210: The Web Planet
Doctor : 1st (William Hartnell)
Companions : Ian Chesterton (William Russell) Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill)
Vicki (Maureen O'Brien)
Series : 2
Originally Transmitted: 13th February - 20th March 1965
Many people have attempted to watch every single episode of Doctor Who since it began in November of 1963. Many of those same people even managed to struggle through all 6 episodes of The Sensorites (Coming soon). But very few people ever manage to make it through all 6 episodes of The Web Planet.
The Web Planet - Ender of Doctor Who marathons ever since someone copied it from someone else and shared it around on a 20th generation videotape some time during the 80s. (I never did this BTW, my fandom started in the early 90s when UK Gold repeated the whole series on TV).
The Web Planet is bad, I mean really really bad. So why didn't I include it sooner?
Well because you just have to admire the balls to try to pull something like this off given the time it was made and the limited resources. The shows budget around this time was approx £2000 per episode which according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator is around £32,800 in todays money.
That would have to pay the cast, crew, build all the sets and film the thing as well. Not only that due to the limited editing facilities you could only have 3 cuts per episode, the whole thing was filmed in one night and any special effects were painted onto the film, no CGI whatsoever.
Compare that the the show now which is rumoured to cost £1 million per episode with 3 weeks to film plus many months in post production and you can see the vast difference.
So what were they trying to pull off?
Well the Tardis lands on the planet Vortis, in the Isop galaxy. Well I say it lands there it's actually dragged down there and all the power in the Tardis is shut off. The Doctor opens the doors by waving his ring in front of a theremin which seems to work.
Once outside he and Ian look at rocks for a while, and then the most dramatic thing in the entire episode happens....
IAN CHESTERTON'S PEN DISAPPEARS
Seriously, it just vanishes into thin air. The Doctor is highly amused by this and for good measure asks Ian for his school tie, and then dips it into a puddle of acid ruining it. Poor old Ian's having a really rough ride in this story.
Vicki & Barbara meanwhile are left locked in the Tardis. Barbara hears a strange sound and follows it out of the Tardis like she's hypnotized. Vicki is left in there are the Tardis is dragged away by a strange force.
All this takes around 25 minutes to happen and they've not even met the natives of the planet yet. To say this story has been padded out is an understatement.
One of the most annoying aspect of this episode is that to make the shots on the planet's surface look more alien they have this really annoying blur effect.
Later on in the episodes, especially when you see the really bad insect costumes battling each other you have this rather strange feeling that you're watching a school nativity play with a really bad hangover. This is made even worse that you can hear the actors thumping around on what is obviously a stage rather than a planets surface & crashing into cameras. It really does look a bit amateur hour.
Finally we start to meet some of the inhabitants of the planet. First we meet the Zarbi.
The Zarbi are obviously giant ants, they were docile until the Animus invaded the planet Vortis and uses them to try and take over the planet. They do this seemingly by bashing things with their head and using Venom Grubs.
The Venom Grubs are lcreatures resembling woodlouse that can spit fire from the end that that big pointy thing at the front known as a larvae gun. I always found the concept of a larvea gun rather odd. Wouldn't the human equivalent be a baby gun? or a toddler gun? The Venom Grubs are actually mentioned in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it-reference during the new series in the 9th Doctor story Boom Town where we are told they're used to punish the Slitheen.
There are some good guys in all this meet The Menoptera.
The Menoptera are a moth like creatures who escaped The Animus when it invaded Vortis by flying to one of the planets moons. The Animus however used it's power by increasing the gravitational pull of the planet bringing all of the Menoptera back to Vortis, the same gravitational pull that forced the Tardis to land there. On their return the Menoptera as forces work as slaves in The Crater Of Needles. A giant crater filled with acid that the Menoptera fill with plant vegetation to feed The Animus. The Menoptera leader is played by distinguished actor Martin Jarvis in his first television role. Probably fair to say he's been in better things since.
Also on the side of good are the Optera
The Optera are the descendent of the Menoptera who decided to live underground when the Animus took over Vortis. Due to the evolutionary process they've lost their wings, have much bigger eyes and are more sensitive to light. For some unknown reason the leader of the Optera speaks with a kind of Mexican accent for no apparent reason, which would be far more annoying in any other story but in this one with the silly high pitched Menoptra squeaks and weird speech patterns to make them sound more alien this is almost a blessing. Oh and they also jump around like kangaroos which is so funny you can't take anything they say seriously.
So anyway, the Animus realises something is afoot and begins to communicate to the Doctor via an old school hairdryer.
In fact William Hartnell even calls it that in the story. At first The Animus believes the Doctor is an agent of The Menoptera. When the Animus realises that he isn't a Menoptera agent and knows nothing he instructs the Zarbi to bring The Doctor to him.
Meanwhile the Doctor's companions have spent the past 3 or 4 episodes gathering together a resistance movement and they attack.(That one sentence just saved you around 100 minutes of having to watch this)
The Doctor along with the now freed Vicki finally meets The Animus who turns out to be a giant spider plant.
The Animus tries to absorb The Doctor's and Vicki's minds by having a psychedelic light show a full year before Pink Floyd ever thought of the idea and which would have probably looked a lot better had it been in colour.
Then Barbara arrived with a couple of Menoptera and an isotope which she intends to use to kill the Animus however it treats her to a psychedelic light show before she has the chance. Thankfully Ian and a few friends walk in at that moment distracting The Animus away from Barbara who uses the opportunity to use the isotope and kill it and the story finishes.
Or so you would think, the story then drags on for yet another 10 minutes of insect backslapping & celebrating and Ian complaining about the loss of his beloved tie before thankfully this whole thing ends and we can get on with a decent story about The Crusades with Julian Glover & Jean Marsh.
It's an easy target but The Web Planet is crap. It was meant to be seen once as a piece of entertainment nearly 50 years ago and at the time and once broadcast on TV they probably thought that was the end of it. I doubt anybody could have foretold in 1965 that this would still be being watched & judged by that days standards all these years later. Amazingly the first episode of this story attracted 13.5 million viewers, the highest ever viewed episode for Doctor Who in the 1960s. It also spawned 2 sequels in 'Twilight Of The Gods' a novel featuring Patrick Troughton's Doctor and Return To the Web Planet, an audio story with Peter Davison's Doctor, so clearly somebody liked this story and was inspired by it. Of course that doesn't make me want to watch this the whole way through ever again.
I leave you with the one famous clip of this story that has become famous over the years, a Zarbi running head first into the camera which was amazingly left in the episode.....