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The Web of Fear

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041 – The Web of Fear
Doctor Who serial
A dormant Yeti awakes...
Cast
Others
Production
Directed byDouglas Camfield
Written byMervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln
Script editorDerrick Sherwin
Produced byPeter Bryant
Executive producer(s)None
Production codeQQ
SeriesSeason 5
Running time6 episodes, 25 minutes each
Episode(s) missing5 episodes (2-6)
First broadcast3 February 1968
Last broadcast9 March 1968
Chronology
← Preceded by
The Enemy of the World 		Followed by →
Fury from the Deep
List of episodes (1963–1989)

The Web of Fear is the fifth serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 3 February to 9 March 1968. This serial — which marks the return of the Yeti, the Great Intelligence, and Professor Edward Travers — is the sequel to The Abominable Snowmen. It marks the first appearance of Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, subsequently better known as the Brigadier, and acts as a pre-cursor to the numerous later serials involving the UNIT organisation.

Plot

Professor Travers of the Tibetan expedition seen in The Abominable Snowmen, tries to get the owner of a museum to return the Yeti robot which Travers had sold it 30 years earlier, claiming the Yeti is dangerous. Professor Travers claims to have reactivated a control sphere (which controls the Yeti), and now it has gone missing. Silverstein, the owner, throws Travers out who is taken home by his daughter Anne. The control sphere crashes through a window and activates the Yeti, which attacks Silverstein.

Jamie, the Doctor, and Victoria, land after some trouble—the TARDIS is frozen in space, and surrounded by what appears to be a web—in the London Underground railway. The station is abandoned, and it is broad daylight outside. Jamie spots an old man seated outside the gate, but they find he is dead and covered in cobwebs. A newspaper seller's poster declares- LONDONERS FLEE! MENACE SPREADS.

Professor Travers is brought by army troops to a WWII shelter adjacent to Goodge Street tube station. He is there at the request of his daughter, and he starts off by annoying Harold Chorley, the only journalist allowed there during the problem that is spoken of constantly. The fortress commander, Captain Knight, disapproves of Travers' presence, believing it to be a military matter.

Below ground the trio see three soldiers unwinding a drum of cable along the tunnel. The Doctor tells Jamie and Victoria to follow them while he tracks the cable's source. However Jamie and Victoria are discovered and captured.

The Doctor follows the cable as far as Charing Cross underground station. He hides when he hears a pair of Yeti coming. Using a mysterious device, the robots cover some crates with a thick cobweb substance.

Jamie and Victoria are taken to the Goodge street fortress. They learn that the tunnel is going to be blown up. They reveal, too late, that the Doctor is still in the tunnel.

After the Yeti have left the platform the Doctor goes to the crates to examine them and is caught by a contained blast as the explosive is set off.

The soldiers soon work out that the blast in the tunnel did not register in the normal way. Jamie and Victoria find out about the Yeti and contact Travers. He is overjoyed to be reunited with his old friends from Tibet, but puzzled as to why they have not aged in 30 years like him. Knight, Corporal Lane and some other soldiers find out that an ammunition party with a truck at Holborn tube station have all been killed and so they set off to recover the ammo so they can blow up the tunnel.

Travers insists the Doctor must be found, and Jamie heads off with Staff-Sergeant Arnold to see if they can find him. They soon meet up with Knight and Lane, who have come under attack from the Yeti. When they try to detonate some explosives against the Yeti, the bombs fail to explode, the blast being smothered by the web generated by the Yeti guns. The Yeti retreat, leaving the soldiers and Jamie to escape. Elsewhere in the underground there is poison web fungus expanding in the tunnels. It seems to be engulfing the whole of the Circle Line, entrapping central London.

Back at the base, Victoria has overheard Anne Travers speculating that she and the Doctor might be behind the Yeti emergence and so heads off alone to the tunnels to look for the Doctor. As she searches, she does not know that a lone soldier is stalking her.

Elsewhere in the tunnels another soldier, Private Evans, is found; he is seemingly the only survivor from the attack on the Holborn ammo party. He explains that the fungus is being grown and stimulated by the use of a glass pyramid, which Jamie recalls was crucial to the Great Intelligence's development in Tibet. Evans agrees to accompany Jamie back into the tunnels, and it is only a matter of time before they become trapped by the expanding fungal web.

Egged on by Jamie, Evans destroys a pyramid of spheres carried by one of the Yeti and this enables them to make their escape. Elsewhere, Victoria and the Doctor are reunited but the Doctor is in the company of a mysterious Colonel (who had been stalking Victoria) who takes them back to HQ.

Professor Travers is overjoyed to see the Doctor again, and together they start to examine Yeti control spheres. The Doctor is sure the Great Intelligence is attempting to conquer Earth once more, and has brought him here for some reason too. Travers is convinced he has brought the Intelligence back to Earth by running experiments on one of the spheres and succeeding in activating it. The mysterious Colonel reveals himself to be Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, who was also part of the Holborn ammo party. He is there to take command of HQ after the death of the previous commander, Colonel Pemberton. During a briefing he holds the time travellers discover that the reason for London's desertion is because of fog on the surface, which follows the path of the fungus underground. If anyone enters the fog they do not come out again.

The personnel at the base are getting ever more nervous as they are entrapped. The fungus continues to spread. The Doctor advocates blowing up the tunnel, thus sealing them in and away from the expanding web fungus. However, it now seems that there is an enemy in their midst: someone unbars the doors to the base and places a beacon for the Yeti in the explosives store. Soon a Yeti is advancing on the HQ and deposits a load of pulsating fungus inside the storeroom. It can be contained by closing the doors, but has consumed all the explosives within and thus preventing the Doctor’s detonation plan. The Colonel decides to recover some ammo from Holborn.

Chorley is the prime suspect, and Victoria accidentally tells him about the TARDIS, and he rushes off to Covent Garden tube station to try and collect it. Jamie and Evans return to the base, and they go to intercept him with The Doctor and Victoria. Meanwhile, the base is attacked by a Yeti, which kills the guards and Craftsman Weams.

The Yeti knocks Travers out and drags him away. When they reach Covent Garden the Doctor's party discover it to be barred off by fungus. The soldiers also cannot reach Holborn as it too is blocked by fungus, which is continually closing in on Goodge Street.

The Doctor retrieves some of the fungal web to start experimenting on it. They find Anne unconscious and Travers gone. Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and Captain Knight are told about the intelligence and the TARDIS by the Doctor. The Colonel decides that while Arnold, Lane and Evans get a baggage trolley through at the same time, he will take all the men left in the base except Knight across the surface to Covent Garden and retrieve the TARDIS so everyone can escape. When everyone has left, The Doctor discovers that the web sample is gone.

At the fungus, Arnold and Lane choose to put on gas masks and go through the fungus with the baggage trolley to get to Covent Garden, but when they enter the fungus Evans hears piercing screams. He pulls the trolley out on a rope to find Lane dead and Arnold gone.

On the surface there are Yeti waiting for the soldiers at Covent Garden. The soldiers take cover in a nearby builder's yard and shut the gate but the Yeti find another way in. The men open fire, but their bullets have no effect on the Yeti, who smash down the main gate as well. The troops retreat and the Yeti kill two men with their sheer strength. Another four are killed by the Yeti web guns, and the Colonel orders a retreat into a nearby warehouse.

The Doctor needs electrical components, so Knight takes him to an electronics store on the surface. In the shop, Knight is killed by Yeti who leave the Doctor alone. He discovers a Yeti model in Knight's pocket, which brought them to the shop. Meanwhile, Corporal Blake and all the other soldiers are killed in the warehouse. The Colonel returns to HQ alone where a model is found in his pocket before two Yetis bring Professor Travers back to HQ, who is possessed by the Great Intelligence.

Travers is used as a conduit for the voice of the Great Intelligence, which is now controlling his body. The Great Intelligence explains that it brought the Doctor here in order to drain his mind. Unless he surrenders to the Intelligence, the entity will drain the brains of Jamie and Victoria. Victoria is taken as a hostage by 'Travers' and the Yeti while the Doctor is given twenty minutes to ponder his future. He decides to surrender himself if he can’t find another solution and applies himself to the control box once more, succeeding in reanimating a broken control sphere. He and Anne manage to get the control box to direct the sphere if they are kept very close. The Doctor then develops a voice control system for the sphere.

Victoria is taken to Piccadilly Circus tube station where the Intelligence abandons its control of Travers. They are soon joined by Staff-Sergeant Arnold, who turns up dishevelled and bleeding, having somehow survived the web. He is hidden from the Yeti and agrees to head off to HQ to tell the Doctor what is happening. Arnold soon links up with the Colonel and Jamie, who are searching in the tunnels. All three agree to return to HQ to support the Doctor, but he and Anne have gone off to track down and seize a Yeti. They manage to overpower one and substitute the servile control sphere.

Back at HQ things take a further turn for the worse when the fungal web bursts through the walls.

The Doctor and Anne release their servile Yeti, knowing it can be controlled later if needed, and then they run into Jamie and the Colonel who bring them up to speed. A little later they find Arnold, who explains that HQ has been destroyed and Evans has deserted. He slips away again while the others are herded by the Yeti and marched toward Piccadilly. In the central ticket hall of Piccadilly Station, there is an enormous glass pyramid, which is there to manifest the Yeti. The Doctor, Jamie, Victoria, Anne, Travers and Lethbridge-Stewart are all reunited at Piccadilly Circus, with Evans brought to them soon afterward. It turns out that the human agent of the Great Intelligence is Staff Sergeant Arnold, who has been killed and his body animated by the Intelligence.

The Doctor is sent into the glass pyramid and is just about to have his mind drained when Jamie unmasks the servile Yeti and uses it in an assault. The pyramid is destroyed in the ensuing scuffle, detonating all the Yeti control spheres, and the corpse of Arnold falls dead. Everyone is happy except for the Doctor. He explains that he had sabotaged the conversion headset and would have drained the Intelligence if the device had been used – but now the Intelligence is free once more. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria slip away and head back to the TARDIS.

Continuity

  • For the dating of this serial, see the Chronology.
  • Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart makes his first appearance in this story, with the rank of Colonel. His next appearance is in The Invasion, and from that serial he serves as the central figure of the UNIT organisation.
  • The design of the Yeti is significantly different from those in this story's predecessor, The Abominable Snowmen. In the first episode, a dormant "Mark I" Yeti – a prop from the earlier story – is reactivated, and a transformation takes place. The Doctor describes the subsequent Yeti as "Mark II".
  • The Seventh Doctor refers to this adventure in Remembrance of the Daleks, asking Ace if she remembers "the Yeti in the Underground".
  • The novel The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee features a brief look at an alternate version of the Great Intelligence's invasion here, this version taking place in the alternate reality visited by the Third Doctor in Inferno, with Britain here being aided by the alternate version of the Master.
  • A very brief clip of the TARDIS suspended in space from episode 1 is later included in episode 10 of The War Games in the next season.[1]
  • Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart mentions the Yeti in the tenth-anniversary story The Three Doctors. and then again in the twentieth-anniversary story The Five Doctors.

Production

Template:Doctor Who episode head

  • Patrick Troughton took a week's holiday during the rehearsals and recording of Episode 2. Consequently, the Doctor appears only in the reprise from Episode 1, and the Doctor's first meeting with Lethbridge-Stewart takes place off screen.
  • The Tube sets were reportedly so accurate that the BBC was accused of illegally filming on London Underground property.[2]
  • Several props were reused from the previous Yeti serial, including control spheres and model Yeti.

Cast notes

  • Actor Nicholas Courtney previously appeared in a different role, that of Bret Vyon, in The Daleks' Master Plan.
  • David Langton was originally cast as Lethbridge-Stewart, but he pulled out before rehearsals and Nicholas Courtney (originally cast as Captain Knight) was given the part instead. However, it is an extra named Maurice Brooks who is first seen in the role, his booted feet appearing briefly late in Episode Two.[3]

Missing episodes

Only Episode 1 and a few clips of this story still exist in the BBC Archives. The clips are those that were censored and physically cut from the film by the New Zealand authorities when they purchased the rights to broadcast the story.

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in August 1976, entitled Doctor Who and The Web of Fear.

Template:Doctor Who book

VHS, DVD and CD releases

  • In 2003, Episode 1 of this story & episodes 1 & 3 of The Faceless Ones were the final episodes of Doctor Who to be released on VHS by BBC Worldwide.
  • Episode 1 and the surviving clips were released on DVD in the United Kingdom in November 2004 in the three-disc Lost in Time set.
  • The audio soundtrack, along with additional linking narration by Frazer Hines, has been released on MP3 CD.[4]

References

  1. ^ Howe, David J.; Walker, Stephen James (1998). "The War Games: Things to watch out for...". Doctor Who: The Television Companion. London: BBC Worldwide. p. 173. ISBN 0-563-40588-0. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Howe, David J.; Walker, Stephen James (1998). "The Web of Fear: Analysis". Doctor Who: The Television Companion. London: BBC Worldwide. p. 144. ISBN 0-563-40588-0. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Anonymous, "The UNIT Story, Part One," Doctor Who Magazine Special, Winter 1991, Marvel Comics, Ltd., p. 9.
  4. ^ "Doctor Who: the Abominable Snowman / The Web of Fear (BBC MP3 CD Audio): Books: Original Soundtrack". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
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