 This story was a replacement for an initial proposal called "The Final Game" by Robert Sloman. If "The Final Game" had gone ahead as planned then it would have written out the character of The Master - with the villainous Time Lord sacrificing his life to save The Doctor's thus achieve a kind of redemption. However, due to the untimely death of actor Roger Delgado, in a car crash in Turkey, Script Editor Terrance Dicks abandoned this original project in favour of a new story, which eventually evolved into "Planet of the Spiders".
This story is mainly remembered for bringing Jon Pertwee's successful five-year stint as the Third Doctor to its end. Jon Pertwee continued to make appearances in film, on stage and on radio, including regular roles as the host of the game show Whodunnit? and as the title character in the children's programme Worzel Gummidge. His involvement with Doctor Who never flagged, as Jon Pertwee became a fixture on the convention scene in the Eighties and early Nineties. He also returned to the programme, as the Third Doctor, on multiple occasions: in the Twentieth Anniversary Special "The Five Doctors", in 1983, the Thirtieth-Anniversary Children In Need special "Dimensions in Time", in 1993, the stage show "Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure", and two BBC Radio dramas "The Paradise of Death" and "The Ghosts of N-Space". Recordings of Jon Pertwee were even used posthumously in the Big Finish Productions audio story "Zagreus". Sadly, Jon Pertwee died of a heart attack in May 1996.
Richard Franklin returned to the role of Mike Yates, who redeems himself in this story after his involvement in Operation Golden Age that occurred in "Invasion of the Dinosaurs". Mike Yates is heard referring to this earlier story.
This was Richard Franklin’s final regular appearance in the show, though he later made a cameo appearance in the Twentieth Anniversary Special "The Five Doctors", in 1983, and the Thirtieth-Anniversary Children In Need special "Dimensions in Time", in 1993. Richard Franklin's subsequent work was mainly directing both stage and television productions. He also wrote the comedic stage play Recall UNIT: The Great Tea Bag Mystery, and penned a novel about Mike Yates entitled "The Killing Stone" which did not see publication.
Kismet Delgado, the widow of Roger Delgado, who had played The Master during the Third Doctor's era, provided one of the voices for the Spiders.
Gareth Hunt, who played human rebel Arak, would go on to play Mike Gambit in The New Avengers as well as starring in a popular series of coffee commercials.
John Kane, who played Tommy in this story, also worked as a television writer, including on the sitcom Terry and June.
This was the final story written by Robert Sloman, although he submitted one further Doctor Who storyline the following November which was not accepted.
This story heralded Terrance Dicks' final credit as Script Editor – handing over the script editing duties to Robert Holmes. Terrance Dicks thereafter returned to freelance writing but he maintained a very close connection with the show, providing several scripts for the programme. Additionally, Terrance Dicks became the primary contributor to Target Books' range of Doctor Who novelisations. Following the cessation of that line, he continued to write original Doctor Who novels for both Virgin Books and BBC Books, including "Timewyrm: Exodus", "Blood Harvest", "Shakedown", "The Eight Doctors", "Endgame", "Catastrophea", "Players", "Warmonger", "Deadly Reunion" (co-written with Barry Letts), "World Game", "Made of Steel" and "Revenge of the Judoon". Terrance Dicks also wrote the stage play "Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure", and was a candidate to script what would eventually become the 1996 television movie "Doctor Who: The Movie".
Even though Barry Letts' was still the show’s producer he elected to direct this story – in accordance with an agreement he had with the BBC which permitted him to direct one story every recording block if he so chose. The last story he directed was "Carnival of Monsters" from the previous season. However, as BBC regulations at the time prevented any person from being credited for more than one production role, Barry Letts was credited as directing this story and not as its producer.
Unfortunately, Barry Letts faced several difficulties in editing this story. Firstly it was found that the original cut of episode three was too short, and so material was inserted which had originally been intended for part four. This and other cuts created a domino effect, with Barry Letts having to pull material back from episodes five and six. In addition the cliffhanger for episode five was artificially created by taking a scene from part-way into episode six and placing it at the end of episode five; this explains why there are several additional scenes at the start of episode six before episode five's cliffhanger is reached. This also forced Barry Letts to include the ‘Cave of Crystal’ flashback in episode six in order to ensure the final episode had a sufficient running time.
The train station Sarah Jane Smith arrives at in the first episode is Mortimer railway station, near Reading.
A clip from "Carnival of Monsters", containing the Drashigs, was used when Professor Clegg holds The Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
Jo Grant, The Doctor’s former companion, sends the Metebelis crystal, back from the Amazon as the natives are fearful of it. In her accompanying letter she states that she and her husband, Clifford Jones, have yet to find the fungus they're looking for. In "The Green Death" The Doctor picked up the blue crystal during his previous visit to Metebelis 3 and subsequently gave it to Jo as a wedding present.
A variety of technical props were used, including a hovercraft, a gyroplane and the second (and final) appearance of the ‘Whomobile’ craft – now modified so that it can fly. The Whomobile was last seen in "Invasion of the Dinosaurs".
The spiders' method of taking over humans is by leaping on their backs and remaining there, invisibly, while they exert telepathic control. The Time Beetle featured in the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "Turn Left" shares some similarities with the Eight Legs; It too is a giant-sized insectoid that can latch onto a victim's back, disguising it's presence at the same time.
The Spiders of Metebelis 3 make further appearances in the short story "Return of the Spiders" by Gareth Roberts (in the collection More Short Trips) and a brief appearance in The Eighth Doctor Stories novel "The Eight Doctors" by Terrance Dicks. They also have a full encounter with the Eighth Doctor in the Big Finish Productions audio stories "The Eight Truths" and "Worldwide Web" by Eddie Robson.
The Fifth Doctor, in "Light at the End of the Tunnel" (published in the Big Finish Productions book "Short Trips 5: Steel Skies"), tries to fight of his phobia of spiders when he goes inside a large pipe making this story as a reference. It is also revealed that the Eighth Doctor still has a phobia of spiders in the BBC Books Eighth Doctor Stories novel "The Scarlet Empress".
Interestingly the BBC Books Eighth Doctor Stories novels "Interference: Book One" and "Interference: Book Two", both written by Lawrence Miles, has the time-travelling voodoo cult Faction Paradox changing history so that the events of this story never happen and instead having the Third Doctor regenerating on a planet named Dust after being shot. A later novel in the series, "The Ancestor Cell" (co-written by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole), resolves this paradox and restores The Doctor's timeline to its previous state.
The term ‘regeneration’ is used for the first time, to describe the process of how the Time Lords take on a new body when their old one wears out. Since no regeneration was shown at the end of "The War Games" (although we do see the apparent beginning of it), this marked the first time since William Hartnell changed into Patrick Troughton in the 1966 story "The Tenth Planet" that an on-screen hand-over of the role had occurred. End-of-episode changeovers would become the norm for the next few regenerations until the regeneration from the Sixth Doctor to the Seventh Doctor at the beginning of "Time and The Rani" (and both played by the same actor) broke the pattern.
This is the first story also to feature a Time Lord (other than The Doctor) regenerating on screen. To date, only two other Time Lords have had a regeneration take place in a television story. The first is Romana in the 1979 Fourth Doctor story "Destiny of the Daleks", although even in her case, the regeneration was actually not seen, as she was in a different room when it transpired. Although The Master was also shown changing appearance on two occasions (in the 1981 story "The Keeper of Traken" and the 1996 television movie "Doctor Who: The Movie"), neither was an actual regeneration. The Master was finally seen to regenerate in the 2007 Tenth Doctor story "Utopia".
This story introduces the character of K'anpo Rimpoche, the previously unnamed Time Lord hermit from The Doctor's childhood, first mentioned in "The Time Monster". K'anpo has the power to travel through time without the use of a TARDIS, to make a corporeal projection of a potential future incarnation (Cho-Je) of himself, and to stimulate the regeneration process of another Time Lord. Whereas a Time Lord was seen to travel without a TARDIS in the 1971 story "Terror of the Autons" and The Doctor has met two future potential incarnations of himself: the Watcher in the 1981 Fourth Doctor story "Logopolis" and The Valeyard in the 1986 The Trial of a Time Lord season of stories. However, no other Time Lord has been shown to stimulate the regeneration process (although it can be argued that the Time Lords stimulated The Doctor's regeneration in "The War Games"; and that The Doctor's companion Romana may have stimulated her own regeneration or projected possible future incarnations for The Doctor to choose from in "Destiny of the Daleks"). K'anpo was referenced again in the 1980 Fourth Doctor story "State of Decay" as the man who told The Doctor about the legends of the Great Vampires.
The character of Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan, the UNIT medical officer, is referred to by The Brigadier who calls for him when The Doctor falls into a daze after staring into the crystal. Sullivan would not actually appear on screen until the next story "Robot", where he was played by Ian Marter.
It has been revealed that Nicholas Courtney ad-libbed The Brigadier's classic closing line ‘Well, here we go again’.
It is unclear how long it takes The Doctor to return to Earth in the TARDIS from Metabelis 3, although three weeks have passed for Sarah and The Brigadier. Paul Cornell in the Virgin Books' The New Adventures novel "Love and War" established that the TARDIS was lost in the time vortex for the equivalent of ten years. This is revealed during a sequence in cyberspace where agents of the alien race called the Hoothi are attempting to trap the Seventh Doctor in a virtual recreation of the worst moments of his life, of which this regeneration is the most painful for The Doctor to re-live.
Tom Baker's first day on set, for the regeneration scene, was on 2nd April 1974. Despite Tom Baker taking part in this story his involvement in it went uncredited.
Although "Planet of the Spiders" completed Season Eleven, the production block continued with Tom Baker's first story, "Robot" that would be used to kick-off Season Twelve, and parts of this story were recorded at the same time as parts of "Robot". This not only meant that Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker were literally playing The Doctor at the same time, but also that Elisabeth Sladen - and to a lesser extent, Nicholas Courtney and John Levene - were having to rush back and forth between the two productions.
Planet of the Spiders was repeated on BBC One as a 75 minute omnibus during Christmas 1974.
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The Firsts:
The first story where the term 'regeneration' is used to explain The Doctor's ability to transform into another body.
Tom Baker's first (albeit uncredited) appearance as the Fourth Doctor.
The first story to feature a Time Lord (other than The Doctor) regenerating on screen.
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(Position = 68 out of 159)
(Position = 89 out of 200)
