July 9: Planet of the Spiders Parts Three & Four

Part three appears to open with a shot of William Hartnell driving a hovercraft...

Part three gives us some exposition (such as how Lupton decided to join a Buddhist group because he wanted power; um, what?), but it's really about two things: how Tommy, the mentally impaired helper at the retreat, steals the blue crystal from Lupton, and how the action (well, much of it) moves to Metebelis III.  The scenes on Earth are still reasonably entertaining; it's nice to get some explanation for Lupton's actions, even if they're a little odd, and Cho-je gets to be happily serene ("It is good that we have come to the West.  You whip your poor horse too much.  He gallops so that he is exhausted and yet, you know, he never leaves his stable").  And John Kane does a good job as Tommy, making him sweet and likable.

But when events move to Metebelis III, things start to take a downward turn.  There's some extensive abuse of CSO, but the real issue concerns the actors portraying the "Two-Legs".  Some of them, like Gareth Hunt, are reasonably good, but then there's Jenny Laird as Neska, who seems to think she's only doing a rehearsal.  "No I shan't you shan't take him Sabor my husband my love why did you do it why why?" is only the most memorable of her lines for its sheer lack of emotion or inflection.  It's such a bizarrely wooden performance that you can't help but watch.  I've never seen Jenny Laird in anything else, but she can't be like that all the time, can she?

The Doctor defends himself from a blast from an Eight-Legs'
guard. (Planet of the Spiders Part Four) ©BBC

And so after part three ended with another fight between the Doctor and some guards who then zapped him and left him for dead, part four gives us the Doctor deathly ill (alas, not quite another example of the Healing Coma) and Sarah captured thanks to Lupton.  But the Doctor's able to discharge the energy he received from the guard thanks to a MacGuffin from the TARDIS, and what's more, he's able to find a mineral that acts as the opposite of the blue crystals from which the spiders derive their powers.  We also get the chance for more exposition, this time about why there are giant spiders on Metebelis III (they stowed away on the colonists' ship and went to the mountains, where the blue crystals mutated them into their present form).  No explanation on why Metebelis III is no longer the blue planet though (even if you accept the explanation that it's the moon that makes everything blue, there's no evidence of it in the night scenes we get here).

The other major event to happen in episode four concerns Tommy, who looks into the blue crystal and has his mind "realigned" (for lack of a better term), allowing him to read and understand things that were beyond him before.  Once again John Kane does a good job with this, as he absorbs the children's book he's been reading with growing excitement, as he realizes how much it makes sense to him.  Oh, and Mike Yates gets knocked out and then tied up by Lupton's associates.  And that's about it for events on Earth, as the cliffhanger once again is set on Metebelis III, as the Doctor unsuccessfully enters the spiders' citadel to rescue Sarah and is instead captured.  Although, curiously, the actual cliffhanger seems to concern Sarah giving up hope once she sees that the Doctor is a prisoner of the spiders, rather than (say) the Doctor getting captured...