Day 99 — April 9th 2021
The Web of Fear Episodes Three and Four
The Web of Fear — Episode Three
There’s a sort of ‘Sod’s Law’ situation in having The Web of Fear turn up in an overseas archive with one episode missing… and that episode being this one; the first appearance of a character who’ll go on to be hugely important to the programme, and who’ll appear in more episodes than some of the future Doctor Whos themselves!
There’s a bit of debate about what happened to this episode. Either it was missing all along, or it was initially there and then stolen from under the nose of the discoverer — possibly because this is a key episode in the development of the series — or perhaps it was just too damaged to restore. Whatever the case, the fact that the BBC are currently working on an animation to cover this gap suggests to me that they don’t expect it to rock up any time soon.
It’s also Sod’s Law that the episode goes to such lengths to make us suspect that Lethbridge-Stewart might be the traitor working with the Intelligence… and yet because we know who he goes on to be we also know that he’s the only member of the guest cast who can’t be evil! The episode really does go out of its way to make us suspect him, though. I think at one point or another almost every character wonders where he’s popped up from.
I know they didn’t realise that Lethbridge-Stewart would go on to be such an important character, and so no real thought was given to his introduction, but it does seem bizarre that we don’t see his first encounter with Doctor Who. You’d think it would add to the mystery if we actively saw him appear out of the shadows to confront our hero in the first place.
But it’s not Lethbridge-Stewart which I think is the real casualty of this episode still being missing for me — it’s the presentation he’s given about how the current situation came about. The soundtrack is great, describing the Natural History Museum covered in mist, and images of the event spreading out across the capitol, but the tele-snaps capture precious little of this. I’d really love to see more of it and find out if the images looked as good on screen as they do in my head.
One last thing to note for this one — at one point it sounds to me like Victoria gives us the name ‘TARDIS’ without the definitive;
Chorley: ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. You can’t land in an Underground station.’
Victoria: ‘Tardis can. It’s not an ordinary sort of craft.’
Chorley: ‘Look, look, you say it can get us out of here?’
And I still think it sounds better that way! From now on in day-to-day conversation I’m going to just be using ‘TARDIS’ to describe the ship.
Another 7/10 for this one.
The Web of Fear — Episode Four
I’ll admit that for the first 10 minutes or so of this episode I was feeling a little deflated. I can remember during my last marathon really loving The Web of Fear when I listened to the audio, and then when the episodes came back it was… I mean it was good don’t get me wrong, but perhaps because we all expected it to be brilliant and we’d been so surprised by The Enemy of the World it fell a little flat. I think I recall bumping up a score or two because I didn’t want to rate it too low.
As those first ten minutes played out today I found myself a little bit — whisper it — bored. I wasn’t all that gripped by anything that was going on, and it’s perhaps telling that I’ve not made any notes for the first half of the episode. I was worried that we might be heading for a five or a six, and I’d be apologetically rating this story as quite low.
Oh, but when it kicks off it really kicks off. The score very quickly went up, and as soon as we hit that brilliant cliffhanger, where two Yeti burst into the lab swiftly followed by a menacing-looking Travers (who’s been missing since the early moments of the episode) I knew that we were looking at a 9/10. It’s a surprisingly low-key cliffhanger. It’s not particularly showy or action-packed, but it really packs a punch, and especially when this episode has continued to build suspicion like the last did.
This time around it’s poor Driver Evans who falls under the suspicion of… well, pretty much everybody. And it has to be said that he does act even more shifty here than he has in all the episodes up to now. When Doctor Who opens the tobacco tin to discover that the captured sample of web has vanished is played very much as a major reveal, and I think we’re supposed to take it as confirmation that the suspicious Welshman is the villain in our midst.
As a side note, I notice that BritBox has a warning for these episodes about ‘racist stereotypes’ in this story… I’m assuming it’s Evans they’re thinking of? It’s the tenth anniversary of my moving to Wales this month, so all Welsh accents just sort of feel like home to me these days…!
Of course I know who the actual traitor turns out to be, and we get to see plenty of him in this episode. I’m not sure there’s been any attempt to throw suspicion on him yet, but perhaps that’s the point? I’ve seen it said that he only comes under the influence of the Intelligence in this episode, having come into contact with the web, but I’m not sure the timeline synchs up for that to be the case, as surely the Yeti ‘homing devices’ have been planted before that? There’s a chance that I’m misunderstanding, though, so I’ll be watching closely for tomorrow’s episodes.
The homing devices are a great idea, although I know they’re something that confused me the last time I watched Downtime. They’re used in that story — if I remember correctly — in the same manner they are in this one, as something to plant on an intended target rather than a way of controlling the Yeti directly. I can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t of hurt whoever is working for the Intelligence to make them a less obvious shape, though!
Anyway, all this and I’ve not even touched on the big Covent Garden battle between Lethbridge-Stewart’s men and the Yeti. While I think so much of the story is perhaps better suited to being lost and only available to listen to (all these claustrophobic tunnels are perfect for creeping down your headphones), this is absolutely a sequence that’s designed to be seen.
And I’d forgotten just how impressive it is, too. It runs for ages, and it’s the perfect showcase of why Camfield is one of the best directors the series ever had. Everything about it works beautifully, from the look of the Yeti marching down the street (once again we can see that ‘Tooting Bec’ theory being proved spot on) to the sheer terror of the soldiers. Watching army personnel getting thrown about will become an everyday occurrence for the series before too long, but here it’s still a novelty. And as much as I praised a similar sequence of the army fighting the monster on the streets of London in The War Machines, this takes that and makes it almost infinitely better. It’s one of the single best sequences we’ve been given in the series so far.
And it’s another chance for me to wish that all Doctor Who had been shot on location and film, because doesn’t it look incredible?
What’s impressed me even more than the battle — and that’s quite a feat, let me tell you — is Lethbridge-Stewart’s return to the base afterwards;
Jamie: ‘What’s happened?’
Doctor Who: ‘Colonel, what happened?’
Lethbridge-Stewart: ‘Gone.’
Victoria: ‘Not all of them?’
Doctor Who: ‘All of them?’
Lethbridge-Stewart: ‘I said so, didn’t I? All of them. Evans, what about your party? Arnold?’
Evans: ‘Gone, sir.’
Jamie: ‘Captain Knight, too.’
Lethbridge-Stewart: Hopeless.’
I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated how good that moment is before. How hopeless and beautifully delivered.
There’s a moment immediately afterwards where I was fairly sure Nick Courtney slipped up with his line and a quick check of the camera script confirms it — he describes the Yeti as being ‘formless and shapeless’ and says that Doctor Who was right when he gave that description earlier in the episode. In the script the Colonel is talking about something else out there — the Intelligence. Which makes more sense because the robots are categorically not shapeless… they’re shaped like Yeti!
I started off this episode thinking I might be a little bit bored with the story, and then the episode responds by killing off almost the entire guest cast and raising the stakes to a whole new level. Had it not been for those slow opening ten minutes, this could very well have been a full-on ten, and there’s every chance that as I think on it more it may yet become one…
