Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders was written by Terrance Dicks, based on Planet of the Spiders by Robert Sloman.  It was the 16^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Publishing the adaptation of the Third Doctor’s final story is interesting as it happened after Doctor Who and the Giant Robot which was published only a few months after the Fourth Doctor made his debut.  This meant that Terrance Dicks, who adapted both stories, knew exactly where he was going when adapting Planet of the Spiders which is of course the six episode finale for the Jon Pertwee era.  The adaptation does an excellent job of compressing the long story down into a smaller page count.  It helps that Part Two was an extended chase sequence which is easily cut down into a high tense chapter, a chase which is great on television, and in prose form Dicks adapts it incredibly well.  Tightly paced is essentially how Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders ends up coming out, but Dicks also knows when to add things, like a different fate for the human villain, Lupton, who on television just kind of disappears while here his flesh is eaten by the spiders.  The Great One is also given a lot more depth here, with some cameos earlier on and a real presence before things can actually be met.  It makes the Doctor’s fate and slow death become one which Dicks actually adds some of the ideas of the Doctor really suffering from radiation in the TARDIS.  There is the weight of Sarah Jane and the Brigadier waiting for the Doctor to arrive and he doesn’t come for a while, something only really implied on television.  Sarah Jane is actually also characterized really well with the idea that she is emotionally attached and has a wider breadth of emotions throughout the book, while on television there isn’t as much of an explanation as to what’s going on with her.  There’s also a weird deviation where Harry Sullivan is renamed Sweetman (though he doesn’t appear) but that was already rectified in Doctor Who and the Giant Robot.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders is an adaptation that actually tightens things up, though doesn’t quite work in changing some of the rather problematic elements of the television stories.  Another shoutout to the audiobook where Elisabeth Sladen really brings the prose to life in an emotional performance.  9/10.