Planet Of The Spiders is the last serial of the 11th season and the last appearance of Jon Pertwee in the title role. It's a 6 parter that started airing on May 4 1974. The Doc and the Brig are at a stage show we never see where they find a real clairvoyant. They take him back to the Doctor's lab where he dies in an experiment with the blue crystal that the Doctor had gotten from Metebelis Three. He'd given it to Jo Grant before she left the series and she mailed it back at the start of this serial. In a seperate stream of story Sarah Jane Smith is visiting a Tibetian meditation center with Mike Yates. He was the member of UNIT that sided with the mad men in Invasion Of The Dinosaurs. After his discharge he's trying to find himself with some om ni pad me hum. Unfortunately there's a dangerous petty man, named Lupton, who has some misguided visions of grandeur. He makes contact with the spider people on Metebelis Three. After one arrives and takes over his mind there's a massive chase that helps fill up a lot of time. Lupton steals the Doctor's new car and the Doc and UNIT give chase in the Doctor's old car.
They race about the countryside and end at an airfield where Lupton steals a tiny gyrocopter. The Doc reveals that his new car can fly though the effects aren't so good. He chases Lupton for ages, then Lupton switches to a boat, and the Doc follows in a mini hovercraft. Just when the Doc catches up to Lupton and jumps aboard the boat the man disappears, transported back to the meditaiton center. It begs the question as to why he couldn't have did it right from the start. At least they had some goofy vehicles to look at. Barry Letts talks about the chase in the making of featurette and he said that Jon Pertwee had seen the mini hovercraft and talked the designer-builder to see if he'd like to have it featured on Doctor Who. He would and they give him a bit part, as the hovercraft driver. Jon Pertwee did much of the hovercraft driving in the chase. Jon liked his gadgets and odd vehicles.
Moving along Sarah Jane gets teleported to Metabelis Three and the Doc finally gets his Tardis fired up in the third episode and gives chase. The Doctor helps the down trodden people who supply sheep, and themselves, as food for the spiders in winning their freedom. There's the usual running around and getting caught mixed in with the yakking. Once all the spiders are dead the Doc returns the crystal to a cave that kills him. He's replaced with the new Doctor in the last minutes of the show.
I was not impressed with the story for the most part but you can watch it yourself and make up your own mind. I found it too long, padded and kind of dull at times. The blue screen didn't work well on several shots. You'd think they would have done a better job for the final serial with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. Producer Berry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks would leave the show at the end of this season. I'll be finding out what the new people do next week.
The extras filled asecond disc. There was a nice piece on Pertwee, one on John Kane who played a pretty good part as a mentally challenged man who gets smarter because of the blue crystal, a piece on Barry Letts and his desire to get back to directing, a Now and Then location short, a photo gallery and a 102 minutes version of the story with all the credits trimmed out. It's the first time that I have seen that. There's also the usual commentary but I never listened to that. Most of these discs have a PDF of the radio times listings. I don't find them too interesing but occasionally there's a nice picture in the listing.
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