ENTERING THE CAVE OF THE ‘GREAT ONE’

You find me sitting here on this unpromising April Saturday morning in mildly eager anticipation that, if the postal gods will so decree it, through my letterbox this morning there will arrive my brand spanking new copy of “Planet of the Spiders”, a tale of meditative Buddhist monks, sinister telekinetic powers being abused in a home counties retreat, the battle for control of a blue crystal, car chases, scary clothing, self-sacrifice and the tragic pursuit of infinite power. All that and some bloody great rubber spiders as well.

Strange as it may very well seem, I can hardly wait.

Now, in terms of the history of great British television, it is little more than a footnote, and, to many of you it might very well appear to be a pretty shoddy footnote at that, when you compare it to some of the great drama and highly polished television programmes being made nowadays, especially as it does include in its running time the character of Neska which is quite possibly the single worst performance I have ever seen by an actor anywhere ever (and I even include the fact that I’ve seen an awful lot of hit and miss performances in AmDram when I mention that). If you want to, come over and I’ll play you the bit of the episode I mean, it’ll pass a few minutes and then you can go away again if you like, possibly slightly enlightened.

Despite all this, that story does mark a moment of transition when Mr Jon Pertwee having acted his socks off by entering into the slightly unconvincing radiation-soaked cave of the ‘Great One’ (a bloody great big rubber spider) crashed down onto the floor and, after a tearful farewell from his friends, transmogrified into Mr Tom Baker.

Rather oddly, of all the television shows made around that time, it is that one in particular that has stuck with me. Maybe it was unexpectedly catching the re-edited to feature-length ‘omnibus’ repeat some months later on a soggy afternoon that made me think that it was being broadcast especially for me, but somehow this rather bizarre tale has managed to remain with me across all of those years whilst other things, like friendships and knowledge learned at around that age, have all slipped away.

The very first transmission of the final episode remains a vivid memory for me, and one of the very few memories I still have from before the age of twelve, because those last few minutes leading up to the impending doom of one of my heroes, were deemed to be likely to be “too upsetting” for the nine-year-old me and I was banished from the room, eventually witnessing this transformation from between the banister rails at the top of the stairs through the open door of the living room where the television set was only just still visible. This great distance, and the accompanying early diminishment of my eyesight meant that for the next six months I was rather convinced that kindly old Uncle Jon had turned into the ventriloquist’s puppet “Lord Charles” (complete with monocle…).

Many, many years later, those episodes (alongside “City of Death”) were released onto commercial videotape on the very same day as my Grandmother’s funeral and I remember a breathtakingly anxious flit into the city to pick them up from WHSmiths (or wherever it was) knowing that I just had time to get into town to buy them if I really rushed about before getting into my sombre suit and joining the family for the solemnities. Three things happened that day. I bought those tapes, we cremated my Grandmother and I had an alcoholic drink for the first time after fifteen-month period of abstinence due to an unfortunate overindulgence at a New Year’s party, but looking back now, it’s watching “Spiders” late on in the evening that remains the most memorable part of that entire time.

These episodes also present one of the great “What ifs…?” of television history, and proves to me in many ways how big a part chance plays in all of our lives, not least for a certain Mr Tom ‘thank-your-lucky-stars’ Baker. What if Mr Pertwee had not chosen to leave the job just then, but instead had decided to hang on for another year or two? Would the ‘Mighty Tom’ have even had a career? He was rather famously working on a building site when he took the job because his career as an actor was so far in the doldrums and he may very well have given up on it altogether. Certainly his later career as a voiceover artist might never have happened if he hadn’t become so familiar to the nation back then. Much of his later work in things like “Little Britain” happened mostly because of him being a favourite of his fans from those golden years of the late seventies. One or two years later, different producers with different ideas may very well have picked a different actor because, despite his major success in the role, he was a slightly off-the-wall, if rather brilliant, piece of ‘thinking outside the box’ casting even then.

If Mr Pertwee had stayed, how would his kindly - if slightly patronising - Uncle figure have played against the more Gothic or Hammer Film style that the new team favoured? Would his more crushed velour persona have played quite so well against the earliest machinations of Davros or the Zygons? Would an epic reflection on the glorious indomitability of Homo Sapiens have resonated quite so gloriously from his lips? Would Field Major Styre have gained the upper hand in mortal combat against the bellowed “Hai!” of a Venusian Aikido chop? Would endlessly referring to Miss Hilda Winters as “Madam” during her gambit with Professor Kettlewell’s Robot have fetched the Time Lord a swift kick in the groin? It really is difficult to tell…

Indeed, with an incumbent resident, would any of those scripts from the new bloke’s debut series have been written in quite the same style, or even at all? It’s so hard to imagine those alternate worlds, those infinite possibilities, but, then, we don’t have to. The baton was passed on, and Mr Pertwee cemented his place in our affections and went off to delight another generation as “Worzel Gummidge” and left Mr Baker to earn his own place in television history. Meanwhile, the imaginations of others took us to the places that were were supposed to go to, and television history unfolded as it should meaning that “Planet of the Spiders” does indeed, as it always did, mark the end of an era.

Both images attached are ©BBC