Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders

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Planet of the Spiders is the sixth and final serial of Doctor Who Season 11, originally broadcast in six episodes from 4 May to 8 June 1974. It was written by Robert Sloman and directed by Barry Letts. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Strange events at a meditation centre link to a blue crystal the Doctor once took from Metebelis Three, drawing him and Sarah into a plan by giant intelligent spiders who want to increase their power. With Mike Yates seeking to make amends and UNIT trying to help, the Doctor returns to Metebelis Three to face the Great One and the consequences of his past choices.

Episode 1

Months after UNIT’s last case, Mike Yates retreats to a meditation centre run by the serene K’anpo Rinpoche and his smiling acolyte Cho-Je: and stumbles on a secret circle led by a bitter salesman named Lupton. Their chanting ripples the air; something answers. At UNIT, the Doctor proudly shows Sarah the sparkling blue crystal he once snatched from Metebelis Three; it amplifies thought: and unease.

Mike slips Sarah a warning: men at the retreat plan to use mind-power for something dangerous. That night, in the cellar, Lupton calls again and a spider (huge, intelligent) materialises, vaults onto his back, and hisses orders inside his head. Under its goad, Lupton infiltrates UNIT, steals the Metebelis crystal, and bolts. The Doctor roars after him in Bessie; Lupton evades pursuit with impossible teleports.

Back at the centre, the Doctor senses a deeper pattern: the crystal didn’t make the trouble: it attracted it. In the dormitory, gentle handyman Tommy discovers the Doctor’s spare crystal shard and clutches it like treasure; it glows. and something begins to change in him. Downstairs, Lupton’s spider-dominated circle opens a doorway that smells of ozone and wild jungles. Sarah, following clues, slips behind a beaded curtain and feels a breeze from another world. Somewhere far away, many legs turn toward Earth.

Episode 2

The hunt explodes into a manic chase: Lupton on a stolen car, the Doctor in Bessie ( then a speedboat, a hovercraft, and a helicopter) their paths crossing like skeins of string. Then Lupton simply vanishes mid-road, snatched by teleport back to the meditation cellar. There he delivers the crystal to the spider cult, who chant until a second portal blooms.

On his back, the Spider (an Eight-Leg from Metebelis Three) promises power and demands obedience. The Doctor and Sarah confront the circle and are repelled by a psychic shove that leaves the Doctor shaken. He turns to K’anpo, the centre’s abbot, and senses a mind older than Earth wearing kindness like a robe. K’anpo counsels: fear empowers the enemy. In the dorm, Tommy’s blue shard clears his mind; he reads his first word and beams.

Sarah sneaks back, hides as Lupton’s group opens the gateway, and is dragged through by a clutch of glittering legs. The Doctor hurls himself after her and is thrown back. On the other side, a hot wind howls over black jungles. On this side, the Spider on Lupton’s back peers through the portal and names what it wants: the last Metebelis crystal (the one in the Doctor’s pocket). The Doctor squares his shoulders. Time to go to Metebelis Three.

Episode 3

Sarah tumbles onto Metebelis Three, the nights filled with blue light and shrilling insects: and is seized by rag-clad humans who live in fear of “the Eight-Legs.” They are a crashed colony’s descendants, worked like serfs by human overseers who carry spiders on their backs like living crowns. In a temple of webs, the Spider Queen regards Sarah as a clever tool: send her back for the Doctor’s crystal or host a stronger mind.

The Doctor follows in the TARDIS and is captured by villagers, then by guards, then by the spiders themselves. He learns the shape of the tyranny: the Eight-Legs struck a bargain generations ago (safety for obedience) and grew fat on fear, using psychic amplification from crystal caverns to ride human hosts. The Doctor slips stocks with a grin and allies with a young rebel couple in the hills, learning routes through the glittering forests and whispers about the “Great One,” a vast spider plotting perfection in a web of crystal.

In the temple, the Queen places brood-sisters on trembling backs and turns a dial; humans cry out, then smile with borrowed voices. Sarah, defiant, pretends to yield and snatches the original blue crystal for a heartbeat before it is torn away. Beneath the mountain, something enormous breathes.

Episode 4

The Doctor steals into the crystal caves with Sarah and sees the truth laid bare: a natural lattice amplifies thought; the missing Metebelis crystal would complete a resonator that could shake minds across light years. That is why the spiders want it back: and why the Doctor’s theft years ago set this future in motion.

A guard patrol drives them apart; Sarah is marched to the Queen, who orders her sent to Earth as bait. The Doctor recovers the crystal in the confusion and flees to the TARDIS, guilt gnawing. Back at the meditation centre, Lupton’s faction fractures; different spiders demand different rewards. In the dorm, Tommy’s transformation flowers (his mind clear, warm, brave) and he hides the Doctor’s friends from the spider-ridden men.

The Doctor seeks K’anpo’s counsel and hears what he feared: there is no trick. He must return the crystal to its rightful place even if that road leads to death. A spider warrior materialises in the hallway; K’anpo stills it with a look and quietly reveals his truth: he is a Time Lord hermit, and Cho-Je his projected future self. He helps the Doctor drop his fear. Sarah pleads to go too. Together they step back toward Metebelis Three, carrying a blue stone that hums with fate.

Episode 5

On Metebelis Three, revolt flickers. The Doctor rouses villagers to throw off their riders by breaking concentration and refusing fear; a handful manage it and stare, free, at the world. The Queen hesitates between cruelty and caution as her sisters whisper that only the Great One’s plan matters. Lupton arrives through the portal, drunk on borrowed power, and is discarded by his spider when he falters; ambition makes a thin meal.

Sarah slips among overseers and opens pens while the Doctor sabotages a crystal amplifier, buying minutes. Then the cave shakes with a voice that isn’t a voice. The Great One summons. The Doctor answers, walking alone into a chamber whose walls are a web of pure Metebelis crystal. The Great One (vast, blazing, mad with certainty) explains the last step: his blue crystal completes the lattice, focusing thought into godhood.

The Doctor whispers that the web will feedback and burn her mind; she laughs. Outside, human rebels clash with guards as spiders leap; Sarah fights beside them until the ground itself sings. The Doctor backs away clutching the crystal and runs: not in cowardice, in dread of what giving it will do; He realises there is no other way. He turns, eyes wet, and goes back toward the light.

Episode 6

The Doctor climbs to the Great One’s throne and sets the blue crystal in place. The web completes; power screams; triumph becomes agony. The Great One’s mind overloads, her palace detonates in cascading light, and the spider sisterhood falls with her (Queens and riders alike) leaving freed humans blinking under a sky that finally feels like weather, not will.

The Doctor staggers to the TARDIS, hands shaking, radiation from the crystal field eating him from the inside. He dematerialises with a promise to Sarah that he’ll be all right and is gone a long time. Back on Earth, weeks pass. Sarah and the Brigadier wait at UNIT until, at last, the TARDIS groans into the lab. The Doctor shuffles out, pale and smiling, murmurs that he got lost on the way, and collapses. Cho-Je steps from nowhere as if answering a bell; K’anpo follows, older and kinder than age, and explains that Time Lords change “face and form” when the body fails: renewal, not death.

He guides the process, lays glowing hands on the Doctor’s temples, and the old energy unfurls, reshaping features, stretching bones. Sarah blinks back tears. The Brigadier mutters something about a new hairdo. Where the Third Doctor lay, a wide-eyed stranger breathes in: and grins. The Fourt Doctor has arrived.

Themes

As a farewell, Planet of the Spiders is grand, strange, and sincerely felt: an epitaph built from consequences. It lacks the white-knuckle cohesion of Inferno and the folk-horror snap of The Dæmons, and the extended chase can feel indulgent.

Yet its atmosphere, moral reckoning, and final grace note lift it alongside The Green Death as a defining Pertwee statement. The blue crystal, the Great One, and K’anpo’s guidance give the Doctor’s last stand a mythic shimmer, making this a top-tier send-off even if not the era’s single finest hour.

Its threads knot the UNIT years to the future with care. The Metebelis III arc (teased in Carnival of Monsters and cashed in during The Green Death) comes home to roost, while Captain Yates’s redemption closes a wound opened in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Sarah Jane’s courage carries straight into Robot, and the regeneration clears the runway for a new tone in The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks. By returning what he stole and paying the price, the Third Doctor ends where he must: passing the torch so the story can change shape and keep running.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Third Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Third Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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