The Web Planet: Ranking - 84

     The Web Planet

(Season 2, Dr 1 with Heiron, Arbara and Vicki, 13/2/1965-20/3/1965, producer: Verity Lambert, script editor: Dennis Spooner, writer: Bill Strutton, director: Richard Martin) 

Rank: 84

   'I know you thought the giant ants were big but they're still the insects on this planet - you should see the eleph-ants. Zarbtrumpet! Ick! Ick! Ick!'

 

‘The Web Planet’ is my candidate for the single most misunderstood episode of ‘old’ 20^th century Who. For your average fan this is the story they can’t bear, creaky, slow and full of six foot ants that talk in bleeps rather than words and the story made in such a hurry that they even leave in the moment when the local monster trips over the camera and knocks it over so it looks at the ceiling. I know where they’re coming from: ‘The Web Planet’ has less plot than perhaps any other 1st Dr story – despite running to six whole parts – while to modern eyes the costumes and props are as amateurish as DW ever got. But oh the potential makes up for all of that: of all the many weird and wonderful alien worlds DW visits in its 60 years this is the one that’s most weirdly alien and in many ways the most wonderful. This is, famously, the only story where there are no humanoids at all other than the regular cast (though a few Dalek stories cut it close) and where the closest thing to ‘normal’ we see all story is acclaimed classical actor Martin Jarvis dressed as a six foot butterfly. This is a world whose sets aren’t the usual buildings and screaming jungles but a barren land of craters and underground caves that look like more like the surface of all those planets that are out there for real than anything else we ever see on telly. There are pools of acid on the floor, strong enough to disintegrate Ian’s Coal Hill school tie. There’s even an ‘atmosphere’, thanks to the brave decision to smear the camera with Vaseline, so that everything we see takes place in a heat haze-type blur (this is the only DW story that looked better on video than DVD, as the digital effects assumed it was a defect and ‘cleaned’ it up – it took a long time to put right again and still doesn’t look as smeary as my old copy). It’s a land where the Menoptera (those giant butterflies) are so confused by human names they come with their own approximations ‘Arbera’ and ‘Eiron’ though weirdly they seem to get the Dr’s right. There’s no incidental score at all for this story – just eerie sounds and special effects that really add to the feeling that you’ve just travelled across the universe for two and a half hours (though an attempt to save on the budget in reality, it’s a really good move and one a lot of future stories will copy, but never with as much success I don’t think because no other DW alien world demands a soundtrack as weird as this one). And then there’s the Zarbi, giant ants that scurry across the floor and a species so alien they don’t communicate in a way we can understand - even with the Tardis translator circuits - driven by an ant-like need to survive and stalk their prey who can’t be reasoned with or shouted at the way the DR usually solves the day. Even given that this is only the 13^th DW story total it already feels as if this is a story that’s breaking the mould in every possible way it can, pushing the envelope of everything that this most elastic format could possibly do – and why not? The reason ‘The Daleks’ was such a big hit was because it was nothing like anything anyone had ever seen on television before and pushed everyone making it to do things they would never nornaly think of. Nobody had ever seen anything like ‘The Web Planet’ before either, which takes the idea of world-building and a new life-form who isn’t just a human in a suit to a whole level beyond that. And no other mainstream series would ever dare try something quite this bold. ‘The Web Planet’ might just be the most DW story ever, one whose ambition outreaches its grasp by light years but whose ambition is so sky high even as a ‘failure’ its a brilliant bit of telly because you’ll never ever see anything quite like it again. Honestly, though, as strange and bizarre as this story seems, scientifically it may well be the most believable story of them all: after all, we know that ants can live in the most impossible conditions on our world and that they have a civilisation utterly alien to ours so why not make them a bit bigger taking over a whole planet? That’s actually more realistic than a bunch of people taking to talking tanks after a nuclear war or a potatoheaded clone race hunting a green blob (writer Bill Strutton’s starting point was watching an ant colony in his native Australia and being astonished that a life so different to ours could exist alongside it, mostly unseen). At the time it made sense – so much so that ‘The Web Planet’ held the non-Dalek viewing figure record for DW until as late as ‘City Of Death’ in 1979 (and then only because an ITV strike meant there was nothing on the other side). It’s only since, when DW has metamorphosised to being less about exploring alien worlds and customs and more about plot and morals that this story looks a bit weird. Well, OK a lot weird – this is, after all, the DW story with the single best end credit in the show’s history (for ‘choreography and insect movement’ – the Menoptera would stay behind in rehearsals for extra ‘wing waving’ practice). It’s also home to one of my favourite DW anecdotes: rising star Martin Jarvis was overjoyed to win this, one of his first TV roles. His agent phoned him up asking if he wanted to play a ‘sort of exiled prince’ in DW and said he didn’t quite understand it all but the plot sounded a little like Hamlet. Jarvis was overjoyed and boasted to all his friends about his great new part – until he got an appointment out the blue calling him for a ‘wing fitting’ and discovered what the part was really all about! Even so, he’s really good – already a star even behind a thick mask and a sort of Humpty Dumpty padding. In fact the cast are strong all round: it’s unusual to have so many strong female roles in this era of DW but Catherine Fleming (as the eerie voice of the Animus), Rosalyn De Winter (chief Menoptera and choreographer) and Anne Gordon (Hrostar) are all top notch, especially considering that under that heavy a mask their personalities really all come down to their voice and their flailing arms. The regulars too are superb and they do what the best of the Dr’s companions do: get to know the people of this world and the help them right their wrongs and overthrow their captors, while undergoing crisis of their own that reflect how we would feel in such impossible situations. It feels as if they’re in real danger in this story too, after sleepwalking through a couple of the previous ones this series: the Dr being possessed by the Zarbi really feels dangerous (after all, we know the Dr can defeat conquering alien armies, but we’ve never seen him up against a culture this alien and strange before), while Barbara having her hands ‘glued’ by the Venom Grubs so she can’t ‘fly away’ while her captors talk about all the chilling things that are likely to happen to them is truly horrifying despite being told to us by a man in a butterfly suit. In fact ‘The Web Planet’ is one of the most horrifying DW stories of them all, for good reason. Though most people from script editor Dennis Spooner down assumed this story to be a Communist parable (i.e. there’s a giant ‘brain’ that controls unthinking Zarbi-ant drones and who think in alien ways) it’s surely more of a WW2 saga. The writer, after all, spent four years in a prisoner of war camp in Crete at the mercy of people who not only didn’t think like him but couldn’t even speak the same language; indeed, language was his ‘escape’ as he learnt how to talk through the other nationalities trapped there. Learning how to speak in grunts and monosyllables must have seemed very like what happens to the Tardis regulars when they’re taken prisoner by the Menoptera while the idea of the indiginous population having their wings clipped so they can’t fly away takes on added poignancy. There’s also the very DW moral of the story that people sometimes miss because of how alien everything is, that it doesn’t matter how different you look you can still find an ally in someone if you have the same objective in mind. Overthrowing the Zarbi feels like a wish fulfilment from someone who dreamed every night for years of overthrowing the drone-like Nazis in charge, running around mindlessly and following orders like, well, ants (what with the Daleks as Nazis as well you begin to wonder if we would even have had a DW series at all without Hitler). For the writer, and indeed a lot of the audience at home who’d lived through a time when they might well have ended up adrift and trapped in a culture every bit as alien as what we see here, this was no joke as many fans assume this story to be, even with the giant comedy ants tripping over and beeping like a rap remix of a car alarm. Vicki, who has just breezed through ancient Rome without breaking sweat, is re-written as a more complex character – terrified out of her wits but still a lot braver and less wimpy than Susan was ever given the chance to be (given that Ian and Barbara’s greatest character strength is their calmness in the face of danger and the Dr is meant to be able to handle everything, this is new territory all round and something copied in most DW stories to come). Of course, after being scared out of her wits, its also totally in character that she adopts a Zarbi and calls him ‘Zombo’ – truly, we should have more companions like her in DW. This is a good story for Ian and Barabar too, who are our eyes and ears even more than normal as they befriend the locals. Only the Dr gets little to do, but even that pushes Hartnell to find news ways of playing this Dr, who has no-one to mouth off at. It’s unusual that we spend more storytime talking to the victims rather than the oppressors (everyone loves a baddy after all) but The Menoptera are one of DW’s most interesting, believable races (yes, even when dressed up like giant butterflies and enunciating in Cod Shakesperian dialect): they’re a suppressed race who were overthrown before they even realised what was happening and are now slaves divided and conquered, separated and lonely, not knowing what has happened to their brethren. The moment when Nemini dies through suffocation, sacrificing herself by plugging a hole so that the others can escape, is one of the saddest in all of DW, even though she’s dressed in a zipped up sleeping bag to look like a sort of five foot woodlouse at the time. Yes, even I have to admit that it’s slow and almost comes to a full stop in the middle (for modern viewers who have, well, ants in their pants - or maybe Zarbis in their trousers - I can understand why this story gets such short shrift). And the Zarbi were the sort of thing that were never going to work in a month of time-travelling Sundays – the BBC prop and costume department worked together to come up with a giant ant that could be ‘worn’ on the actor’s back that’s a one hell of a lot better than it has any right to be and yet still looks hopelessly daft. There are moments, specifically those where the entire dialogue consists of the lines ‘Ick! Ick! Ick! Zaaaaarbeeeeee!’ when ‘The Web Planet’ seems like the stupidest thing that ever ended up on prime time UK telly. And there are a lot of moments like that in this story, I have to say. However where other fans see stupidity I see courage and ambition, where other people see a load of actors who should know better waving their arms around and tackling giant ants I see a world that’s gloriously imaginatively alien and where others see a mess that should never have been tried I see a story that’s moving and well told, one of DW’s most emotional in many ways. I just also have a sneaking secret wish that we’d lost this one, so that we could listen to the soundtrack and imagine it instead rather than look at it and all the mistakes that made it to air (alas one thing that was wiped is a fun sounding trailer that showed the Zarbi turning up to BBC TV centre and being shown to their dressing rooms!) Still, a zillion points for ideas and ambition and even if the execution lets everything down a little its still not as bad as everyone says. There’s never been another story quite like this one in all of DW, even in the books and audios where its easier to imagine such an alien world. Let’s face it there’s never been another bit of TV quite like this one period. For that alone ‘The Web Planet’ is a story to champion – the fact that it also manages to be really good, most of the time anyway, is astonishing given the amount of risks it takes. Would that we had more stories that take as many gambles as this one does.

+The first episode cliffhanger is one of the series’ best. For pretty much the last time The Tardis is presented to us not just as a travelling home or a fancy spaceship but as the only lifeline that can save the regulars from being trapped forever on this awful, alien world and much of the plot revolves around them trying to get back to it. Only, shock horror, Vicki manages to make her way back the Zarbi do something clever and the Tardis takes off with her still in it, dematerialising in front of her eyes. Neither the Zarbi nor Menoptera have discovered space travel yet so there really is no other way off Vortis. This Dr, who has rarely been fazed by anything so far up to and including The Daleks, giving a look of utter helplessness as he sighs ‘My Tardis...My ship’ while staring more or less at the viewer at home, is heartbreaking in all the best dramatic ways.

- The ‘Atmospheric Density Jackets’ were a last minute substitute when William Hartnell point blank reused to wear the planned spacesuits (though who can blame him, at 57 and already suffering from arteriosclerosis). They’re literally anoraks. They’re not even made to look particularly futuristic!