Planet of the Spiders

6 episodes
Aired between 4th May 1974 and 8th June 1974

Written by Robert Sloman
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Barry Letts

Synopsis
Mike Yates, ex UNIT officer has taken himself off to a an idyllic country manor, where Buddhists have founded a meditation centre.  His goal is to sort his head out after all the brainwashing he's been through (see The Green Death and Invasion of the Dinosaurs).

Whist at the retreat, he comes across a small group of people, also staying at the retreat, who have turned their Buddhist practices to the occult.  They meet secretly in the basement and use a mandala and a strange meditation ritual to try and summon something into being.   Yates watches them one night and is forced to flee before they catch him.  The group, led by a man called Lupton, deduce that the only one with a car there that night was Yates.

Elsewhere, the Doctor and the Brigadier are on a night out.

They go to see Professor Herbert Clegg, a gentleman who runs a clairvoyance stage show.  The Doctor is interested in him, as he is currently doing research into psychic energy, and as such he invites Clegg to visit UNIT HQ.

Clegg accepts the invitation, believing that the Doctor is just another customer wanting a psychic reading.

He passes everything off as a trick, simple illusions; a story that the Brigadier is more than happy to accept, but the Doctor knows better.  He watched the show, and could tell that Clegg's reactions were far faster than they should have been.  He accuses Clegg of being authentically clairvoyant.  Clegg admits it and the Doctor convinces him to undertake some tests to help his research.

Back at the country manor, Yates has called in Sarah Jane.  He wants her as an investigative journalist to look into it and hopefully tell UNIT as no one there would believe him.

As he fills her in on the ride down, they almost hit a tractor and are forced to swerve off the road, It turns out to be an illusion, and is clearly a message sent to Mike to stop prying.

The Doctor hooks Clegg up to a machine that can read his thought patterns and begins the tests, just as Sgt. Benton arrives with a package addressed to all the main UNIT staff.  The Doctor playfully asks Clegg to tell them what's inside the envelope.  He concentrates and tells them it's a blue crystal.

The Doctor smiles and opens the package to show that it is indeed a blue crystal.  It contains a note from Jo Grant, sent all the way from the Amazon (not BY Amazon you understand).  It says that her and Cliff are fine, but the natives don't like the look of the crystal and if they want to make any progress in finding their rare mushroom, they need to get rid of it, so she's sent it back.

Little do they realise that whilst they are reading the note, Clegg is staring into the flashing crystal.  The ground begins to shake and Clegg has terrifying visions before he dies of a heart attack.  The Doctor uses the machine to find out his thoughts prior to death, revealing a vision of a spider.

Meanwhile, Mike and Liz get to the manor.  After a bit of snooping, they meet Lupton who alludes to the fact that he summoned the illusion of the tractor and gives him a friendly warning.  They pretend to be frightened and leave the manor in the car, but then ditch it outside the grounds and sneak back to find the group are in the cellar.  Mike and Liz are spotted by an autistic handyman called Tommy.

 Sarah gives Tommy a trinket to keep him quiet as he loves pretty objects, and once alone again, Mike and Sarah sneak down into the basement.  They watch the ritual commence and are horrified to see a giant spider appear on the mandala before their very eyes.

The men are just as surprised to see the spider as Sarah and Mike.  They try to flee, but one is shot by blue lightning that the spider emits.

Lupton commands the spider to leave but it talks and it tells him he will have great power if he helps it retrieve the blue Metabilis crystal.  It jumps on his back and disappears, much to everyone's surprise.

The men leave, with Lupton warning them that they tell no one of this.

Back at UNIT HQ, Clegg is taken away to the coroners and the Doctor decides that the only thing for it is to look into the crystal himself.

Mike and Sarah leave the cellar.  Sarah goes back to tell UNIT but Mike decides to stay and try to warn the Abbot of the retreat.  He hears Lupton and one of his cronies coming down the corridor so makes himself scarce.

Lupton explains that the spider's mind and his are now psychically joined together.  It tells Lupton of the crystal and together they seek it with their minds.

The Doctor looks into the crystal and spaces out for a bit, but cannot get anything accurate out of the thing.

Mike goes to see the Abbot but Tommy tells him it's late and stops him.  Mike is forced to give him another trinket to send him away, but the delay allows Lupton to find him.  Lupton gives Mike another friendly warning and he's forced to go back to his room to keep his alibi.

The next morning, Sarah visits the Doctor.  She tells him everything she's seen and explains about the spider which correlates to the image from the blue crystal.  Little do they know that Lupton and the spider have tracked the crystal's aura to UNIT HQ.  Lupton shoots blue lightning out of his hands and disables any guards that get in his way.

He then uses his new found psychic power to teleport the crystal to his hand from outside the door.

The Doctor, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier and Sgt. Benton give chase in Bessie as he escapes in the Whomobile.  They run around the countryside until they arrive at an airstrip.  The Doctor gets in a small helicopter and spots him from the air,

After a lengthy chase, that draws the attention of the Police, Lupton realises that it's no good so he abandons the Whomobile and hides.  As the group look for him, he sneaks into the helicopter and flies off.

The Brigadier thinks all is lost, but the Doctor and Sarah rush to the Whomobile and fly off after him!

The chase continues in the air until Lupton runs out of fuel and is forced to land, where he then steals a speed boat and races off.  The Doctor leaves Sarah by the shore and jumps in a hovercraft and continues the chase.

After even more cat and mouse antics, the spider tells Lupton to concentrate.  He and the spider disappear just as the Doctor jumps on the boat to stop him.

Lupton re-appears in the meditation centre and goes back to his room, unaware that he's seen by Tommy.  He makes plans with the Spider to take over Metabilis III and gain untold power from the crystal, but he doesn't count on Tommy stealing it through the open window to add to his "pretty" collection.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane decide to head to the meditation centre as it's the logical place for him to be.  They begin searching for Lupton.

Lupton is obviously angry that the crystal has been stolen, but he and the spider have no choice but to  abandon it as they are summoned to Metabilis III by the Queen Spider.  Together, they make a pact to bluff their way through.

Sarah Jane finds Lupton just as he goes through the time vortex from the mandala in the basement. She steps on the thing too and is transported shortly after, The Doctor is forced to race back to UNIT and use the TARDIS' hardwired coordinates to go and get her back.

On Metabilis III, Sarah finds herself in a human village, where the primitive folk are subjugated by the spiders (or 8-legs as they call them).  The spiders periodically visit the village and take people away for food.  Sarah tries to stick up for the village elder as one of the spiders arrives and is arrested herself.

The Doctor shows up in the TARDIS just as she's about to go and gets himself into a fight with the spider's human servants when he tries to bargain.

He gets shot by the human guard's use of blue lightning and falls unconscious at the foot of the TARDIS.  In all the confusion, the elder's wife gives Sarah Jane a red scarf to hide herself in the crowd.  The 8-legs and her servants leave, taking the elder with them and enforcing a curfew on the village.

Back at the meditation centre, Mike Yates sees Lupton's cult gathering in a room together.  He sneaks closer to overhear them.  They're worried about Lupton and are panicking.  They are paranoid when Tommy turns up to clean the room and they shove him outside, warning him to keep away from them.

On Metabilis III, the elders sons take the unconscious Doctor into their home along with Sarah.  They're convinced the Doctor is dead until he moves slightly.  Even though he's not dead, he's certainly dying.

The 8-leg Queen goes back to her citadel and finds Lupton among her council.

She challenges him but it turns out his spider is prepared to stand with him.  They claim they have the crystal and will not give it up to the great one (all hail the great one), some kind of spider-goddess, until they've been suitably rewarded with power.  The Queen counters their demand by telling her council about the Doctor and Sarah's presence on the planet.  She suggests that Lupton's requests be denied until they are dealt with.

Back on Earth, Tommy ends up looking into the crystal and getting his intelligence significantly increased.  He's amazed to find that he can read and think intelligent thoughts.

Elsewhere, the Doctor whispers to Sarah to get a special machine from the TARDIS.  Sarah risks death by going out during the curfew, but manages to get it.  As she turns to head back, she comes face to face with Lupton who captures her and takes her off to the Citadel.  she leaves the machine by the foot of the TARDIS.

Back on earth, Yates decides to approach Lupton's cronies directly.  He tries to reason with them but they're so paranoid that one knocks him out cold.

Sarah is placed in a web cocoon alongside the village elder, whose name is Sabor.  He's quite content to accept his fate and recommends they just wait for death.

The Doctor recovers and over breakfast, he learns from Sabor's sons that the humans are descendants of colonists that crashed on the planet.  The spiders were normal sized ones that came on that ship too, but thanks to the special crystals around, they evolved into the size they are now and got intelligent.

The sons ask for the Doctor's help and he agrees, but first, he asks for lots of different types of rocks and begins testing them with his machine to find out which ones have special powers in them.  He finds some and can use them to counter the blue lighting.  He sets off out to rescue Sabor and Sarah.

He gets to the citadel and strolls in, countering the guards lighting on his way.

He gets into a brawl and Lupton disarms him, demanding  that the guards kill him.  The guards refuse to obey Lupton and capture him instead, taking him to the cocoon area where Sarah is glad to see him only to become dismayed when the guards follow.  They web him up in a cocoon and leave him there.

Back in the Council of the eight legs, the Queen discovers that Lupton and his spider conspirator have lied, they don't have the crystal.

Lupton thinks fast and tells them that it's still on Earth, yes, but it's hidden where only he knows.  The rest of the Council see it as the Queens failing and speak of a new coronation if there's no invasion of Earth.  The Queen says she will visit the Great One (all praise the Great One) and get approval for the invasion.

The Doctor and Sarah swap puns as they're held captive.  Sarah questions why the spiders didn't just take the crystal from Metabilis before the Doctor did.  The Doctor says they weren't around then though.

The guards come back and take Sarah Jane away.

Back in the village, Sabor's sons get the protective stones as headbands and gather a militia to assault the citadel.

As time passes, Sabor carries on doing his Monty Python impression (you know, "you lucky, lucky, lucky...")  The Doctor tells him to shut up because he's spoiling the Doctor's concentration in trying to loosen the webs.  Thanks to tricks learnt by Harry Houdini, he manages to get out of the webs.

Meanwhile, Sarah Jane is taken to the Queen who offers Sarah a bargain.

The Queen doesn't want to invade the Earth, and explains that she lied to the council.  She asks Sarah to help her get the crystal back and gives a promise to let the Doctor and Sarah Live, as well as listening to the villagers and generally being more kind to them.  Sarah relents and the spider Queen possesses her.

Back on earth, Lupton's cronies talk to Mike Yates.  Mike convinces them that the only way to help Lupton is to try and re-establish contact via the mandala, the hope being that Sarah Jane comes back as well.

In the council, Lupton talks to his spider and says they should go back and get the crystal ASAP and use the bridge between worlds to kickstart the invasion.  The spiders turn on Lupton for his presumptuousness but allow him to live.

The Doctor is running through the corridors trying to find Sarah.  He hears her calling him but when he gets there, he comes face to face so to speak with the Great One (all praise to the Great One).

On Earth, Tommy  is reading everything he can, his mind full of questions.  He eventually goes to find Mike Yates, believing he can tell him what's happened to his brain.  He sees Yates and Lupton's cronies talk about the cellar.  He makes the connection that something's happening with Lupton and the cellar.  He decides to go to Cho Je, the centre's guru.

The Doctor tries to make sense of the strange feminine voice coming from the ether.  It is the Great One (all praise to the Great One).  She demands that the Doctor returns the last perfect crystal of Metabilis to her so she can complete her Crystal web and span her consciousness throughout the cosmos.  The Doctor refuses to help her, but she can effortlessly control his mind.  She makes a big show of forcing him to stomp around in a circle against his will and jeers at him for feeling afraid, a sensation he's not particularly used to.  The spider god demands again that the Doctor brings him the crystal and in fear, he flees the area.

Yates and Lupton's cronies begin chanting and the council of spiders pick up on the energies.  They work to open another gateway through the mandala and send some spiders through it.

Tommy tells Cho-Je about everything that he knows and the guru calmly asks him to go and get the crystal whilst he goes into the cellar and warns them to stop.  The spiders appear and zap Cho-Je with blue lightning, Yates too when he tries to stop them.  Tommy hears it all and runs off to find the abbot of the meditation centre: K'anpo.

Back on Metabilis, the villagers assault the citadel just as the Doctor finds Sarah Jane.  She convinces the Doctor to hold her hands and together they teleport back to the TARDIS.  The Doctor is a bit bemused but Sarah waves it away by saying that the Queen spider taught her how.  They rush into the TARDIS and go back to the meditation centre.

At said meditation centre, the spiders jump on all the cronies backs and disappear.

They confront the Doctor as he arrives in the TARDIS but he counters their lightning with one of the stones he gathered.

 Tommy runs in and helps them escape, locking the cronies in the cellar.  Sarah looks astonished at Tommy, saying "you're normal, you're just like everybody else" to which Tommy says "I sincerely hope not."

Tommy takes Sarah and the Doctor to K'anpo Rimpoche and waits outside.  The old abbot seems to know the Doctor and listens with a glint in his eye as the Doctor recounts what's happened.

The cronies get out of the cellar and try to assault Tommy with fists as well as lighting.  Neither works though and he stands fast, refusing to let them by.

In the other room, K'anpo suggests to the Doctor that giving them the crystal might be a good idea.  The Doctor refuses and says he doesn't know where it is anyway, but K'anpo reveals it in his hand.  Tommy gave it to him.  Sarah suddenly acts rather strange and begins talking with the Queen spider's voice.  She shoots the Doctor with lighting and advances on K'anpo.

The Doctor is still conscious though and he and K'anpo talk Sarah round into repelling the Queens possession.

The Doctor seals the deal by getting her to look into the crystal.  The Queen falls off Sarah's back and disappears.

Outside the cronies lighting still cannot affect Tommy.  The spiders try to focus their energy.

After more discussion, the Doctor figures out that K'anpo Rimpoche is the very same hermit that the Doctor spent time with on Gallifrey (see The Time Monster).  K'anpo explains that he regenerated and went to Tibet and decided to stay there.

He explains that Cho-Je is a figment of his personality and not truly alive in the strictest sense.  K'anpo tells the Doctor that he must face his greatest fear, meaning that he's to take the crystal back to the Great One (all praise to the Great One).

The cronies storm the room and shoot K'anpo but are too late to stop the Doctor from teleporting to the cellar (with the help of K'anpo's mysticism).  He rushes into the TARDIS and goes back to Metabilis III.

When he arrives, he meets Sabor's sons who tell him the attack was successful.  As they lead him into the citadel however, it becomes obvious that the attack actually failed and they're all possessed by spiders.

The council of spiders gloat at the Doctor but Lupton tries to snatch the crystal from him.  The spiders stop him as they know that on Metabilis III, the Great One will see them coveting the crystal (all praise to the Great One).  They let the Doctor pass and take the crystal to their goddess, much to Lupton's dismay.  The resentful man rants at the spider's and get's shocked to death for it.

Back on earth, Sarah and Tommy care for K'anpo as he lies dying.  He tells them not to be concerned and they watch as he regenerates into the younger Cho-Je.

The Doctor takes the crystal back to the Great One (all praise to the Great One) and advises that if she puts the final crystal in the web, it will cause a feedback circuit that will destroy her.

The spider goddess mocks him and says it's too late for him either way, as the sheer amount of crystals in the cave are already destroying the cells in the Doctor's body one by one, so it doesn't matter for him - he's a dead man anyway.  She levitates the crystal from his hand and places it in the web, laughing and waxing maniacally.

The Doctor watches as her brain gets overloaded and begins to throb with energy.

The rest of the spiders begin having fits (including the ones on Lupton's cronies).  The citadel and the mountain on Metabilis III self-destruct and the spiders on earth die.  The crisis is over, but the Doctor has gone.

Three weeks later....


Sarah Jane pops into UNIT HQ looking morose and wandering around the Doctor's lab, lamenting his loss to the Brigadier.  She's convinced that he knew going back to Metabilis III would be the death of him, and she says they won't see him again.

As she finishes her words, the TARDIS materialises in the lab and the Doctor emerges, looking deathly pale.  He says he got lost in the time vortex and collapses on the floor.  Sarah holds his hand and tearfully begs him not to die.

He says "A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don't cry, while there's life, there's ....."  with that he goes silent and closes his eyes.

Suddenly, a mystical music and energy field appears, heralding the arrival of a levitating K'anpo Rimpoche.

The Brigadier watches baffled as K'anpo reassures Sarah that the Doctor's alive.  He says that he will give the Doctor's cells a little push with some of his energy and the Doctor's cells will regenerate.  He will look different and his brain cells might be a bit frazzled for a while, but he will effectively be the same man.  Sarah asks when it will happen and K'anpo says there's no time like the present.  He gestures towards the Doctor and fades away, parting with the words "look after him".

Sarah gasps and says that it looks like the regeneration's started and the Brigadier exhales, uttering the words "well, here we go again."

Slowly, the Doctor's face transforms into a man with dark curly hair and a big nose.

Trivia

• Given that Barry Letts and Terrence Dicks were about to leave, it's no surprise that Letts kept this last story for himself.  He co-wrote the piece officially with Robert Sloman, but a significant part of it had Lett's influence, chiefly everything about Buddhism as Letts was big into Buddhist practices himself. 

• Jon Pertwee's back troubles continued, which is why you see him far less in the fight scenes than in previous stories.

• The guy who played Tommy went to the first rehearsals for this story by taxi.  He decided to try his Tommy voice out on the driver and managed to convince the driver that he was a bit simple.  When the Driver asked him why he wanted to go to television centre, he was caught in a situation where he didn't want to have to explain that he was putting it on, so he said he was there to see Doctor Who.  This gave the taxi driver the unfortunate job of trying to convince him that Doctor Who wasn't actually real!  They even had to get the security guard to reassure him that this was just a TV studio.  He was in a very bad position and ended up convincing the driver to go, and then explaining to the security guard in his normal voice what had happened!

• The guy who played Tommy later went on to create the British sitcom Terry and June.

• Roger Delgado's widow was having a tough time getting any inheritance from the insurance company as they were being unscrupulous and finding loopholes.  To help her out, Barry Letts gave her some voice over work as the voice of the Great One (all praise to the Great One).

• Liz Sladen was absolutely terrified of spiders.  This as you can imagine, would be a problem when she had to have a giant one hanging off her back.  In an act of kindness, Jon Pertwee worked with her for a couple of weeks, beginning with a tiny spider prop and urging her to touch them, building them up in size each day until she could do the scene.  No wonder the bit where she says "I'm frightened" seems pretty convincing!

• You might be surprised to know that this is the first story to use the word regeneration when talking about the Doctor changing forms.  From this point on, it would become a staple, and would also be an indicator that each subsequent regeneration had to have the Doctor fatally injured in some way.

• So this is the end of an era.  For this last story, Jon was a bit subdued, keeping more to himself in rehearsals, answering fan mail and learning his lines.  He was undoubtebly sad to go, but according to him, he went to head of serials, Shaun Sutton and offered to stay if they paid him more.  He says Sutton refused.  Barry Letts however contests this story, saying it had nothing to do with Shaun as he made the final decisions around what the money was spent on.  Jon went on to have a fruitful career, especially in children's TV where he played the loveable scarecrow, Wurzel Gummidge, and Spotty in Superted, but nothing quite overshadowed his time in Doctor Who.  He was a well known face on the convention circuit and in the dark years between series', he worked with Mark Gatiss and the guys who would establish Big Finish to do some B-Movie straight to video spin offs.

What worked

• The spider designs were quite good, especially Boris, the running spider

• The feel of the occult was pretty good and creepy

• Loved the Brigadier's one liners and flummoxed disbelief

• The hovercraft chase was refreshingly different 

• I like it how they tied up all the loose ends such as the crystal and a satisfactory redemption for Mike Yates

• Sarah combating the Queen spider's mind control

• The final scene

What didn't work

• The new Metabilis III

• Every single thing about the village and villagers on Metabilis III

• The script's idea of the Doctor being scared

• Tommy

• Lupton's cronies attacking Tommy

• K'anpo's levitation

Overall Feelings
So it's come down to this.  The end of Pertwee's run and given the often action oriented stories he's been involved in, we can expect something really explosive to send him out on....well, we can expect it.  What we get is re-heated left overs.  This story is the bubble and squeak of the Doctor Who universe.  Helicopters - check, chases in vehicles just left there with the keys in them - check, the Doctor doing kung-fu - check.  This is a paint by numbers story, but it's not necessarily what Barry Letts wanted it to be.

The story was supposed to have deeper meanings to it, a moralistic tale that made us all think.  Some of those things resonate through, fair enough. but for every nugget of spiritualism injected into the story, there's a huge blob of bad CSO, crappy acting, or pointless time wasting scenes.  Even the spiritual bits don't seem to fit for me.  I'm sure lots like them, but it feels out of kilter, like Barry Letts shoehorned them in because he wanted to, not because they could legitimately add anything to the story - to me, K'anpo's presence, levitation and pedantic wisdom is as out of place and wrong as Midichlorians are in the Star Wards Universe.

But is it all bad?  No, it can't be if it's re-heated Pertwee. They've got some of the things in there that made his time extra special.  The vehicles chosen for the chases were interesting, but we didn't need almost a full episode of them, only to find out that the spider could have teleported away in the first place.  The occult feel invokes the very best parts of the Daemons, and the end scene is pretty emotional.

For many, this is an adequate story with a famous ending that would influence Doctor Who for generations to come.  To me, it's disappointing because if it was toned down, and if some of the effects worked just a little bit better, and if we'd have seen Metabilis III like it appeared the first time, this would be one of the very, very best.

Rating

6 out of 10

Not the worst regeneration story ever, but it could have and should have been far better than this.

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Nice to watch once in a blue moon, if only for the nostalgia that this is the end of an era.

Watch this if you liked,,,

• The Web Planet

• The Abominable Snowmen

• The Daemons

• The Image of the Fendahl

• The State of Decay 

• The Runaway Bride (Doctor Who, Christmas Special)

Consulting the Matrix

Do you think the Doctor confronting his fears was a good climax?

The Monster of Peladon

Six episodes
Aired between 23rd March 1974 and 27th April 1974

Written by Brian Hayles
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Lennie Mayne

Synopsis

The society of Peladon has moved on since we last saw them.  They are now a member of the Galactic Federation and as such, the Federation have set up trade agreements to mine for the rare mineral: Trisilicate.  The only thing that hasn't progressed in an age, is the miners superstitions.  They are wary of the Federation's sonic lance and become terrified when using the lance causes an apparition of the fabled monster Aggedor to appear and vaporise one of them,

It is into this setting that the TARDIS materialises.  The Doctor intends to visit and introduce Sarah Jane to his old friend, King Peladon, but the TARDIS dumps them in the caverns under the citadel, a cause of much teasing on Sarah's part.  Despite Sarah wanting to take off again, the Doctor forces her to go with him through the tunnels to find the citadel.

In said citadel, the miners go with the federation consultants - Vega Nexos and a human called Eckersley to see the ruler of Peladon - Queen Thalira, daughter of King Peladon, and her political priest, Ortron.

The miners, led by Gebek and Ettis inform her that Aggedor is clearly unhappy that they are delving deep for the trisilicate, and Ortron is quick to fan the flames, making no attempt to hide the fact that he doesn't think they should be part of the Federation as they will be drawn into the current Federation war with Galaxy 5 (the reason why they need the trisilicate is the war effort).

Vega Nexos and Eckersley manage to convince the miners to go back and have a look.  When they get there, they use the sonic lance to blow a hole in a tunnel wall and Aggedor's spirit turns up again and vapourises Vega Nexos.  Eckersley and assures them it's all alright and blames the apparition of Aggedor on saboteurs from Galaxy 5.  Ortron sends his guards through the tunnels to capture anyone in there.

It just so happens that the Doctor and Sarah are wandering down the caverns, lost.  It's no surprise then when they are captured and brought before the queen as saboteurs.  It's only the appearance of Alpha Centauri who can vouch for the Doctor that saves them both.

After the Doctor and Sarah get up to speed with the goings on with Ortron advising the Queen that Aggedor's spirit is unhappy at the mining, Ettis' intent to cause an uprising and force the federation employees off world, and Gebek's insistence for a peaceful settlement; it's not long before the Doctor concludes that someone's causing Aggedor's spirit to appear and thereby manipulating this course of action.

The Doctor, with the Queen's permission, goes into the tunnels with her mute champion, Blor, to investrigate the last Aggedor sighting, entering the cave blasted open by the sonic lance.  Once they get there, Aggedor appears once again and vapourises Blor.

Whilst they're inside, Ettis and his miners turn up and blow the cave shut with the sonic lance, intending to seal the Doctor inside with Aggedor.  Luckily for the Doctor, Aggedor disappears again, and Gebek shows up.  Ettis tells Gebek that he's given the cave back to Aggedor to appease his spirit and trapped the Doctor inside.  Gebek tells him the Doctor's the only one helping them and so he uses the sonic lance to open up a gap in the rockfall for the Doctor to escape just as Aggedor appears again.

Once free, the Doctor and Gebek agree to join forces and convince the rest of the miners to defeat a bunch of guards that turn up.

Sarah, meanwhile hears about the cave in and decides to go into the caverns to find the Doctor.  It's not long before she's lost.  She comes across a strange metal door with a window in the caverns.  This is the refinery.  She see's someone through the window but when she tries to talk to them, they disappear.  She tries the door and a loud alarm sounds, hurting her brain.

Back in the Citadel control room, Eckersley and Alpha Centauri hear the tripped defenses and rush off to save Sarah.  

The Doctor meanwhile settles down with Gebek, Ettis and the Miners and tries to convince them that he will lobby on their behalf.  He just needs to go see the Queen without Ortron being there.  Gebek agrees to help him and the Miners say they will too, but once they leave, Ettis gives back word, convincing some of the others to attack instead.

Luckily, the refinery defences were turned off and Eckersley and Alpha Centauiri can revive Sarah.  She tries to convince them of the figure on the other side, but they both insist the place is empty.

Given the fact that the Doctor has been seen helping the Miners fight the guards, Ortron convinces the Queen to order the guards to find and kill him.

As Sarah, Eckersley and Alpha Centauri return to the control room, Ettis and his group capture them (knocking Eckersley unconscious) and order them to open the armoury doors.

Alpha Centauri manages to find the right switch and the Miners get federation guns, but accidentally sets off  an alarm.  Ettis is forced to flee and takes Sarah as a hostage.  She manages to get free of him and is caught by Ortron, who sees her as a Conspirator.

Ettis and his men run into the Doctor and Gebek and tell them about the weapons.  Gebek goes back with the Miners, leaving the Doctor to try and find the Queen.

Sarah is taken to Ortron's temple.  Ortron refuses to listen to her excuses and he arrests the Doctor too as he comes in through the secret entrance.  He consults with the spirit of Aggedor for a fitting punishment.

Alpha Centauri and Eckersley meanwhile, hear of Sarah's arrest and go to the Queen to try and get her freed.  The Queen says Ortron's rule in the temple is final.  The Queen gets some courage and goes to the temple to overturn Ortron's verdict.  She finds however that the Doctor and Sarah have already been thrown into a pit to face the judgement of Aggedor.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane face the mighty creature, Aggedor, but to Ortron's surprise, the Doctor calms Aggedor using the Venusian Lulaby as he did fifty years ago.  The Queen stands up to Ortron and demands he obey her and release the Doctor and Sarah.

Meanwhile, Alpha Centauri talks to Eckersley about how messed up the situation is.  He suggests for the safety of Federation interests, perhaps Alpha Centauri should send for some Federation troops.  Alpha Centauri does indeed call in the troops, whilst Eckersley rushes off to secure the sonic lance still at large.

Now that the judgement of Aggedor has been determined and the Doctor has survived, Ortron is forced to accept it.  He storms off, leaving the Queen to talk with Sarah and the Doctor.

Together, they convince the Queen to speak with Gebek and look at ways of making concessions to the miners.  The Doctor goes off to find and bring Gebek back, leaving Sarah to have more of a chat with Queen Thalira about womens liberation, challenging her views by saying "there's nothing 'only' about being a girl."

The Doctor calls to see Alpha Centauri on his way to find Gebek and learns that troops are coming.  He chastises Alpha Centauri and Eckersley for being short sighted.  Sarah finds him and mentions what she found in the refinery to him, shortly before Ortron announces his presence.  He says that they may have passed the judgement of Aggedor, but he believes them to be saboteurs.  He says they cannot leave the Citadel.  The Doctor tries to disobey this and is unsurprisingly arrested again and taken to the dungeons.

 As Ortron is occupied with the Doctor, Sarah sneaks through the corridors and goes to find Eckersley to make sure the sonic lance is out of the way of the miners.

When the Queen challenges the Doctor's imprisonment, Ortron refuses to comply, justifying the fact that the Doctor willfully broke the law.  She cannot change his mind, but she forces him to leave Sarah alone.

As Eckersley and Sarah move the lance, they are indeed attacked by the miners and overpowered. Much to Ettis' disdain, Gebek allows Eckersley and Sarah to go free, but keeps the lance once Sarah tells him that the Queen wants to discuss terms.

Sarah and Eckersley go back to the throne room and tell the Queen and Ortron about what's happened.  Ortron again spins conspiracy theories about them letting the device go so easily, but Eckersley insists that the miners had guns and none of the Queens guards did.  The sides will be evened up though when the Federation troops land.  Ortron is outraged that Federation troops are coming.  Alpha Centauri confesses to messing up, but says that the troops cannot be stopped once they are called.  Once they find out that the miners are causing problems, they might get rid of them and bring in great mining machines, to Peladon's detriment.  Together, they start to come up with a plan to cover up the problems and make sure everything looks fine.

Afterwards, Sarah goes to the dungeon to break the Doctor free.  She meets Gebek who takes the mission off her, sending her back to the safety of the Citadel.  Sure enough, Gebek finds the Doctor's cell and disables the guard, freeing the Doctor.

Once free however, the Doctor asks Gebek to take him to the refinery rather than the throne room. The Doctor believes something fishy is going on don there and it could just be the key to whoever's behind the unrest.  On their way, they see the miners going back to work, supervised by the Queens guards.  Gebek doesn't like it, but the Doctor keeps him focused on the refinery.  Once they get there, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to disable Eckersley's defence system.

Eckersley sees them on CCTV, but Sarah insists that there's someone hiding down there and the Doctor is just trying to find them.

As the miners get back to work, the spirit of Aggedor appears and attacks them, forcing everyone to flee.  They run down the corridor towards the refinery as the Doctor hot-wires the door controls.  The refinery opens to reveal an Ice Warrior!  The Ice Warrior takes them both prisoner as the Federation fleet arrives, the fleet and troop consisting of Ice Warriors, led by the Ice Lord Azaxyr.

Azaxyr wastes no time in establishing martial law.  He gathers the royalty and other key members in the throne room.

He tells them he's no interest in any petty arguments, he only wants to assure the trisilicate will be mined.  He orders the miners back to work, who will toil under the supervision of the Ice Warriors.  The alternative is death.  The miners and the royalty are united in saying that they prefer death.

As the discussions are ongoing, Ettis and a bunch of the miners try to storm the throne room with their Federation weapons.  They are cut down and only Ettis escapes.

Azaxyr wants to kill the Doctor, but is convinced otherwise as it's pointed out that he had a good relationship with Gebek and could be the one to convince the miners back to work. Azaxyr allows him to live and goes with Eckersley to check the refinery.

The Doctor is putting the pieces together, and determines that the Ice Warriors are somehow involved for their own ends.  He believes the soldier, Sskell was the figure Sarah Jane saw in the refinery before the Federation troops were ever called.  To buy some time, he and Gebek tell the miners to cooperate with the Ice Warriors in the same manner that they cooperated with the royalty of Peladon. They get the message and the miners go back to work.

Azaxyr is pleased, but still mistrusts the Doctor.  He confines him and Sarah to the control room.  That suits the Doctor just fine, as he can control the "air conditioning" in the mine.  He raises the temperature to affect the Ice Warriors.

Elsewhere, Ettis shows up and tells one of the miners that he intends to use the sonic lance to blow up the citadel.  The miner tries to warn Gebek but Ettis is insane and he knifes the miner to stop him.

The Queen demands Azaxyr lets her speak to the federation and give a formal complaint, but Azaxyr refuses.  He says there's a communications blackout until the emergency is over.  The Queen points out that the miners are working so the emergency is over, but Azaxyr simply states that the victory came too easy to trust it.

He's right. As the Ice Warriors become groggy due to the heat in the mines, the miners rise up and overpower them.  The Doctor and Sarah escape the control room in the chaos and meet up with Gebek.  They find the knifed miner who fills them in on Ettis' plan.  Sarah looks after the miner, Gebek goes to help the miners and the Doctor goes after Ettis.

As sarah comforts the miner, she is grabbed by Sskell and taken to Azaxyr.  He demands to know where the Doctor is.  Sarah is stubborn at first but relents and tells them he's trying to stop Ettis.

The Doctor finds Ettis as he's about to fire the sonic lance, the pair have a sword fight and a fist fight.

Azaxyr watches the fight on CCTV.  Alpha Centauri is nervous that Ettis might win and blow up the citadel but Azaxyr says it won't because he's booby trapped the lance, setting it to explode as soon as anyone tries to fire it.

Sure enough, Ettis wins the combat and goes to set off the lance, blowing himself up in the process, and most likely, the Doctor too.

Sarah watching through the CCTV camera is distraught but can do nothing.

Azaxyr commands Eckersley to go to the refinery and turn the heating down, which he does.   They all move away from the screen and don't notice that the Doctor survived the blast.  He heads back through the mine until he finds Gebek.  He asks about Sarah, but Gebek only knows that she's disappeared.

The political situation progresses, with Azaxyr declaring a planet wide martial law.  He intends for Queen Thalira to rule in name only.  Working together, the Queen, Ortron, Sarah and Alpha Centauri try to escape to the communications room.  Ortron is shot in the attempt and the queen is recaptured.  Azaxyr demands to know the plan and the Queen tells him they've escaped to the tunnels.

Not knowing where Sarah is, the Doctor goes to the refinery again with Gebek to try and get some evidence of Azaxyr's corruption.  Sure enough, they both come across Eckersley and Azaxyr, talking about how their little plan is working perfectly.

Sarah and Alpha Centauri meanwhile get to the communications room.  Alpha Centauri sends out a general distress call on the long range radio, whilst Sarah checks the CCTV.  She hears Azaxyr and Eckersley's conversation too.  They discuss how to find the Doctor, Sarah and the rebels whilst they're in the tunnels.  Eckersley said he'll turn off the ventilation in the mines and use the spirit of Aggedor to panic everyone and force him out.  They all watch as Eckersley reveals a statue of Aggedor with a directional heat ray inside it.  He can matter-transport it to anywhere in the mines and does so, killing another miner and sending the rest into panic.

Alpha Centauri is astounded that Eckersley is part of the conspiracy, but Sarah is more surprised to find the Doctor is still alive.

Azaxyr and Eckersley head back to the communications room, leaving an Ice Warrior guarding the entrance.  Sarah Jane heads through the mines to reunite with the Doctor and provides a good distraction for the Doctor to disable the Ice Warrior.

Eckersley and Azaxyr find Alpha Centauri and demand to know what it's done.  Azaxyr see's through Alpha Centauri's bluffs, and determines that a distress signal has been sent.  He wants to kill the ambassador, but Eckersley convinces him to keep Alpha Centauri alive.  They all go to the throne room and Azaxyr tries to get everything back under control.  It's not long before Alpha Centauri opens it's mouth again and denounces Azaxyr and Eckersley as traitors, stating they're working for Galaxy 5, the enemy of the Federation.  Queen Thalira defies them but Azaxyr threatens her with death if she doesn't comply.

Eckersley questions Alpha Centauri about how it found out their plans, and Alpha Centauri accidentally reveals that Sarah and the Doctor are at the refinery.  Azaxyr sends Sskell and some other Ice Warriors to go and kill the Doctor, Sarah and Gebek.

Meanwhile, in the refinery, the Doctor turns on the ventilation again, and begins to work out the controls for Aggedor.  Sskell and the other Ice Warriors begin to burn through the door.  Time is tight, but he manages to use the spirit of Aggedor to destroy the Ice Warriors just as they break through the refinery door.  Sskell survives though and rushes back to Azaxyr.

With a bit of a reprieve, the Doctor sends Gebek back to rally the miners.  He promises to use the spirit of Aggedor to convince the miners that their "god" is now on their side.

As the Doctor gets back to the controls, Eckersley's voice comes over the loudspeaker.  He warns the Doctor to surrender, but the Doctor refuses, forcing Eckersley to use the defence system to mash the Doctor's brain.  The Doctor sends Sarah away so she's safe from the defence system and he prepares to tough it out, manning the controls as the defence system gets more intense.

Azaxyr is forced to send his Ice Warriors into the mines to deal with the rallying miners, but as they get closer, the Doctor uses Aggedor to kill them.

The Doctor keeps the miners safe until they get to the Citadel, then he finally succumbs to the defence system, falling unconscious.

Sarah sneaks some distance behind the miners and finds a gun on one of the dead guards.  She takes it and finds Eckersley in the control room.  She demands he turn the defences off but Eckersley smiles and tells her it's too late, the Doctor's dead.  She sees the CCTV image and believes him.  This gives Eckersley the chance to snatch the gun from her.  He threatens to kill her, but locks her in the room instead.

Meanwhile, the miners fight their way to the throne room and find Azaxyr holding a gun to the Queens head.

They put down their weapons, but jump the Ice Warriors.  In the ensuing fight, the men manage to kill the Ice Warriors and stab Azaxyr to death.

Once the Ice Warriors are dealt with, Alpha Centauri goes to the communications room and finds Sarah.  Sarah is upset at the apparent death of the Doctor and heads morosely down to the refinery.

Eckersley meanwhile sneaks through the tunnels to the throne room and takes the Queen hostage.  He rushes through the tunnels to try and reach his secretly parked spaceship.

As Sarah looks on the Doctor's body, he miraculously begins to move.

She's mad at him when he tells her he simply put his body into total sensory withdrawl.  They head back to the Citadel and soon learn that Eckersley has kidnapped the Queen.

The prospects of finding Eckersley in the maze of tunnels is grim, until the Doctor comes up with an idea to use the real Aggedor to track his scent.  Needless to say, Aggedor finds Eckersley and attacks him.  Both are killed in the struggle.

In the aftermath, the Queen thanks the Doctor and Sarah for their help and tries to convince him to stay as her new advisor.  Sarah says she's a strong enough leader anyway.  The Doctor suggests Gebek would make an excellent Chancellor.

Alpha Centauri rushes into the throne room and exclaims that as soon as news of Eckersley and Azaxyr's failure had got out, Galaxy 5 sued for peace.

Gebek tells the Doctor that they've retrieved the TARDIS from the tunnels and the Doctor and Sarah slip away to return to Earth.

Trivia

• This is the last time we see the Ice Warriors on screen for 39 years!  They were in Doctor Who related audio adventures and novels however, and if the Sixth Doctor's run would have had enough of an audience, they were scheduled to come back around 1984, but those plans were scrapped to do the Trial of a Time Lord.

• Brian Hayle's original script was intended to have the Federation be like the priests in the old west and out in Africa, trying to civilise the primitive "Pels".  It could be said that Barry Letts and Terrence Dicks didn't think the public would get it though, so the script was altered 

• Jon Pertwee's back trouble was playing up by this time, so we get very clear shots of Terry Walsh in a wig when the doctor's fighting Ettis instead of Pertwee strutting his stuff. 

• There was significant pressures when filming this one, due to the short timespan afforded to make it.  This of course, occured during the 3 day week.  Click here if you don't know what that is.  In a way, it's effectively what this story's about.

What worked

• The dark sets, lit by flaming torches offer a good sense of primitive society

• The fact that Elizabeth Sladen was given the feisty Sarah Jane back again rather than the "What's that, Doctor?" version we got in Death to the Daleks

• The Ice warriors are still good at what they do, even if the way they're defeated is the same in almost every story

• It was nice to try a political spin on the story, with most people having motive and actively working towards it

• It was sort of nice, if unnecessary to visit old friends like Alpha-Centauri.

What didn't work

• Why did the Doctor go into the temple and announce himself when he knows it's a death penalty?

• I hate the way that Ortron just doesn't listen to reasonable arguments

• The inclusion of the real Aggedor was a bit pointless

• Why lock everyone up in the one place that they can control everything from?

• In fact, why lock them up at all?  After the 2nd and 3rd time they'd interfered with plans, surely Azaxyr and Eckersley would be thinking it's easier to kill them and think of an excuse later

Overall Feelings

Given everything that's gone on with England at the moment, what with leaving the EU and all the uncertainty that it brings, it's sort of easy to see where this story was aiming.  It's not quite right though.  I mean, the original story was meant to show how the "Pel" high society was keeping all the trisilicate profits for itself and not letting any trickle down to the miners (which does come across), but as a side effect, we also get arguments about why it's in Peladon's best interest to be part of the Federation or not, as the case may be.

I think it handles the crux of the politics quite well, but it gets the whole thing over to the viewer in a very boring and predictable way.  There's lots of back and forth, storming armouries, getting locked up in a vital communications room and at least two occasions of Sarah being upset that the Doctor's dead.  It was just all a bit tedious for me.  I mean, was anyone really surprised that the Ice Warriors were the bad guys?

One upside to this though, is, like Curse of Peladon, there's a little bit of room to explore Sarah Jane Smith's beliefs.  It's not as much as Jo Grant's I admit, but it is still there.

This story might have been refreshing the first time round (as in the Curse of Peladon), but Monster of Peladon just repeats the same tropes as the first story and expects us to be satisfied just because a funny rude looking alien turns up and an ancient furry creature that serves no purpose in the story apart from the one OBVIOUSLY used to justify it's existence.

If it was a three or four parter, I think it would be infinitely better, but the padding and regurgitated scenes and tropes make it a chore to watch.

Rating

6 out of 10

A nice try, but far too long, meaning there's no tension and a lot of repetition

Rewatchability Factor

2 out of 10

A long and often boring see-saw of miners and soldiers fighting over an armoury.  Once is enough.

Watch this if you liked...

• The Curse of Peladon

• The Green Death 

• The King's Demons

Consulting the Matrix

Do you like the Ice Warriors better as good guys or bad guys?