Things I've Learnt from Watching My Favourite Doctor Who Stories: Part 6 - The Web of Fear

6. The Web of Fear

Necessity is the mother of invention if you can't go down the Tube...

This is one serial that was built its legendary mythical status due to being 5/6 missing. Unlike the Tomb of the Cybermen, for this story we had episode one - and what a cracker it is! (Imagine if it had been episode one of Enemy of the World that was not lost rather than episode three!) 

Web starts as a full blown horror with the Yeti coming back to life and mercilessly bashing the life out of the poor museum owner. We're in the capable hands of director Douglas Camfield, who has turned up frequently in this list and this story plays to his strengths with its strong military theme and action sequences. No wonder they got Patrick Troughton to record that special trailer warning children that if their parents got scared they were to hold their hand! 

At this time, stories set on contemporary earth were still rare, following the War Machines, The Faceless Ones and the first episode and a half of the Evil of the Daleks. Setting the story in a familiar environment like the London underground was genius, but you could argue that the Great Intelligence using robots in London disguised as Yeti makes little or no sense. But when did that ever stop this programme which revels in the incongruity of situations like this. And this is one of the stories that has, over the years, adopted a Friends-style subtitle - The One with the Yetis in the Underground! 

In 2013, there was amazing news that the remaining episodes as well as the Enemy of the World's lost instalments had been found in, of all places, Nigeria. (Please feel free to read that last sentence in the style of Deborah Watling in the Lost in Time documentary) The news was slightly spoilt by the revelation that someone - I have my suspicions who! - had half-inched episode three but to go from 5/6 missing to 5/6 found, was nothing short of miraculous. Available on ITunes, I quickly snapped them up rather than wait several months for the DVD. 

It even made headline news and I always remember some tv critic on the One Show, almost gleefully, pointing out you can see the zip in the Yeti costume in the battle scene in episode six. A bit mean spirited I thought in light of how joyful the fans to have it back. It felt like the Doctor Who equivalent of pointing out that a foul by an England player in the 1966 world cup final. 

This is, after all, the story that convinced London Transport the BBC has gone behind their back and film on their property, after refusing permission without charging an exorbitant fee. They were fooled by the magnificent and convincing sets designed by David Myerscough-Jones. The sequences filmed at Ealing Film Studios are notably more atmospheric and capture the coldness of an abandoned tube station perfectly. 

Episode Four is often championed as the best episode of the six, mainly due to the wonderfully dramatic action sequences filmed at Covent Garden. It's tightly directed as one by one the soldiers are picked off by the unstoppable Yeti, although you can't help feel sorry for the one who clutches its head as it's shot coming through the gate! In quick succession, a large percentage of the cast are mercilessly killed off, characters such as Corporal Blake and Captain Knight who we've got to know over the last four episodes. In an era that's unabashedly family-centric, it's atypically brutal. 

It is of course, the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney as Brig... sorry, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and he's excellent, he's the model of authority, and it's a shock to see him lose his cool after the Covent Garden massacre. Surprisingly he's written not as the comedy sceptic he'll become in latter Pertwee UNIT stories, but he actually seems to believe the Doctor while Knight is the sceptic. The scene where they question the Doctor is intense with Troughton in the foreground, facing away from them as if avoiding their gaze. I'm part of the generation whose first encounter with the second Doctor had been in the Three and Five Doctors, where he's written a lot broader than here. 

There's a mysteriousness to him here that's similar to the Tomb of the Cybermen. He's quick to be pally with Anne Travers (a lovely performance by Tina Packer) but at the expense of his relationship with Jamie and Victoria (he even tells Victoria to be quiet at one point!) If there is a failing of this era it's the watering down of the companions, often shunted off to make way for more interesting characters, which is a shame. It's a fault of the era as a whole rather than just this story and Jamie at least gets to be heroic at the end, even if he does muck up the Doctor's plan to defeat the Intelligence. 

The Web of Fear is as perfect a slice of Doctor Who as you can can get. It's mission is purely to enthrall and entertain, and now we've 5/6 of it back, we can see it certainly it is one of the best. 

Next Time: A friend is a friend for life. Just don't leave them stranded in Aberdeen...