Since ‘r’ and ‘theta’ have the same number of elements (by default 100 with linspace), you can use element-wise multiplication:
r = linspace(0,1);
theta = linspace (0,2*pi);
x = r.*cos(theta);
y = r.*sin(theta);
z = theta;
figure(1)
plot3(x, y, z)
grid on
That should do what you want (plot an Archimedes spiral).