2.12: The Web of Fear

In which Yeti invade the London Underground, and the Doctor makes a new friend.

Broadcast: February-March 1968.

Watched: October 2019

The Web of Fear, Episode 1

Troughton definitely copping a good feel of Watling there. The fact that Salamander in the TARDIS doesn’t have anything to do with the next story, it’s just a silly cliffhanger that’s immediately resolved, is very odd.

Oh good, anti-semitism. [It really, really is: the character of Julius Silverstein is a truly awful covetous Jew stereotype. In other news, one of the writers of this story, Henry Lincoln, went on to be a conspiracy theorist, who co-wrote the book that inspired The Da Vinci Code.]

Why does the control unit make the Yeti thin, then?

The structure here is weirdly Sawardian isn’t it? Leaving the regulars stuck in the TARDIS for the first 15 minutes while showing us a load of set up.

Victoria leaves Earth three years after the first tube trains run: the fact she hasn’t heard of them is appalling. As for how the Doctor gets from Covent Garden to Charing Cross so quickly, or why there’s a junction there... I ask you.

Oh my god they’re going to blow up the tube, this is terrifying.

The Web of Fear, Episode 2

Arnold’s certainty that the Yeti haven’t found the Doctor is at least one thing that suggests the writers aren’t totally making this up as they go along. Chorley the dodgy journalist recording the death rattle down the phone is hilarious.

I love the map, obviously, but how exactly moving fungus makes bits of the lighting go out is a mystery. 

The comedy Welshman is deeply suspicious.

Quite like, but am confused by, the fact they run what appears to be footage of multiplying bacteria under the end of the credits.

The Web of Fear, Episode 3

“We’re completely hemmed in” - have they forgotten that stations have entrances and there’s a third dimension and stuff?

I think this might be a story that works better as a compilation than episodes? It’s quite fun and tense and holds your attention but it doesn’t really change or develop. I wonder if this might be frustrating if you’re stuck watching it in 25 minute bursts.

The Web of Fear, Episode 4

It’s strange in its way how Lethbridge-Stewart is nothing special? Just another apparently disposable guest actor. I like that he instantly believes the Doctor about the TARDIS. Normally that’s how we’d know he’s a goodun, but here it’s meant to be suspicious I think. 

[Some explanation for the uninitiated: this story marks the first appearance of Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart who, promoted to Brigadier, will become a regular from 1970-4, and then pop back frequently enough after that to get bumped up, in the wilderness years novels and audios, to the status of the Doctor’s best friend; his daughter Kate Stewart is still in the show today. Oddly enough, though, on his first appearance, he’s just a regular army captain. This story is sort of an accidental pilot for the UNIT years.]

Arnold is very obviously the real villain. Though I do feel sorry for suspicious Welsh driver Evans.

The battle is great. The cliffhanger with Travers reappearing and looking mental is better. [Travers, Jack Watling’s character from The Abominable Snowmen, reappears in this one, several decades older.]

The Web of Fear, Episode 5

Odd cliffhanger that doesn’t involve the regulars or even the monsters.

Don’t have much else to say so I’ll use this opportunity to ask: has the opening theme changed? When did that happen? The very beginning feels less eerie. [Apparently it changed with The Macra Terror, half a dozen stories ago, and I just didn’t notice.]

The Web of Fear, Episode 6

Is that a fake Sydney Pottier film poster?

The ending is bobbins isn’t it even by the standard of these things. This one’s lots of fun and makes up for the base under siege thing by not having exactly the same story or characters as the others... but you wouldn’t say it goes anywhere.

Still, glad it’s back.