Trivia / Doctor Who S11 E5 "Planet of the Spiders"

---

• Actor-Inspired Element: Jon Pertwee had seen a hovercraft at a boat show at Earls Court and wanted to use it.
• Author Phobia: It shouldn't come as a surprise that writer Robert Sloman was a terrible arachnophobe.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Robert Sloman wasn't very happy with this story, claiming he was "cleaned out" of ideas. This would be his last script for the programme.
  • While Barry Letts was a little more positive about the story than Sloman, one thing he really wasn't happy about was the shots of the Whomobile in-flight, due to the disconnect created by having the Whomobile footage shot on video, and the aerial footage shot on film. Letts therefore made an attempt to shift the series to being shot exclusively on video, but this was abandoned by succeeding producer Philip Hinchcliffe after it resulted in issues while shooting "The Sontaran Experiment".
• Enforced Method Acting: Elisabeth Sladen was arachnophobic and didn't enjoy having a large spider on her back.
• Prop Recycling: The headset from the brainwashing device in the previous season's "The Green Death" reappears as the headset of the Doctor's mind-reading device.
• Throw It In!: The Brigadier's "Well, here we go again" reaction to the Doctor's regeneration was ad-libbed by Nicholas Courtney.
• Wag the Director: 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.
• What Could Have Been:
  • This story was created as a replacement for "The Final Game", a story that would've written out the Master by having him pull a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Doctor. Said story would've revealed that the Master is, depending on the source, either the Doctor's brother (which "The Sound of Drums" later deconfirmed) or an amalgamation of his dark side (which was reused for the Valeyard in "The Ultimate Foe"). The script was thrown out after Roger Delgado died in a car accident while shooting an episode of the French miniseries The Bell of Tibet, and this was written in its place.
  • Barry Letts said in the DVD Commentary that, in the scene where Clegg makes images appear on the IRIS machine, he wanted to use footage from "The Green Death" but decided to use the Drashigs from "Carnival of Monsters" thinking they were scarier.
• You Look Familiar: This serial has an unusually high number of instances because, as it was Pertwee's last, they deliberately chose actors he'd worked with before so he would be more comfortable and have a better time:
  • Look:
    • Professor Clegg is the third nervous scientist played in the series by Cyril Shaps, after Viner and Lennox.
    • Kevin Lindsay (Cho-Je) had previously played Linx.
    • Christopher Burgess (Barnes) was both Swann and Professor George Philips.
    • Terence Lodge (Moss) had previously played Medok and Orum.
    • Andrew Staines (Keaver) previously played the Sergeant to Benik, Goodge and the Captain of the SS Bernice.
    • George Cormack (K'anpo Rimpoche) had previously played Dalios.
  • Sound:
    • John Dearth (Lupton) was previously the voice of the BOSS.
    • Amongst the spider voices is Ysanne Churchman, who had previously voiced Alpha Centauri in the two Peladon stories.

---