The Web Of Fear: Ranking - 109

                                      The Web Of Fear

(Season 5, Dr 2 with Jamie and Victoria, 3/2/1968-9/3/1968, producer: Peter Bryant, script editor: Derrick Sherwin, writers: Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, director: Douglas Camfield)

Rank: 109

  'Underground overground wobbling free

The abominable snowmen otherwise known as yeti

Making the most of the web guns they fire

The Great Intelligence's furry army for hire'

 

 Here’s an interesting story to review – ‘The Web Of Fear’ is nicely taught and tense while you’re watching it, with tension that nicely builds up as you’re – often quite literally – left in the dark. It’s in many ways the ultimate example of Dr Who making the ordinary become extraordinary, by having the Abominable Snowmen from, umm, ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ let loose in the heart of London, in the underground, with the usual excuse of delays from ‘leaves on the line’ now a Yeti with a web gun (actually a combo of a hairdryer and a spray gun!) The Yeti are no longer over there in Tibet whispering mystical thoughts, but over here in heart of London shouting war ones. How you feel about this story depends on what you think of that sentence: for me it’s a shame as it makes them just another generic shooty baddy trying to take over a familiar landmark without the mystery of before, but at a time when we still had comparatively few stories set in the present day I can see why it would have been thrilling. After all, you can’t get more ordinary and realistic than a dark place full of manmade trains – or more Dr Who ish than a lumbering hairy beastie set to kill us all. It’s the perfect location in many ways: the natural home of more than a few viewers watching this – no, not the actual underground having re-read that sentence, but you know what I mean, a place everyone knew of and a lot of people had used. It’s a real place you can visit and a lot of people watching in 1968 had probably been on which gives this story a real blast of realism, while being trapped underground, in the dark, with the lights off, is the ultimate example of a ‘base under siege’ story. The fact that is a landmark of sorts in Dr Who, with the introduction of the Brigadier (albeit here a Colonel before promotion) and the first time Dr Who has played with a box of toy soldiers (even if UNIT itself hasn’t been formed yet) meant that this was a memorable story for many, full of striking visuals that stay in the mind long after more esoteric thoughtful stories have left. Watching it is a highly enjoyable way to spend two and a half hours, with twists and turns and intrigues and mysteries galore.

This story holds a special place in many a fans’ heart, although getting to the bottom of why it does is a bit trickier than it is with other, more obvious recovered classics like ‘Tomb Of The Cybermen’ or indeed what we have left of ‘The Abominable Snowman’. For here’s the thing: once you step away from the fog of actually watching the story and think about it some more it really doesn’t hang together that well. In their original story the Yeti invasion makes perfect sense: The Great Intelligence is taking over the Earth one monastery at a time, with robot armies waiting in the bushes that are disguised as a local folk story (how long have the Yeti been in Tibet? When did the tradition of big hairy beasties living on the mountain start? When did the ordinary, if a ‘real’ abominable snowman can be called that start to become extraordinary? Nobody knows and that’s great!)  But why does The Great Intelligence switch plans and invade the underground with beings that are eight foot tall, covered in hair and walk very very slowly? Why do they have guns that can shoot lethal cobwebs? (Not something a ‘real’ Abominable Snowman has ever been seen carrying. If they had a pet spider it would make more sense). Why do they release a killer fog in the city that, perhaps more than any other, is used to smog drills and staying indoors (especially in 1968, only sixteen years after a particularly lethal smog killed two thousand Londoners and when people were loosely on the alert for a poison gas attack from Russia. Because yet again this tale of a menace at the heart of our society controlled by brainwashing is another cold war paranoia story at the heart of it). Why have they regenerated by remote control and become less cuddly, yet look sillier and still move embarrassingly slowly for a world takeover?  (Surely the speed would be something more necessary to an invasion than flashing red eyes and a slimmer waist?) The Great Intelligence isn’t very intelligent really is he? Now if he’d taken over an army of red pillar boxes rather than hairy beasties or something equally local then he might have had a chance, but the Yeti are always going to stand out up top, so they have nothing to do except skulk in the shadows waiting. What are they waiting for? The Doctor. You know, the geezer with the space-time machine, who was last seen in Tibet. Why aren’t they waiting there for a rematch? It all starts to sound a bit desperate – while at the same time also being rather gripping. In other words I still can’t tell if writers Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln were inspired geniuses or absolute hacks (and their other stories don’t help: ‘The Abominable Snowman’ suggests the former, ‘The Dominators’ very much the latter). What are you supposed to do with a story like this that’s a mixture of inspired and tired? I’ve seen this story lots (after decades of reading and listening to it first) and I still don’t know.      

What we do know is that for forty-five years this story lodged in so many people’s subconscious that it was accepted as one of those handful of top tier Dr Who classics that we would probably never get to see again and like ‘The Tomb Of The Cybermen’ its reputation grew. After all, on audio it’s suitably creepy, unsettling, very atmospheric and – especially when you were listening through the ‘fog’ of an old bootleg copy – demands so much concentration you don’t necessarily think about the plotholes. And then it was returned (or 4/6ths of it were anyway; we’d always had episode one, the weakest in many ways) right in time for the series’ 50th anniversary. That web of intrigue behind their recovery is complicated enough to make its own action packed six part film one day: TV archivist Phillip Morris found a lead that BBC canisters had been spotted in a TV station in Nigeria and found this story and ‘The Enemy Of The World’ sitting there. Unfortunately, so legend has it, by the time Morris came to take the tapes away the episode of ‘Web’ episode three had gone awol, possibly taken away for extra negotiating weight when someone went away and realised it was the all-important episode of The Brigadier’s first appearance (this is thought to be why the story was released on i-tunes when ‘Enemy’ went straight to DVD, in the hope that the missing episode could yet(i) be tracked down but at the time of writing it’s still missing; the DVD followed four months later). Incidentally, I’ve always wondered how long this negotiation took, who knew about it and whether it was deliberately held back for Dr Who’s anniversary year, given that Steven Moffat suddenly decides to bring back the Great Intelligence and make it the lynchpin of the anniversary and the story ‘Name Of The Doctor’ after forty odd years in limbo, even though the official story it that it’s all a happy coincidence (not least because Moffat struggled so hard writing their first comeback in ‘The Snowman’ and in normal circumstances tended to abandoned stories that weren’t working earlier). Being able to own it and watch it (more or less) complete has both helped and hindered this story’s reputation. Like ‘Tomb’ if anything the fog around it has grown bigger: it still seems like magic that we can actually watch it after wondering what it might have looked like for so long and somehow wrong that we can now own it as a physical object and file it away amongst our other DVDs. As a result, though, it’s super hard to think about this story clearly and subjectively.

Mostly this is six episodes of running around in the dark while trying to work out which of the UNIT soldiers is a spy, with barely a break away from that main plot: hardly the most taxing DW affair. Mostly it’s an exercise in atmosphere and tension that doesn’t make much sense written down (indeed the novelisation is one of the weakest of the lot I always thought). The ‘whodunnit’ aspect is rather clumsily done (spoilers: you’re lead to think it’s journalist Harold Chorley, who looks like Robin Day but acts like David Frost, so many times that it can’t possibly be him, while we know in retrospect it’s not going to be the future Brig even if he’s acting shiftier than anyone else, so it’s kind of obvious it’s Staff Sgt Arnold. Not least because he’s the only person we see being touched by a web) and feels to me as if it was decided on later: Arnold doesn’t seem possessed the opening few episodes and actively works against the Yeti and yet there’s somebody passing on information (has the Great Intelligence left his mind free but is seeing things through his eyes? Would be nice to have a word of explanation on that though. The first draft had him guarding the museum and getting taken over but the actor wasn’t free for the hurried shoot so this plot element was dropped. Though it’s daft anyway: why doesn’t the Intelligence use him earlier in that case? Nobody would know). There’s more escaping and capturing than normal and long periods of the plot where nothing much is happening (such as when The Doctor gets knocked unconscious at the end of episode one and doesn’t wake till episode three, allowing Patrick Troughton a quick holiday. Clueless as to what’s going on, Jamie and Victoria spend an episode going ‘I don’t know’ under interrogation). The ending is a total copout after investing six weeks of your life, as The Great Intelligence proves to be really dumb and tried to drain The Doctor’s brain (why does a being with enough of an ego problem to call itself a Great Intelligence need more intelligence?) without realising he’s switched wires so he can do the same to it. An idea which is just daft (what’s The Doctor going to do with a spare brain? Won’t it burn his brain out the way that happens with Rose in ‘Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways’ and The Doctor-Donna in ‘The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End’?) And is interrupted by Jamie, leading to The Great Intelligence’s escape into the ether anyway, ready for a re-match (that won’t happen until as late as 2011 and Christmas episode ‘The Snowman’, owing to the writers getting greedy and demanding extra money for the continued use of The Brigadier and cutting their own merchandising deal with their next monster race ‘The Quarks’ and undercutting the BBC). The very last shot is our trio hurrying off before the rains come through, even though they’re clearly in far more danger from the electricity being turned back on, as electrocution would be a big clue (a plot point ignored by the start of next week’s story ‘Fury From The Deep’). There’s no bigger concept here, no metaphor for something bigger going on, no profound scifi thoughts to keep you up at night, just hairy beasties playing hide and seek down a tunnel for two and a half hours. ‘Web’ really is a case of style over substance, a story big on atmosphere and not much more.  

What an atmosphere though: you’ll never go on the tube again without wondering what might be lurking just out of sight. This is a properly scary Dr Who story, one where the tension is high at the start (in the one episode we always had) and only gets greater and greater after that. Being a Douglas Camfield directed story, the ex-soldier is particularly strong on the ‘action’ sequences that are always hard to get a handle on when you only have the audio, with a lengthy sequence in poor Covent Garden market (again! See ‘The War Machines’. That’s what comes of being the widest open space in the centre of London I guess) that might just be the best filmed ‘fight’ in all of Who history. The way the Yeti are hiding not in caves but the London manmade equivalent and the way the Intelligence whispers over the Tannoy now is a clever twist. There are great shots too of someone, more often than not, The Doctor in profile looking worried with his back to everyone else so they can’t see how scared he is, until he turns back round and puts a brave face on things. In the context of the WWII vibes, in one of the most bombed cities in the war only twenty odd years on, it’s powerful stuff: everyone knows what danger they’re in and are trying to keep calm and carry on rather than panic. There’s a claustrophobia about this one which gets tenser as the episodes build up, with our ‘home’ (the communications hub) which starts off so full in episode one threadbare and empty as things get desperate and the bodies pile high by episode six. ‘Web Of Fear’ is , like ‘The Dalek Invasion Of Earth’, a chance to play out the fears of a generation about what so very nearly happened not so very long ago.

The underground sets too are superb and the telesnaps didn’t do them justice now we can see people actually moving along them. The story goes that designer David Mysercough-Jones got in touch with the real London underground to ask if they wanted to be featured in a story where people who ventured down to their stations were zapped by yeti robots and died a gruesome death; unsurprisingly they said no (honestly, it’s a bigger surprise so many similar organisations said yes to Dr Who down the years). Or rather, they said that could only happen if Dr Who paid a whopping £2000 an hour for the privilege and filmed during the hours of 2-5Am when no trains were running. Unsurprisingly the BBC said no (night shoots are expensive and £2000 is around an entire episode budget in this era). No one could stop the BBC manufacturing their own sets though and Myerscough-Jones spend lots of hours (and a fair chunk of that budget) travelling round and round the underground making notes. There were three sets in all, each of them re-dressed and joined in different combinations across the story to make it look as if there was an infinite number of corridors: a straight corridor section, an ‘s’ bend and a ‘y’ junction (Note the in-joke when Victoria comments at the end how ‘all these tunnels look the same to me!’) The attention to detail, down to the railway sleepers (wood topped with foil to look like live rails), the vending machines and the mock near-future posters, is glorious. The chap at the underground who turned the BBC down happened to see the first episode go out on TV and was so convinced the BBC had really filmed in the underground illegally despite his refusal  rang up to complain about everyone breaking their word and wouldn’t believe these were really sets until someone sent him some behind-the-scenes photos. If they could fool someone who knew them well then they could fool anybody and they’re a huge part of why this story works as well as it does. One thing we couldn’t see on the telesnaps either was what a good effect the ‘cobwebs’ were, a painted backdrop with a light held behind them so that they ‘glow’ – a simple technique but one that’s really effective in the near-dark. Ditto the effect we always saw at the end of episode one (and repeated on the others) of the camera covered in cobwebs while the credits roll. Oh and if you want to trace the route for yourself location fans it starts off at Covent Garden in episode one, moves to Cannon Street for episode two, disembarks at St Pau’s in episode three and winds up at Piccadilly by episode five, which is sort of the line from Marleybone to Whitechapel (but with a few detours). Even though we only ever leave TV centre for a quick fight in Covent Garden Market.  

One of the things that people miss about this story too is what a good use it makes of the Tardis as a time machine. We haven’t had a story that’s played around with that since ‘The Ark’ a couple of years earlier, but as a fully paid up sequel (transmitted a mere twelve weeks since ‘The Abominable Snowman’)we get to see many of the same characters roughly forty years after the events of that story (although the dating is a little suspect: Professor Travers isn’t the sort of man to be exact about anything and there’s no way either the first story was set in 1935 or this one is in 1975, judging by historical events and furnishings. Although if the London Underground is anything like my local having advertisements eight years out of date hanging on the walls isn’t necessarily that unlikely).It’s fun to see Jack Watling (one of Dr Who’s most famous guest stars, who just happens to be the dad of the actress playing companion Victoria) best known for playing the sort of virile active gung-ho action hero we saw in ‘Abominable’ shuffling around as an old man in aged makeup (especially to his daughter, who reportedly blew several takes by getting the giggles). It’s really clever having someone everyone automatically respected now dismissed as a doddery old man who’s lost it when – until The Doctor turns up – he’s the only person who knows the danger everyone is in (he is, in fact, the closest the series comes to basing a character on Professor Quatermass. Fitting for a story that kick-starts the wholesale nicking of the first three Quatermass stories). Watling has great fun walking with a stoop and making a character who was once a bear of a man, not un-yeti like himself, look small and drawn. The professor was always proud and a bit full of himself now cantankerous and dismissive, not unlike the 1^st Doctor. The contrast of how he now looks with the Tardis crew who haven’t aged a day (well, twelve weeks I guess) really sells the concept of the Tardis to you too. For a time he and his daughter Anne were considered for joining UNIT, before a falling out between the writers and the BBC put paid to that (it’s hard to see how the Professor would fit in, yet also easy to see how the sceptical, sarcastic, unruffled, intelligent Anne ended up as Liz Shaw in season seven).However even then this story falls apart slightly. Would Travers really risk life and limb taking some ‘souvenirs’ of the last story back to England with him, when he knows full well how dangerous they are? How did he get the Yeti to London all the way from Tibet? (I’d like to see him explain that on the flight over – or indeed the tube to his house). Would a proud man like Travers really have entrusted his precious Yeti to a Museum – particularly such a small one where it’s one of a jumble of exhibits? (The BBC approached the Natural History Museum but were once again turned down – after all the security is pretty lax in what we see on screen - so had to cobble this version together out of leftovers in stock, including a stuffed giraffe and some plant pots. I certainly wouldn’t pay a shilling or so if all the exhibit rooms were like that!) The characterisation of Silverstein, admittedly written in at the last minute when the scene got changed, also leaves a lot to be desired: it’s one of two cases of out and out anti-semitism in Dr Who (alongside the bandits in ‘The Creature From The Pit’, who are at least aliens after all) as the owner cares more ofr his profits than his life (if you’re going to stoop so low as to do that then at least give him a less obviously Jewish name!)

Equally mixed is the much-lauded entrance of the Brigadier who’s going to hang around for the next seven years and the first shots of UNIT, although neither are quite how we imagine them just yet. Both will, in time, come to be great additions to the Who canon and you can see why Terrance Dicks (still assistant script editor at this point, under Derrick Sherwin) seized on them as just what he needed for the new-look no-frills show he inherits in another year and a bit. However neither are quite there yet. This Brigadier is a shifty character, snappish and on edge throughout, actually closer to his parallel world Brigade Leader self (from ‘Inferno’) and you’re meant to distrust him and think him a suspect. Full praise to Nicholas Courtney for taking what’s not such a great part yet and really making the most of it (and it’s so sad he died just before the re-discovery); he was actually pencilled in to play Private Knight (after Camfield remembered how good he was as Bret Vyon in ‘The Dalek’s Masterplan’) but given a ‘promotion’ when another actor, David Langton, pulled out and though Courtney was too young to serve in a real war (and only got as far as a private in his national service) he totally understands the part, making the Brig a stiff-upper lip soldier who takes commands but also one that understands people. The yeti attack in episode four, which kills his entire platoon while he hides on top of a railway carriage (another fine set) is the closest we ever see him to death and ot seems to shape the way he thinks forever. Already, though, he’s enough of a judge of character to trust The Doctor almost straight away (albeit pointing a gun at him on their very first meeting!) and is the only person that believed in time and space travel without question, characteristically seeing the bigger picture of it as a means of escape for his men rather than laughing at the concept. UNIT don’t technically exist yet, this being just your normal bunch of soldiers, but they’re clearly a prototype. Five years of being around them have blinded us to what a change this made at the time: to date we’ve seen plucky scientists and explorers fighting monsters at key Human bases but seeing the people we’re always told are there to protect us utterly lost and breaking down because they can’t fight the Abominable Snowmen the ‘normal’ way is really powerful. If even men who are trained to stay cool and calm are breaking, what hope do we have when the Yeti go on the loose? It makes ‘sense’ that UNIT would grow from this fight, a natural reaction from a government trying to hush this lot up (and this is arguably and chronologically the second time, following ‘The War Machines’, that the general public at large know about an alien threat. Presumably Torchwood cleared it up). It’s a shame that a lot of the individual soldiers are treated so poorly though, with Evans turned into the butt of all the jokes (I’m only supposed to be the driver’!), at least when Chorley isn’t in the room (people didn’t trust journalists even back then!)

 
The Yeti are less successful. The new slimmer design, meant to make them scarier, just makes them look sillier (I rather liked the cuddlier look – and why would a voice and a bunch of robots feel such need for cosmetic surgery anyway?) As scary as the yeti is when close-up on screen for the most part they don’t do a lot and the threat relies on you remembering how scary they were last time not necessarily what’s in front of you. They’ve been given a new ‘roaring’ sound too which doesn’t quite work (it’s the sound of a flushing toilet treated with Radiophonic Workshop magic and it’s obvious once you know…Sorry if I just broke that fog of illusion for you!) They don’t really do anything that scary and seem a lot less threatening here than in Tibet (black and white works well for monsters who lurk in the shadows and there are a lot of shadows in the underground, but even on a diet it’s hard for any of the Yeti to lurk properly the way even The Daleks and Cybermen do). One of the Yeti is John Levene by the way (in the costume I mean, not a real Yeti!) who so impressed everyone with his care and performance and ability to take directions that he went to the top of the queue when Camfield was looking for someone to play Sgt Benton (even though most of ‘Web’ was filmed in a freezing January the enclosed sets and hot studio lights made it intolerably hot for the poor extras in the Yeti costumes, so when John wasn’t needed he used to creep across the floor to the ‘dead’ Yetis and release them from their suits. He also eagerly joined in with all the jokes, such as Frazer Hines sticking a number on his back and asking him for a dance as if they were in ‘Come Dancing’, forty years before Dr Who was exterminating ‘Strictly’ in the ratings). They’re a good cast all round in fact  the gradual slide into paranoia and distrust from the soldiers playing nicely against the robotic Yeti, although characterisation remains a bit of a struggle for Haisman and Lincoln, with all of these characters larger than life and none of them quite ‘real’.

As always it goes without saying that the regulars are superb and help sell the feeling of desperation to us. Even Victoria is less wet than she often is as being against her dad makes Deborah Watling up her game, while Victoria keeps her wits about her when the others aren’t there, often a step ahead of the soldiers. One thing that a lot of fans pick up on is that she needs to have the London Underground explained to her when it would have been big news in her day (the first route, Paddington to Farrington, opened three years before ‘Evil Of The Daleks’ is set) but to me it makes sense: Victoria is very sheltered even for a Victorian and has spent most of her life in the family home; she would never ever have expected to set foot on the Underground and as a character the whole ‘point’ of her is that she doesn’t have the curiosity of The Doctor and just wants things to be over. Jamie gets a nice lot to do at long last, alternating between being protective of Victoria, being loyal to The Doctor and trusting in him and defending his plans against all others and helping the soldiers fight the Yeti. Jamie is used to a world of fighting, even if its usually redcoats not Yetis and is usually in the open air rather than underground. He’s adaptable though is Jamie and never more than here and even if its his clumsy interference that scuppers The Doctor’s plan it’s done out of love and loyalty: you just know Jamie would do anything to have the Yeti kill him and spare his friend. As for The Doctor, Patrick Troughton wears many hats across this episode (though not his original stovepipe one: there wouldn’t be room with these low ceilings, not that you ever see the ceilings!) and has a lot to do even compared to normal. He’s the brain who works out what’s going on, the scientist who analyses the web, the soldier fighting from the front and the comic relief who lightens the mood, all with the same unscrupulous expression. While ‘Enemy Of The World’ is his best performance (not least because it’s a reminder of how much of a performance the Doctor actually is, what with Pat playing the baddy too) this is a close second. You trust this Doctor and it’s his belief in the plot that stops it feeling so daft. This trio have grown close over the past year or so and are reading each other instinctively too (legend has it Deborah was pleased her dad was back as she hoped it might make them behave. Only he took their side in their japes instead! The most famous being where Troughton ‘borrowed’ a pair of knickers in wardrobe and swapped them for Victoria’s necklace in the scene where he discovers it lying on the track. ‘I’d recognise them anywhere’ was Jamie’s next scripted line!) The director, designer and regulars between them sell a lot of this story’s atmosphere.

Yeti roar aside, the sound of this story is particularly memorable too: the warbling when the ‘great intelligence yeti balls’ start moving of their own accord is one of the great memorable sounds of Dr Who. Often in this story the darkness is all you see so the soundtrack matters more than it usually does (and is one of the reasons this story stood out when we only have the soundtrack; it was almost a shame when we finally had pictures to go with the soundtrack, given all the things my imagination had come up with). Having some that eerie and strange in a place as ordinary and everyday as the underground is a large part of this story’s success. The musical score is one of the better ones too, really adding to the fear and menace. Camfield never got on with Who’s regular composer Dudley Simpson so he takes time off in favour of music taken from stock. Which would normally be a means to groan (especially when the same sodding ‘Cybermen’ theme turns up again for the fifth time in two years) but Camfield is looking further afield. This story follows on from ‘Enemy’ in featuring Who’s first proper classical music score and it’s the same piece by Bartok, but a better more suitable one this time that makes this sound more epic than it actually is. Especially when the body count piles up and you realise that for most of these characters this story is a one-way ticket. Oh and Pink Floyd fans should check out the names of the UNIT personnel, ‘Arnold’ and ‘Lane’, which combined make up the name of the band’s first single debuted in a nightclub round the corner from here and might well be a topical joke about them being the first ‘underground’ band the writers could think of (or might just be coincidence). Sadly nobody sees a yeti called Emily play to confirm the point. In retaliation (or another coincidence) Pink Floyd were fans of the show and return the favour by riffing on the Doctor Who theme tune during their instrumental ‘One Of These Days’ from the ‘Meddle’ LP in 1971. Though I’m still waiting for a proper Pink Floyd Dr Who soundtrack (most Dr Who stories can be reduced to the lyrics of the song ‘Us and Them’. Not forgetting ‘Another Sycorax In The Wall’ ‘Cybercomfortablymen’ ‘Shine On You Out Of Phase Planet Made Of Diamonds’ ‘Run Down A Corridor Like Hell’ ‘Wish You Were Here In A Neverending Timeloop’ etc).

This tale the underground is quite the journey. Even so, it’s an odd mixture of a genuinely great adventure and a story where the series seems to go down the tubes, winning out purely by the instinct of the cast and the director who play things impressively straight when it could easily have lapsed into parody. What you end up with is an atmospheric collection of not much happening. As much as the script builds up episode by episode it also repeats itself a lot. Of all the six-parters in Dr Who this is the one I’d take the scissors to most: the only escape from the gloom of the subway is a ten minute diversion above ground and even these sets become monotonous after a while. There’s a great four parter here, but, a little like every journey I’ve ever taken on the underground, we end up stuck in too many sidings while the exciting things happen somewhere back down the tunnel in the distance, unseen. The monster attacks are if anything better shot than last time, but it’s sad to see the Yeti’s fall from being semi-mystical beings with spheres of whispering voices changed into robots with a remote control (one which The Doctor spends an episode hunting for, just like I always do. Although this time it’s me hiding behind the sofa not the remote). While there’s a lot of mystery over who the baddy might be and where exactly the yeti are, this is one of the few stories where you could jump from the first episode to last without really having missed much (it doesn’t help that Patrick Troughton’s on holiday for part two and the plot struggles to do anything without the Doctor there). We also never find out how the yeti end up down the underground: there’s only one scene where the great intelligence gets to talk to the Doctor at all and he (She? It? Can a disembodied voice have a gender?) is too busy mocking him, something probably best left till the actual defeat given how things between them went last time. The story as a whole is, like many a sequel, a lot sillier and less interesting all round than the impressive debut. Nevertheless that’s just a reason why this story isn’t one of my very favourites or as high as a lot of fans would put it – this is still a great atmospheric story, one that even in the ‘monster’ season full of bases under siege is properly scary and full of new inventive ideas that will last on Dr Who far into the future. Far from ‘abominable’ in other words and one that both looks and sounds amazing. If you don’t think about it too hard.

POSITIVES + The model shot of the Tardis in space, covered in cobwebs, is one of the best in the series, suspended in space then being dragged to its doom. It’s so successful they recycle it wholesale in ‘The War Games’ (even though the cobwebs make no sense!)

NEGATIVES - A lot of 1960s Dr Who stories have a ‘token’ comedy character. While not as bad as, say, Pigbin Josh (unlikely yokel stereotype eaten by an orange bouncy castle) or Morton Dill (New Yorker on the Empire State Building who thinks the Daleks are a magic trick but amazingly doesn’t get exterminated...worst luck) Harold Chorley is still extremely irritating and doesn’t have any plot function except getting in the way. Apparently he’s the writers’ idea of David Frost, getting under people’s noses in the middle of an emergency and asking them stupid questions about how they’re feeling when the world seems doomed, but David Frost was never that irritating (Chorley’s actually a lot more like Robert Peston, though he was all of eight when this story went on air). No serious army would ever tolerate his presence in the middle of a serious mission, but then UNIT never seem that serious an army organisation even here in their sort-of first appearance, what with blowing tunnels up without checking who is down them (the Doctor as things turn out..), letting civilians roam around instead of cornering it off and not really having much of a plan which soldiers to send where. This will only get worse when UNIT become regulars, strangely.

BEST QUOTE: Professor Travers: ‘It’s more than likely that we won’t be able to defeat this menace and that London in fact the whole of England, might be completely wiped out. There, did you get that?!’

PREQUELS/SEQUELS: Believe it or not there have only ever been two specially made trailers in 20^th century Who, beyond those that simply use clips from the episodes at least. The one for ‘The Ice Warriors’ is apparently lost forever with only the script surviving but while the visual footage for ‘The Web Of Fear’ trailer is lost we do at least have the soundtrack, recorded by an enterprising fan on a reel-to-reel tape alongside episode six of ‘The Enemy Of The World’ (and included as an extra on the ‘Enemy’ CD). The 2^nd Doctor is wandering alone down the underground tunnels when he’s surprised by, well, ‘us’, with this trailer breaking the fourth wall nearly sixty years before Russel T Davies got into trouble for it. ‘Thank goodness it’s you!’ The Doctor says before going for a sit down on the nearest platform. Then he warns us that ‘when we start out on our next adventure, Jamie Victoria and I we meet some old friends – and we also meet some old enemies, the Yeti as a matter of fact and this time they’re just a bit more frightening than last time, so I want to warn you that if your mummy and daddy are scared just get them to hold your hand’. The yeti appear at which point the Doctor exclaims ‘Here we go again!’ and runs away, calling over his shoulder to us ‘See you soon – I hope!’ Patrick Troughton was in so many ways the most child-friendly of Doctors and that’s never been more true than here. They should have done more trailers like this but, alas, the idea was dropped when producer Peter Bryant left the show. A rather wobbly animated version ended up an extra on the ‘Web’ DVD.

‘Secret Of The Tower’ (1973) sees the 3^rd Doctor and the Brigadier returning to the London underground in a comic strip from the ‘Dr Who Holiday Special’ of 1973 that’s clearly inspired by memories of ‘Web’. The pair are on the track of Hingrad, a master of disguise who everyone at home expects to turn out to be The Master (only they couldn’t afford the rights to Roger Delgado’s likeness, so it’s not quite him in either character or likeness. What makes this weirder is that they do pay for Delgado’s likeness in the other strip in the special, ‘Fogbound’, which is a better story all round with The Master taking over a seaside town and dousing The Doctor in fog every time he gets too close!) The duo (*goodness knows where Jo is) know Hingard is under Tower Hill Tube Station somewhere and start questioning confused passengers getting off the train when one man turns and flees. Our heroes give chase only to find he’s disappeared from view. Closer inspection reveals a secret passage in one of the walls. Oo-err! The strip has been quite tense till here but then it gets silly as Hingard, who has something of the Medieval period about his manner, kidnaps The Doctor and takes him to his base under the Tower of London where he’s put into the stocks and has a cannonball fired into him at close range (which The Doctor catches! Don’t try this at home, kids). It turns out that Hingard is really panning to steal the crown jewels and sell them ‘in order to be in charge of this pitifully primitive world’ (Charming! Who is Hingard going to sell them to though? I mean the minute someone starts wearing them it’ll be all over the news). His cover rumbled, Hingard does the Masterly thing and escapes in one of his disguises and is last seen swimming away across the Thames: the writers were clearly intending for a re-match but it never came. Good thing too really, this is daft even by Dr Who comic standards, although it’s great to see the Brig in a comic in more than a cameo for once. It’s a pretty good likeness of Nick Courtney too!   

Although it got a bit overshadowed by the TV Movie a year or so later, at the time ‘Downtime’ (1995) was the most exciting Dr Who event in years: the closest we’d come to an actual bona fide Dr Who story since the series had been cancelled in 1989 (most fans had agreed to consider ‘Dimensions In Time’ a collective fever dream rather than proper story by then). Admittedly the BBC weren’t making it and it didn’t feature The Doctor but there was an official air to ‘Downtime’ missing from so many ‘nearly’ stories by BBV or the Audiovisual series. Reeltime Productions couldn’t use anybody owned by the Beeb itself but they could reference the series and bought up the rights from individual writers to appear in the special as played by their ‘real’ actors – Debbie Watling as Victoria along with her father making his third appearance as Professor Travers (now the right age without the need for the makeup used in ‘Web’!), Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and Nicholas Courtney as The Brigadier (with a real moustache, not a stuck-on one). The straight-to-video release was so semi-official, in fact, that it even got its own novelisation (in the ‘Missing Adventures’ range). Written by Marc Platt, creator of ‘Ghost Light’, it’s understandably less obtuse and more of a Who-by-numbers story about possession which feels in retrospect like a pilot for the ‘Sarah Jane Adventures’ (who did this sort of plot at least once a series). Sarah Jane is investigating a new craze, the New World Order University which offers courses in meditation and ‘spiritual guidance’ from an actual Tibetan monk. The cures it promises sound too good to be true – and they are! So It turns out that the shady person in charge of it all is…Victoria Waterfield! She’s had her head turned by the Great Intelligence which possessed her dad all those years ago and remained inside him, Mara style while it’s ambiguous whether she’s been overtaken too or is just easily led (and such is Debbie Watling’s performance, after thirty odd years of being out of the Who limelight for the most part, she really doesn’t act much like the Victoria we saw on telly, so it could be either!) The Great Intelligence needs it’s ‘locus’ to obtain its goal though, once stolen by The Doctor and handed over to the Brigadier for safe keeping. The Brigadier is kidnapped, tracked down via one of his pupils named Daniel at his old public school (see ‘Mawdryn Undead’) but he’s given it over to his daughter, with this the first appearance or even mention of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brig’s estranged daughter (although she’s played by Beverly Cressman not Jemma Redgrave here and the two actresses couldn’t be less alike, in appearance or character – this Lethbridge Jnr is floaty and nervy, not formal and tough. She has a habit of repeating all  her dad’s most famous lines from old stories though, even ending by replying to Sarah Jane’s offer of supper ‘I’d rather have a pint!’ Oh and she has a son – the Brig’s grandchild Gordy - whose never mentioned in the TV series). In a plot right out of ‘Invasion Of The Dinosaurs’ the intelligence has possessed one of the UNIT soldiers too, Cavendish, who becomes an informer. It’s Daniel who breaks free of his brainwashing though just long enough to die saving his friends. Standard fare then really, with a plot that recycles every Dr Who ‘possession’ plot going, with a hint of paranoia over ‘new age’ cults ripped off ‘Quatermass IV’ and the unlikely premise that the Big kept one of the Yeti status from ‘Web’ and gave it to his daughter as a toy despite knowing how dangerous it was. Together mixed with sometimes dodgy production values and some actually pretty awful acting makes it a chore to sit through at times. For all that, though, it’s wonderful to see old friends back together again – as well as those playing their usual parts the cast also includes Geoffrey Beevers (Melkur and Caroline John’s hubby), John Leeson (K9, miscast as an Alexie Sayle type DJ) and James Bree (The War Chief), while the Brig feels way more like his old self than he did in ‘Mawdryn Undead’ or ‘Battlefield’ with lots of screen time, though Sarah gets the short straw). There’s also the very Who theme of home computers being ‘evil’, at a time when for a lot of people they were the strange and mysterious unknowns (like transistor radios in ‘The Invasion’ or wireless in ‘Bells Of Saint Johns’) that point to what a full 1990s series might have been like. It’s also fun seeing Victoria as a baddy facing down Sarah Jane – you’re torn over who you want to win! As well as the original 1995 video there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it DVD release in 2015, both of which also include a making of documentary (which sets the tone for the Dr Who Confidentials to come and is actually a more interesting watch all round). 

This seems a good time to mention the ‘Lethbridge-Stewart’ series by CandyJar Books (2015-2022) which ran to ten volumes of short stories plus multiple spin-offs covering the Brigadier’s career pre during and post UNIT including a sequel to Downtime ‘Child Of The New World’ in 2020 in which the Brig’s grandson (now grown up and around twenty – time flies even when it’s relative you know) is kidnapped by the New Order for revenge. Mother and Grandfather travel to the same Tibet as in ‘The Abominable Snowman’ to rescue him. Alas it’s a bit generic and not the best story in the range which vary considerably – some are really good though, filling in the gaps in what we thought we knew and none more so than the early stories which cover what happened between ‘The Web Of Fear’ and The Brig’s next appearance in ‘The Invasion’. The first story in the range, Andy Frankham-Allen’s ‘The Forgotten Son’,  continues directly after the last scene of ‘Web’ with The Brigadier (well, Colonel still technically) in charge of putting London back to how it was before the underground Yeti invasion and spreading the cover story that the Snowmen were in fact, umm, bears. A short story offered as a pre-order freebie, titled ‘Legacies’ is set in an ‘Unbound’ style alternate universe of ‘Web’ where the Doctor gets shot as a trespasser, The Brig dies at the hands of the Yeti and all of London falls with him until the Great Intelligence is defeated by…The Tardis (no really!) It turns out that even with the timelines restored The Great Intelligence isn’t quite as dead as it seems and is only sleeping until it rises again, hiding inside a small boy in a tiny local village. ‘Moon Blink’ is another highlight in the range, with the moon landing of July 1969 the backdrop to a cold war story where Russians and Americans both are trying to track down what remains of the Great Intelligence’s yeti spheres and use them on their rivals. The future Brigadier is put in contact with a desperate Ann Travers who needs army protection and they find they have a mutual acquaintance in The Doctor.  Chorley, the TV presenter from ‘Web’, makes a cameo appearance too. ‘Night Of The Intelligence’ is set quite a while after ‘Web’, with UNIT now up and running when another member of the Travers family (Edward) is possessed by yet another yeti-sphere. This story takes quite a deep dive into the Brig’s background and hints that his military career saving people comes from childhood trauma when he was unable to save his brother James, something the Great Intelligence preys on. ‘The Dreamer’s Lament’ also features Mary Travers and Harold Chorley and features the death and funeral of Professor Travers in the middle of a story that’s otherwise about an English equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle from which Chorley only just escaped with his life. That’s it for the ‘Web Of Fear’ linked stories but a quick mention of ‘The Man From Yesterday’, an entire Brigadier story set in…Cromer! 

‘Time Of The Intelligence’ (2017) is part of the ‘Counter-Measures’ spin-off series, one based around the supporting cast of ‘Remembrance Of The Daleks’ and set in the 1960s.  This particular story belongs here, though, as it features another attempted takeover of London by the Great Intelligence in a story that’s a cross between ‘The Web Of Fear’ and ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’, with the voice brainwashing people from their television sets. There are Yeti running loose too, though they’re again described to the public as ‘great bears’. They even have Professor Travers back again, although it seems a waste given that he’d sadly had to be re-cast (Tim Bentinck’s performance is a good one but they might as well have made it a new character for all he sounds like Jack Watling). Like many of the ‘Counter Measures’ stories it doesn’t really have anywhere to go: this lot are just a less interesting UNIT, despite the acting chops of Simon Williams as Captain ‘Chunky’ Gilmore and Pamela Salem as Rachel.

‘The Web Of Time’ (2019) is part of the sixth series of Big Finish’s range ‘The Diary Of River Song’ in which The Doctor’s wife heads pops back in time to visit her hubby – often at the most unfortunate times. This story’s a bit of an oddball, happening in parallel to ‘The Web Of Fear’ a couple of days before without ever quite crossing over into the main story the way these sets usually do. River, as a time-travelling archaeologist, has been hired to track down a painting that was last seen during the great Yeti raid of the London Underground. Only she’s got her timings wrong (what River?!) and arrives just after the looters have vanished, apparently caught in the act of stealing it by UNIT’s intrepid Captain Knight. There’s a Yeti raid and a belated explanation for why the Yeti seem to leave The Doctor alone a little for the middle of ‘Web’ (they’ve detected that River is a fellow time-traveller and at first think she’s The Doctor). River persuades The Captain of her story that she’s innocent and together they track down the looters, recovering the painting but losing River’s time vortex manipulator in the process. The looter returns but so does the Intelligence: this is the point in ‘Web’ when Knight falls under the Intelligence’s spell, whilst River blows up its ‘pyramid’ of eggs, knocking it ‘off line’; however the painting she was sent to find is burned into ashes (River faced with a choice between saving the painting or saving the looter figures The Doctor would have her save a man’s life any day). River restores Knight’s mind by restoring his memory, not realising the Intelligence still lies dormant in his mind and unknowingly sending him back to The Doctor. All in all one of the best River spin-offs, very cleverly woven round the main story, enhancing and in some places explaining the events of that story without ever contradicting it, although it’s a real shame River never got to meet the second Doctor, a situation that has comedy written all over it (‘I have a wife? Does that mean I have a mother-in-law too? Oh my giddy aunt!’)

Finally, ‘The Web Of Fear’ is another of those small handful of Dr Who stories performed on stage as an adapted play. The Bedlam Theatre Company sought permission from the BBC who waived their fee considering it was a charity performance raising money for the Foundation for the Study Of Infant Death (they robaby felt they owed Colin Baker, a one-time patron, one). So this is a rare instance of people using the names of The Doctor and companions (Nick Scovell, who’d done a couple of Big Finishes, plays the 2^nd Doctor) with four performances, all at Portsmouth Arts Centre in mid 2000. Both Silverstein and Chorley were turned into women to better suit the theatre company!

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