Day 98 — April 8th 2021
The Web of Fear Episodes One and Two
The Web of Fear — Episode One
Even more than The Enemy of the World, this feels like something special to have been recovered. When I was first getting into Doctor Who The Web of Fear was one of those ‘holy grail stories that people always wanted to see recovered. It’s been over seven years since this story came back, and yet it still feels incredible to say ‘Oh, yeah, I’m going to sit down and watch The Web of Fear today’.
Of course we’ve always had this first episode of the story, so there’s a risk that this episode just gets taken for granted… but ooh it’s good!
I really, really, love the image of the police box suspended in space being covered with the pulsating web. There’s something slightly magical about it, and I think it’s genuinely scary. We so rarely see the TARDIS fall under the control of the evil forces, but coming hot on the heels of seeing Salamander make it into the Control Room this feels genuinely dangerous.
It also feels like something quite different to actually see the TARDIS in space like this. We’ve had it — or similar — on a couple of occasions so far, but it still feels fresh at this point in the programme’s history. We’ll be getting a lot of similar shots as we move into the 1970s, so I’m enjoying the novelty of them for now…!
And then there’s the TARDIS crew. Oh, I love Doctor Who with Jamie and Victoria. I’ve found myself really loving the company of all the companions this time around, and every time they leave I worry about how I’ll take to the next ones. Ben and Polly were my best friends for a couple of weeks, but Victoria has taken their place beautifully. There’s something so easy about the relationship between our current trio, and I’m genuinely going to miss it when she leaves in about a week’s time.
I love them exploring the Underground tunnels together (although I’m surprised it took Doctor Who so long to realise where they were — did Jamie not pointing out the actual tracks and platform not ring alarm bells before he saw the station name?!), and I’m especially fond of his brief exchange with Victoria;
Victoria: ‘Is it safe?’
Doctor Who: ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a moment…’
The last time Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln wrote for the programme, in The Abominable Snowmen, Victoria was very well catered for. She was given an inquisitive streak and a curiosity that’s been sorely missed for the last couple of stories. I’m hoping that their return to the programme means we’ll be seeing her a little more pro-active again.
One thing I’ve seen criticised about this episode before now is the condition of Silverstein’s museum. About Time, for example, lists it as ‘something that doesn’t make sense’ and says; ‘The museum itself. Why? Specifically, why have a rare and costly item like the Yeti on display in a poxy little collection like this?’
I’ll admit that in the past I’ve thought it was a slightly odd museum, but this time around I suddenly realised — it’s not supposed to be a proper museum at all. It’s the 1960s equivalent of Van Statten’s collection in Dalek. Sure enough the script describes it as a ‘Private Museum’. I’ve developed an entire head canon in the last hour that Julius Silverstein is a high-ranking member of Torchwood who snapped up the Yeti almost as soon as Travers returned to England, and has had it on display in his opulent private collection ever since, letting almost no one set eyes upon it.
I think the scenes in the museum are my favourite part of the entire episode. They’re lit, shot and scored like an old Universal horror movie, and they’re all the better for it. There’s something almost majestic about them, and they almost feel — whisper it — too good to be wasted in Doctor Who. You can tell we’ve got a master at work again, with the return of Douglas Camfield after almost exactly two years away from the series following the end of The Daleks’ Master Plan.
A really solid start, and an 8/10 from me. I get the feeling that had this episode only come back in 2013 when the rest of them did then it would definitely be getting a 9, but I have to go with my gut!
The Web of Fear — Episode Two
Okay, we’re going to have to talk about it at some point, so it might as well be here. Just when is The Web of Fear set? It’s a bit of a contentious issue, and the first piece of the big UNIT Dating Conundrum. Let’s look at the evidence we’re given on screen in this episode, as they’re the main things used when making placement;
- When Travers meets Jamie and Victoria in this episode, he’s baffled by their apperances. ‘But it can’t be,’ he exclaims. ‘Why, that’s over forty years ago!’
- Anne has a chat with Victoria about the TARDIS and says ‘…and you met him, when was it you said? In 1935? In Tibet?’. Victoria confirms the date to her.
Taken together, they would seem to provide a date of at least 1975, and there’s a school of thought which takes that date as read — generally the people who like to place the UNIT stories of the 1970s in a kind of ‘near future’ as originally intended. I’m not one of those people, it has to be said. I think the UNIT stories all take place around the time they were broadcast, and while the show these days likes to poke fun at the confusion about dating it has made a definitive choice; The Sarah Jane Adventures puts them squarely in line with broadcast.
Some people then grumble that it makes the two above instances make no sense, but I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a handful of solutions for making this story’s setting be 1968 — the same year it was broadcast — and still fit with everything we’re told on screen. As I see it there’s a few options;
- Option One: Travers is clearly presented as a bit senile in this story, right from the very begining. Perhaps he’s simply getting his dates muddled up? He says ‘over forty years ago’ when he actually means ‘over thirty years ago’.
- Option Two: Victoria doesn’t actually know the date they were in Tibet, and arrives at 1935 by mistake. She certainly didn’t know the date in that story, so perhaps she’s just plucked it from thin air as a guess, or she’s picking up on cues from Anne because my favourite theory is…
- Option Three: Travers makes more than one trip to Tibet, and Anne muddles them up when talking to Victoria. In this instance let’s say that The Abominable Snowmen takes place in 1925. Travers chases the ‘real’ Yeti at the end but it eludes him, and he ultimately returns home empty handed. A mockery is made of him in the press — as he expected in that story — and so he raises the funds to go back again, which he doesn’t manage to do for a full decade. He fails to find the ‘real’ Yeti on this occasion, but he brings back one of the Robot Yeti which has been locked away immobile at Det Sen. When he returns to England people still don’t take him seriously, and he’s forced to sell the Yeti to Julius Silverstein to pay back his investors (In Episode One Silverstein says of the Yeti; ‘For thirty years it stands here in my museum’). When Victoria and Anne have their chat, Anne suggests that the ‘last time’ her father visited Tibet was in 1935, and Victoria just latches onto that date as it’s the only solid one she’s been given.
Essentially what I’m saying is that yes, we’re given a few seemingly concrete dates for this story in relation to The Abominable Snowmen, but I don’t think they’re the be-all and end-all. The camera script makes it a bit tighter (Anne also confirms that it was 40 years ago that her father met the TARDIS crew), but as broadcast, I think any one of those options could happily explain the issues away.
Of course we get a whole host of other problems when we reach The Invasion and then the Pertwee era, but we’ll discuss them as and when.
So with dating out of this way, what about the episode itself? The standout element for me is Harold Chorley, who’s an odious little man and all the better for it. I love him sticking his microphone into every situation — there’s a brilliant bit where he waves it under Victoria’s nose and she looks properly irritated — and I genuinely laughed out loud at his recording of the soldier’s in trouble, with the sounds of battle followed by a scream; ‘Great stuff!’.
I think it’s a mark of how interesting all the guest cast are that you don’t especially notice the absence of Doctor Who from this episode, and it serves as a great excuse to get Victoria out and into the tunnels herself. I’m glad to see she’s taking initiative again — it gives me hope for the rest of the story!
A 7/10.
