Doctor Who/Recap/S11/E05 Planet of the Spiders



"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!"

- The Doctor trembles before the Great One

Sarah Jane visits her friend Mike Yates at a crypto-Buddhist retreat in the English countryside. Some of them have apparently been skipping meditation lessons to hang out in the basement and summon ENORMOUS FREAKING SPIDERS from Metebelis III, a world ruled by the terrifying things. As if enormous spiders weren't bad enough, these are enormous telepathic mind-controlling spiders, and one of them takes over a Buddhist and turns him into a spider-puppet. Naturally, they have designs on our world; but their chief aim at the moment is the recapture of a blue crystal prism thingy. Conveniently enough, the Doctor has just received one in the mail! It's from Jo Grant, who he gave it to back in "The Green Death".

Puppet guy follows Sarah Jane back to UNIT HQ to steal the Metebelis crystal, using mind-thrown lightning bolts to get past security. Awesome. Psychic powers so rarely come with offensive capabilities. A completely badass hovercar vs. helicopter chase ensues, but the guy gets away. The Doctor and Sarah Jane deduce who the thief must have been, and head back to the retreat—but by then the puppet guy has misplaced it.

The evil monks turn a mandala into a portal to Metebelis III, and puppet guy goes through. Sarah Jane, who really should know better than to step into glowing circles on the ground, finds herself there as well. She tries to foment glorious revolution amongst the human proletariat, but their arachnid overlords promptly arrive to put an end to that. She is saved by the timely intervention of the Doctor—who's used the TARDIS and the crystal to get to Metebelis III himself—the spiders attack him, leave him for dead, and go back for reinforcements. They're back bright and early the next morning to haul Doctor and Companion back to Spider HQ, where they have obviated prison cells by the simple expedient of swaddling their prisoners in spider silk.

The Doctor wiggles out of his cocoon, frees Sarah Jane, and decides to put the crystal back into the cave where it was found in the first place, on the theory that it will placate the intelligence that spawned it. But the radiation will surely kill anyone who enters the cave! If only there were some brave hero willing to sacrifice his life to replace the crystal! One who could, if he were to die, regenerate into Tom Baker!

There is.

Tropes
""ALL PRAISE TO THE GREAT ONE!""
 * The Adjective One: The Great One.
 * Author Appeal: By Proxy: The massive (and completely gratuitous) car chase that takes up most of the second episode was the writers' farewell gift to Jon Pertwee, who appreciated any excuse to drive motor vehicles very fast.
 * Back for the Finale: Mike returns to redeem himself after getting booted out of UNIT for his betrayal in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
 * Badass Normal: Sgt. Benton. The mind-thrown lightning bolts instantly kill normal humans, and seriously inconvenience the Doctor. Benton takes two to the chest, and shakes it off with enough wherewithal to bring the car around.
 * He also makes a damn fine cup of coffee.
 * Book Ends: Jon Pertwee's run as The Doctor begins and ends with him stumbling out of the TARDIS and collapsing.
 * Catch Phrase

"Sarah Jane Smith: This is the abbot of-- no, it's Cho-je. I mean, it looks like Cho-je -- but it's really K'anpo Rinpoche ... I think. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: Thank you. That makes everything quite clear."
 * Call Back: The Metebelis crystal from The Green Death makes a return, complete with a letter from Jo Grant.
 * Combo-Platter Powers: When the spiders possess people, they give them Psychic Powers and the ability to shoot bolts of lightning from their hands. Three years later, these seemingly unrelated abilities would come together again...
 * Deceptive Disciple: Lupton to K'Anpo
 * Distracted By The Pretty: Tommy.
 * Famous Last Words: "Tears, Sarah Jane? Don't cry. While there's life, there's..."
 * Flowers for Algernon Syndrome: Tommy. Unusually for this trope, there's no sign that Tommy loses his newfound intelligence at the end.
 * Flying Car
 * From Nobody to Nightmare: Lupton was a former salesman and manager for 25 years who was embittered when his company fired him.
 * Giant Spider: Lots 'n lots.
 * A God Am I: the Great One's desire
 * God Save Us From the Queen
 * Gone Horribly Right: The Great One's plan.
 * Grand Finale: To the Pertwee era as a whole as it features a callback to Jo, Yates's return and acts as a loose sequel to Invasion of the Dinoasurs and The Green Death.
 * "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The Doctor, to spider-controlled Sarah Jane
 * I Love Nuclear Power
 * Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Protects Tommy from the spider-people's lightning bolts.
 * Inspirationally Disadvantaged: Tommy
 * Kneel Before Zod: the Great One tormenting the Doctor in part 5
 * La Résistance
 * Left for Dead
 * Load-Bearing Boss: Crossed with Made of Explodium. When The Great One dies, her underground lair explodes, which brings down half the mountain it's beneath.
 * Lost Colony: the human colony on Metebelis III.
 * Magicians Are Wizards: Clegg
 * Mineral MacGuffin
 * More Expendable Than You: Benton tries this in Part 2. The Doctor shoots him down immediately.
 * The Nth Doctor: Somewhat lampshaded when the Brig recalls that the Second Doctor became the Third Doctor. And K'Anpo.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Huath, the Queen spider, is Old Irish for "fear".
 * One-Gender Race: The spiders, apparently.
 * Phlebotinum Overdose
 * Poke in the Third Eye: Clegg's death, apparently due to using the crystal while the spider is coming across.
 * Power Crystal
 * Psychic Powers
 * Puppeteer Parasite: with some remaining free will. Lupton in particular finds himself able to telepathically torture his spider right back when she tries doing it to him.
 * Religion Is Magic
 * Shangri La
 * Spiders Are Scary
 * The Starscream: Lupton's spider to the Queen.
 * Two Aliases One Character: Cho-je and K'anpo Rinpoche are the same entity, with Cho-je serving as a sort of future projection of K'anpo that merges with him for his regeneration. Since Sarah Jane is unfamiliar with regeneration, she understandably gets the two confused at the end:


 * We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future
 * Welcome Back, Traitor: Although Yates doesn't rejoin UNIT, Sarah and the Doctor are very trusting of him despite that nasty "Golden Age" business.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: K'Anpo does this, controversially, but the Doctor did provoke the whole mess by stealing the crystal, and his reaction to getting Professor Clegg killed is pretty cold.
 * The X of Y
 * You Sound Familiar: Lupton was previously the voice of the BOSS.

All praise to the Great One!