madly keen on Barry loved CSO, and was one of the pioneers in its use and continued to use it all through his directing career.
But, in my experience, it was nothing but trouble.
To be perfectly honest, it was designed to put a picture in behind a news reader.
That was it.
It wasn't designed for anything else.
It certainly wasn't designed for dramas.
But as soon as they realised, "Hey, if we stand these people against blue, "as long as they're not wearing the classic thing, "they're not wearing the blue shirt, "we can just put a background in behind them.
" It saves you going on location.
Sometimes the CSO is very, very successful, and then other times, as in Planet of the Spiders, I think, it seriously lets it down.
Will you show me the way? There's more than one way into the caves.
Come.
When it came to actually putting a person standing in front of a background, you had this horrible problem originally of what was called "fringing, particularly if you had hair, because the signal just couldn't cope with distinguishing strands of hair.
I did notice things like the fringing.
I don't think you could not.
It never spoilt my enjoyment.
I mean, I'm aware I've got, sort of, folk memories of my dad saying, "That's not very realistic, is it?" All I can remember is very often coming into the studio and finding them cursing as they were trying to get the CSO working.
MAT: This is, frankly, all that remains of Metebelis, the city of the spiders.
These were built by my colleague Steve Bowman.
If I remember correctly, we had about six of these and they were set up on a, sort of, sandy base with some polystyrene rocks in the background, and that again was one that was against the CSO blue, so not actual sky could be put in behind them.
NARRATOR: But not all of the exotic settings in Planet of the Spiders were shot against CSO backdrops.
A lot of material was filmed on location in the West Country.
Where that shows is this huge chase that takes place in Episode 2.
Take me to the airstrip.
We'll spot him from the air.
You know, hovercraft and car and speedboat and helicopter.
You know, Jon's Whomobile.
He said to me one day, he said, "I know you're keen on sailing," and I said, "Yes, that's right.
" He said, "Are you going to the boat show this year?" And I said, "Oh, I shall if I can.
" He said, "Well, go to such and such a stand," he said, "because somebody "has built an individual hovercraft," he said, "a blow-up hovercraft.
" He said it would be marvellous if we could get that into a Doctor Who.
And I saw it, and I liked it very much, and I spoke to the designer, owner and said, "Would you be happy about this?" "Ooh, yes, "he said.
"I'd be very pleased.
" At the same time, Jon had seen, when we went on location for another show, the little gyrocopter, like a little miniature helicopter thing, and he'd said the same thing about this.
"'Cause surely, sometime we can get that into the show," or something.
So I quite deliberately thought, "Well, as it's Jon's last, "let's give him a real taste of the fun of this.
" He's turned off to the right, Brigadier.
I say again, he's turned off to the right.
Jon loved anything you could drive, you know, and drive fast and dangerously.
And he could do it.
He was very good at handling them.
Most of the driving, not absolutely all, but most of the driving in that chase where you see Jon is being done by Jon.
(ENGINES STARTING) MARK: It's obviously indulgent, but very sweet of him to do it.
I think the problem, as is always the way, there's no narrative to it.
It's just a chase.
Nothing happens in it, really.
There's no setback.
There's nothing that You know, the Doctor plunges into some water and has to clamber into a hovercraft.
It's liked they've lined up and he's got an Oyster Card, and he just pops something next to him.
Doctor! We're flying! Yes, of course we're flying.
And it was only years afterward that I realised that from story terms it was absolutely nonsense, because in the end, the spider, the invisible spider on the villain's back, played by John Dearth, saying, "Concentrate, concentrate!" He concentrated and vanished from the boat and appeared back at the meditation centre.
Why didn't you do that right at the beginning? I mean, why did the chase ever appear on screen? I mean, when it was being chased at UNIT headquarters, why didn't the spider say, "Concentrate, concentrate," and vanish? Nobody else seemed to notice this, so maybe we got away with it.
Clever, Lupton.
(CHIMING) (WHISPERING) Pretty.
MARK: One of the things I love from this story is Tommy, and it's absolutely, inextricably linked to the fact I was brought up opposite a mental hospital.
And I remember being very, very struck by this character.
And obviously he had this very, "Oh, pretty Sarah Jane," kind of, simple demeanour.
All Tommy's pretties.
But the idea of the crystal making him cleverer, I just thought it was wonderful.
It is wonderful.
(CHIMING) And there's a brilliant piece of writing when he suddenly speaks very differently.
Tommy, you're normal! You're just like everybody else! I sincerely hope not.
"I sincerely hope not.
" I've never forgotten that, and I'm not just saying that with the benefit of hindsight.
I never forgot that.
It made me sit up, even as a kid.
It's a brilliant piece of work and such a clever idea.
Not patronising at all.
It's terribly touching.
Through the power of the crystal, he becomes sufficiently self-aware that he doesn't want to be like one of the herd.
He actually wants to be an individual.
That's a wonderful message.
Really very well done.
NARRATOR: In the role of Tommy, John Kane was one of the few new faces in Planet of the Spiders, because, in another nod to the departing Doctor, the guest cast was largely made up of actors who'd already starred with Jon Pertwee in previous serials.
There was probably a strong element of nostalgia in it, to have people Jon knew and had worked with, and that he'd be happy and comfortable with.
NARRATOR: In John Pertwee's first season, Cyril Shaps had played Dr Lennox in The Ambassadors of Death, while Walter Randall had been the first victim of Project Inferno.
In subsequent seasons, Christopher Burgess had appeared in Terror of the Autons, Terrence Lodge in Carnival of Monsters, and Andrew Staines in both of those stories.
As we've already heard, George Cormack had played King Dalios in The Time Monster, Kevin Lindsay was Linx in The Time Warrior, and John Dearth was the voice of Boss in The Green Death.
The Queen Spider was voiced by Roger Delgado's widow, Kismet, while the voice of Lupton's spider belonged to Ysanne Churchman, previously the voice of Alpha Centauri in the Peladon adventures.
The Great One is all-seeing.
SPIDERS: All praise to the Great One! The Great One is all-knowing.
SPIDERS: All praise to the Great One! The female voices, an inspired idea, building up to the Great One herself.
I remember the wonderful, kind of, mania All praise to me! and, actually, Pertwee looks terrified.
GREAT ONE: 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.
For a Doctor he was always so much in control and was so avuncular.
I mean, that's why I just adored him.
He was like the granddad I didn't have.
He was so in command, so on the rare occasions when he showed fear, you really believed it.
And in this instance, and because it's the ultimate, I remember being frightened by looking at him and thinking, "This is really serious.
" (WHOOSHING) (SARAH GASPS) SARAH: Doctor! Even though nobody had fired him, he decided that he wanted to go, but even so, I think it was a great emotional wrench for him, to actually To actually leave the programme.
I got lost in the time vortex.
The Tardis brought me home.
I cried a great deal, yes.
I'm very emotional.
I was very upset about it.
Yes, I was upset about leaving.
I had five years.
A good five years.
(LAUGHING) But if I'd had five minutes, I probably would have cried, too.
I can remember watching the last episode of Planet of the Spiders at my Uncle Jack's house.
If I put myself there, I can see the layout of the front room, and my cousins and my brother and my dad watching it.
I had to face my my fear, Sarah.
I had to face my fear.
And this growing, awful, terrible realisation that he was going to die.
But you forget, he is a Time Lord.
I will give the process a little push and the cells will regenerate.
He will become a new man.
He says, "You may find him a little erratic when he recovers," so that was, kind of, paving the way for Tom.
When will all this happen? Well, there's no time like the present, is there? I can remember knowing with dread certainty what was happening before my eyes Look, Brigadier.
Look.
I think it's starting.
and thinking, "Who's that "ugly, beak-nosed" What's that all about? It took me a long time to warm to Tom Baker.
A long time.
-Who? -MAN: Tom.
-Tom who? -MAN: Tom Baker.
I don't know Tom Baker.