Planet of the Spiders v. The Lie of the Land
This is the eighth week of my gradual rewatch of Doctor Who stories, old and not quite as old, and the Randomiser has presented me with the Third Doctor’s final televised story, Planet of the Spiders, written by Robert Sloman and first broadcast between 4 May and 8 June 1974, and the Twelfth Doctor story The Lie of the Land, written by Toby Whithouse and first broadcast on 3 June 2017.
With this post I am changing my written style. It’s a longer form now, rather than my previous attempts at limiting every paragraph to tweet-length. The original idea was to enable me to tweet each post in the form of threads, so people on Twitter could retweet, like or reply to individual points. But that was becoming a bit messy – Twitter wasn’t posting the threads in an easy-to-follow form, and it was just more trouble than it was worth. It’s possible that the removal of that strict character-count discipline will allow me to be more ranty – judge for yourself below – but hopefully it makes the blog more readable.
Otherwise, it’s the same format as before: a review of and reaction to each story, followed by connections I made between the two.
Planet of the Spiders
It’s interesting that the Randomiser gave me Planet of the Spiders to watch just a couple of weeks after The Green Death. The two stories mark the end of each of the Third Doctor’s final two televised seasons, and POTS makes several deliberate callbacks to TGD. Both stories were written by Robert Sloman and include John Dearth as a principal guest star; additionally, the blue crystal stolen by the Doctor from Metebelis III in TGD – and a future version of the planet itself – are central to the plot of POTS, a parcel from Jo sets events in motion, the Doctor battles giant creepy-crawlies, and there is even a reappearance of the giant headphones prop that BOSS used to control his servants at Global Chemicals.
There is a slightly indulgent feel to POTS, most obvious in the second episode which is little more than an extended chase sequence giving Jon Pertwee the opportunity to race around the English countryside in various action vehicles. The story also allows Barry Letts (co-writer, and at the end of his last full season as producer) to treat himself and viewers to some Buddhist-influenced messaging, as the Doctor’s journey becomes one of having to let go of his pride in order to achieve a next-stage transformation.
The story provides an interesting study of Buddhist-styled meditation, increasingly an attraction for people in the West seeking inner fulfilment in the 1960s and early 70s. This set-up of a group of middle-aged men occupying a large country house for spiritual pursuit seems incongruous, but perhaps not completely unrealistic. Many of those who sought fulfilment through these ‘new’ Eastern traditions in the second half of the twentieth century were middle- and upper-class men, disillusioned and/or burned out by the modern age. Some would have fought in the Second World War, some would have been crushed by the wheels of business and industry.
The figure of Lupton makes me think of my Grandpa – not in character (Grandpa was kind, intelligent, funny and creative), but a little bit in the way he looks, and that he turned to meditation as an antidote to rat race rigours. I understand that my grandfather (just six years older than Lupton actor Dearth, and an RAF veteran) became worn down by several successful years in business, and as part of his recovery learned to meditate through the Holland Park-based London School of Meditation. All the evidence was that the practice learned there worked for him, but it’s always struck me that the cost of membership of such an organisation makes it rather exclusive.
Charging money for spiritual enlightenment seems wrong to me; all the Abbot K’anpo Rimpoche would have requested was a cotton scarf! Such are the dangers of any religious movement or community becoming institutionalised, I suppose, and why so much of what we have today representing the teaching and guidance of Buddha, Christ and all those other great lads is corrupt and exploitative. It’s good that POTS presents religion with this sort of nuance: applied correctly and intelligently, and with a good heart, spiritual discipline can bring good things, but – used selfishly – meditation can bring monsters into your life, and crystals can drain your life force.
Anyway, I miss Grandpa.
Also part of the community at K’anpo’s meditation centre is Tommy, a young man with social and learning difficulties. It’s a sympathetic and reasonably mature portrayal (for the time) of someone with a mental health condition, and of the different ways they can be treated by society. Tommy is treated with kindness and respect by Cho-Je and Sarah Jane, patronised slightly by Mike Yates, and bullied by some of the others at the house. That Tommy seems to live in a store cupboard suggests he doesn’t receive the best care.
The potential of Tommy’s mind is unlocked, dramatically, by the psionic powers of the blue crystal from Metebelis III. This crystal is the heart of the story, and the Third Doctor’s final rite of passage. Stolen by the Doctor in episode one of TGD, now the Eight-Legs want it back, but not as a cultural relic like the Elgin Marbles or episode three of The Web of Fear – the Great One demands its return to enable her to achieve ascension to divinity: it will give her infinite intelligence and power. As K’anpo reminds the Doctor, true enlightenment comes through the relinquishing of materials and self, not their attainment. The blue crystal represents all that we falsely value.
If possession is nine-tenths of the law then Sarah Jane Smith could be a High Court judge, so often has control of her mind been taken over by evil alien intelligences. Elisabeth Sladen had a particular gift for acting possessed, but her performance as the puppet of the Queen of the Eight-Legs is one of the most chilling, and one of the best-remembered, perhaps because of the classic horror-style still of Sarah with the Spider on her back.
Sarah has another strong story here in POTS, fearlessly undertaking a journalistic investigation into Mike Yates’ reports of strange goings on at the men-only meditation centre, and providing the voice of hope (and faith, in the Doctor) against Sabor’s ‘stoic acceptance of the inevitable’ when they are cocooned together in the Spiders’ larder.
Sarah, and the Brigadier, have the privilege of representing us, the viewers, at the Doctor’s side to witness the wonder of regeneration. This was something that had only been seen on screen once before (unless you count K’anpo’s regeneration a few minutes earlier, of course) – in 1966, when Polly and Ben witnessed One’s regeneration into Two. That was eight years prior to POTS, so most children watching this scene won’t have seen it happen first time round. The primary job of the companions-at-hand in these circumstances, like Whovian Mary Magdalenes, must be to help us believe and understand what is happening, to give voice to our doubt and confusion, and provide a measure of reassurance that the rest of the world is still as it was even though our hero has changed.
Three seemed to be a sound, reliable, well-adjusted Doctor. He wasn’t inclined to clownish behaviour like his immediate predecessor or successor, he was kinder than One, more confident than Five. He was quick-witted, strong, dynamic and stylish. But his greatest weakness, we are led to believe by his mentor K’anpo in POTS, was his susceptibility to fear. We saw this in The Mind of Evil, as the Doctor was incapacitated by visions of flames, of the world on fire. Now, K’anpo challenges him to face what he fears most – in this instance the cave of the Great One on Metebelis III. It’s odd in a way to think of Three afraid – he always seemed brave. But often truth is buried deeper than we realise.
The Lie of the Land
The Lie of the Land was filmed and broadcast in the first half of 2017, and written by Toby Whithouse towards the end of 2016. We can make some reasonable guesses about what inspired this tale of disinformation, propaganda and media collusion. The vote in favour of the UK’s Brexit took place in June 2016, following months of deceit and the fabrication of some wide-reaching corporate belief in ideas such as sunlit uplands, unheralded public funding and great British values. Donald Trump was elected to the presidency of the United States later that year. He, and those architects of Brexit, are certainly not the first people to lie their way to power and success, but it seems that the realisation that one could magic untruths into broadly-accepted facts (like Masters of the Land of Fiction), simply by speaking them through the right media, was becoming the default way of public life.
TLOTL was chilling when I first watched it, but 2017 seems a long time ago now. In 2023, it’s moved beyond scary to become simply depressing. The shock value of the story has gone. It’s no longer a warning; the future is here, the Monks are among us. Every day, we look at read and hear what they say – on the television, in the newspapers, on social media, at work, at family gatherings … look carefully and you’ll realise a Monk is standing there, behind the newsreader, next to your great aunt at the dinner table. ‘The Monks have been with us from the beginning. ‘They bring peace and order.’ ‘Global warming isn’t real.’ ‘He stole the election.’ ‘We’re all in this together.’ ‘Trickle-down economics.’ ‘Britain’s full.’ ‘Gender is binary.’ ‘All lives matter.’ ‘It was a work event.’ ‘The strikers are greedy.’ ‘The divine right of kings.’ ‘He’s an antisemite.’ ‘She’s turned him against his own family.’ The lies of the lands. And so the poor get poorer, the rich gets richer, and the Monks become ever more powerful.
A special power of the Monks is an ability to make themselves seem more numerous than they actually are, so Nardole thinks he sees at least twelve of them guarding the pyramid in Central London when in fact there are none. They are the Reverse Silence. This seems to be reasonable comment upon the misguided impression we sometimes get that most people out there are of the Right, that they are supportive of the powerful, the billionaires, the corporations, the media, those who persecute, oppress and destroy. I certainly think it sometimes, but common sense would suggest it’s not true. I hope so, anyway.
Appropriately, the Monks are ghastly-looking creatures. Truly horrible. Are these actually the most visually terrifying monsters we have ever seen on Doctor Who? It must be close. There’s a particular horror to that one that sits in the centre of their headquarters, channeling fake news around the world. He appears to be little more than a husk, lifeless and physically powerless, yet he powers the spread of evil lies around the globe. We could call him Rupert.
Those who resist, even if just by questioning the lies, are called ‘memory criminals’. The son of the captain of the North Sea ship on which Bill and Nardole stowaway to find the Doctor was sent to a labour camp for possession of a box of comics. There will have been some 2000ADs in there for sure; maybe some Beanos, V for Vendetta, Maus … I’m sure it was a great box!
TLOTL is a strong story, I think – one of a number of good ones by Toby Whithouse. The social commentary isn’t especially subtle but there is no need for it to be. It makes good observations clearly, entertainingly and provocatively. I’ve built myself into a bit of a rage rewatching it and writing the above, but it’s a healthy sort of rage. I’m reminded of how little one can trust in media messaging, and I think we all need constant reminders of this.
On the downside, parts of TLOTL were spoiled for me by the character of the Twelfth Doctor. I’ve mentioned in previous posts how I have struggled to like Twelve. It’s such a shame because I like Peter Capaldi as an actor so much. I feel my hopes raised every time he appears in a scene – such as when Bill discovers him on board the prison ship – and then the bubble pricked every time he starts talking to one of the ‘pudding brains’ that surround him. He’s just so unpleasant to people. I get that this is deliberate. I get that the Doctor is alien, that he doesn’t do ‘nice’ as we humans understand it, that previous incarnations have been tetchy, rude, irascible. But I felt there was something extra about Twelve, that started to spoil my enjoyment of the show. As a child, the Doctor was always someone that I wanted to be with. I wanted him to arrive in his TARDIS and invite me to join him on his adventures. I think that appeal was lost with Twelve.
So the performance he puts on for Bill is just that – a charade, a lie within the lie, designed to test whether she is really free of the Monks’ influence. But I don’t think it needs to be quite so cruel, and the Doctor’s nastiness doesn’t end once the act is over. He carries on talking down to Bill, mocking her; in fact, everyone in the room laughs at her, even Nardole. A room full of white men, most of them uniformed and carrying guns, laughing at a young black woman, is a really bad look.
One of the narrative threads of this series of DW is the Doctor teaching Missy how to be a good person. Twelve’s run is soon to end, with the words ‘Be kind.’ All deliberately ironic, I presume.
Pearl Mackie’s Bill is great – what an engaging, powerful character she is. In TLOTL we see her talking a lot to her late mother, drawing on memories she keeps locked away in her mind as what the Doctor calls an ‘isolated subroutine’. I mentioned my grandfather earlier on, and I think I do the same sort of thing with him. I do it with a friend I lost, and my cat who died last year. Hopefully it’s something many of us do. Nobody can tell us lies about a special relationship, because nobody has felt or known exactly what you felt. In a world of deception, hold on to the truths.
Connections
In TLOTL, Earth has become an occupied territory. Humans live in fear of a military rank of other humans who serve the Monks, distant but powerful overlords. It’s not dissimilar to the lives of humans on Metebelis III, living under the despotic rule of the Eight-Legs.
Both the Monks and the Spiders (and those in their power) fire some sort of electrical charge from their finger tips. The Doctor is more hands-on in POTS, fighting off a pack of guards with what I assume is Venusian Aikido. In TLOTL, Nardole demonstrates an alien martial art of his own, the Tarovian Neck Pinch.
It's Wear a Beanie to Work Week for the companions in these two stories - Nardole in TLOTL, and Sarah in POTS.
The climax of both adventures is centred on a large, blue inverted pyramid which magnifies the power of the mind. When activated, both pyramids – a completed collection of blue crystals in POTS, and the Monks’ psychic transmitter in TLOTL – can release energy sufficient to destroy whoever is beneath it.
TLOTL, the one with the Monks, features monks, obviously, and so does POTS, although the Tibetan monk Cho-Je and his venerable Abbot K’anpo Rinpoche, turn out to be one and the same being – a Time Lord, and the Doctor’s childhood mentor.
Both POTS and TLOTL are regeneration stories. POTS is one of the most significant in the series’ history. Bridging the eras of two of the series’ longest-running Doctors, this would have been the first regeneration ever seen by many young viewers back in 1974 and the last any would see again until 1981. By 2017, I think regenerations had become a little devalued. We seem to get one or two occurrences in almost every season these days, so the Doctor’s pretence at a regeneration (did we know he could do that) in TLOTL isn’t as exciting as it was probably meant to be.
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