DVD Review: Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons and Doctor Who: The Planet of the Spiders

June 19, 2011

by Erin Hatch, Editor-at-Large

Now two more classic Doctor Who stories, Terror of the Autons and The Planet of the Spiders (featuring Jon Pertwee) are now available for you to own on DVD!

Back in 2009, I was scandalized by the idea that any actor could possibly replace David Tennant as The Doctor in BBC’s excellent science fiction series Doctor Who. I couldn’t imagine anyone taking his place, and was sure that the series would no longer be the brilliant show I knew and loved.

Little did I know that Doctor Who fans had been going through these traumatic transitions for decades, going through nine doctors before getting to Tennant. Ok, ok, I knew that the show had been running pretty much forever and that I was late to the game, but Old Doctor Who was never something that existed as a concrete thing for me. It was a backstory that I knew of, but did not know. A show that I could imagine but had never seen.

In many ways, the release of Classic Doctor Who serials is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is really fun to be exposed to the backstory of the current series, to see earlier versions of current elements in the show, and to see what is the same and what is now different. On the other hand, a lot of the Old Doctor Who is pretty bad. Almost unwatchable. I could rarely sit through a whole episode at once without becoming thoroughly bored. Maybe that says more about me than it does about the DVDs, but even if I wasn’t a very distractible person, Old Doctor Who would still be pretty bad. I guess it comes down to whether you find the cheesiness endearing.

Terror of the Autons features Roger Delgado as The Master, a Time Lord who arrives on Earth and pursues a plan to create living plastic that will help release a magical crystal full of alien spirits that will help take over the world. The Doctor and his companions at UNIT rally to oppose the Master’s plan and save the world. The pace is slow for a four episode arc, to the point that it feels much longer. The Doctor stays on Earth the entire time, and even with creepy dolls made of living plastic, crazy robot-like plastic creatures (the Autons themselves), and Time Lords who can use mind control on gullible human pawns, the plot is almost boring. Even the action packed shoot out between UNIT troops and robotic Autons lacked tension.

Planet of the Spiders is the last story arc with the Third Doctor, and covers the transition between Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. The story involves the Doctor and his companion, Sarah Jane Smith, discovering a secret cabal of students at a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery who are attempting to use the powers of meditation to summon a demon from another realm, but end up teleporting a telepathic alien spider from across the stars, who takes control of the leader of the students and tries to steal a crystal belonging to the Doctor so that they can… wait for it… take over the world. It is much better than the earlier Jon Pertwee set, though it is still pretty ridiculous in many ways and displays a lot of the same creative, but poor, quality special effects that Autons and, apparently, the Jon Pertwee years altogether. It has a little bit more action, which is fun in the way that it is completely over the top (see the Highlights below), trying to send Jon Pertwee out with a bang by throwing everything possible his way, regardless of whether it makes sense. It is a six episode story arc, but seems to go faster than the four episode Terror of the Autons, despite the silly story and cheesy special effects. Also, it manages to include a little bit of planet-hopping, with several episodes featuring the Doctor and Sarah Jane visiting the planet of the spiders, Metebelis Three.

Highlights:

Terror of the Autons: There isn’t much to recommend this story arc, except for its importance to Doctor Who mythology. This is the first appearance of The Master, the Doctor’s perennial rival who acts as the central villain of this story, as well as the first appearance of the Doctor’s companion, Jo Grant (played by Katy Manning), who would work with Jon Pertwee for most of his time as the Good Doctor. This also features appearances of other Time Lords, and contains all kinds of other elements that are referenced in later incarnations of the Doctor.

Episode 2 of Planet of the Spiders: This probably features the most ridiculous chase sequence of modern television. To summarize: The villain steals an intergalactic crystal with extreme psychic power, and then gets away by stealing the Doctor’s car. (Yes, the TARDIS doesn’t work, but he has a car.) The Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and other UNIT staff members jump in a car and follow the villain, dropping the Doctor off at an airfield so that he can pursue the villain in a helicopter. The helicopter helps the Doctor corner the villain, so the villain ditches the Doctor’s car, and when the Doctor gets out of his helicopter to find the villain, the villain steals the helicopter. The Doctor, unfazed, gets in his car, revealing that it can, in fact, fly. The flying car chases the helicopter until the helicopter runs out of gas, at which point the villain ditches the helicopter and steals a boat. The Doctor steals a hovercraft to pursue the villain, and in the middle of this chase the episode ends on a cliffhanger.

To Recap:
1. Car chases Supercar.
2. Helicopter chases Supercar.
3. Flying Supercar chases Helicopter
4. Hovercraft chases boat.

This chase takes over ten minutes, or nearly half of the episode. I would say that it was a cheap way to get Jon Pertwee into as many bizarre vehicles as possible before he ended his run as the Doctor, but it was so entirely awesome that I forgive it for any cheapness. The best part of the chase is that it is absolutely useless dramatically: the villain in this scene has the ability to teleport, and uses that ability to end the chase. (Even the producer and co-writer of the episode admitted to realizing the silliness of the chase years later in the special features of the DVD).

Special Features:

The real highlight of both sets are not the episodes themselves, but the special features that surround them. The discs are full of production featurettes, cast and crew interviews, and information tracks that give the viewer the full historical scope of the show they watch, and help them better understand how things evolved into the modern show they know and love.

Terror of the Autons Special Features:
-Audio Commentary by actors Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney, and Producer Director Barry Letts.
-Life on Earth Making of with actors Manning and Richard Franklin, script editor Terrance Dicks, producer Letts, new series producer Phil Collinson, with archive interview footage of Jon Pertwee (who passed away in 1996)
– The Doctor’s Moriarty Retrospective on the Master
-Plastic Fantastic featurette
-Photo Gallery
-PDF Materials: Radio Times Listings, promotional material for Doctor Who Sugar Snacks and Nestle products
-Production Notes Subtitle Option
-Digitally Remastered picture and sound.

The Planet of the Spiders Special Features:
-Audio Commentary with actors Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, and Richard Franklin, Producer/Director Barry Letts and Script Editor Terrrance Dicks.
-The Final Curtain: The making of the Third Doctor’s Last Story
– John Kane Remembers… Interview with the actor who played the character Tommy in this arc.
– Directing Doctor Who: Barry Letts retrospective
-Now and Then: Film locations.
– Planet of the Spiders: Omnibus Edition: A full length, unrestored edit of the story arc.
-Omnibus Trailer
-Photo Gallery
– PDF materials: Radio Times Listings
– Production Notes subtitle track Option
– Digitally remastered pictures and sound.

Overall:

Both arcs feature poor writing and terrible editing, with the series’ low budget apparent across the board. While the special effects demonstrate extreme creativity given the show’s budget, they are really rough as well, even by 1970’s standards. There are some fun ideas there, and the acting is generally OK, but the show is extremely dated, and Terror of the Autons was nearly unwatchable due to nonsensical.

Doctor Who, as a series, could have been amazing at its time, and the series has evolved into something wonderful, but in many ways the series does not hold up, especially to people who were introduced to series after 2005 by Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, or Matt Smith. There are many fascinating aspects of these two releases from the Jon Pertwee years of Doctor Who, but they are part of a slow-paced, poorly-written, and low-quality production that survives based on its imagination and creativity, not production values. These sets should be considered by long-term Doctor Who fans only, or by really passionate fans of the new series who are willing to withstand the quirks of the past to understand the history of the show they love.

ComicsOnline gives Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons – 2 out of 5 Creepy Dolls Following You.

ComicsOnline gives Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders – 4 out of 5 Magical Meditation Crystals.

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