The Web Planet

The TARDIS is dragged off course and lands on Vortis, a world under seige. With no power in the machine the Doctor and Ian venture forth onto the planet in search of answers while later Barbara succumbs to a mysterious force and leaves Vicki alone inside. Vortis is a planet where the dominant life forms are the humanoid butterfly people, the Menoptera, but they have been driven away by an evil entity they call the Animus, and the Animus in turn has enslaved the ant-like Zarbi to act as its soldiers in the war for the planet. Caught in the middle of it all, the Doctor and his companions realize the true nature of the Animus and ally themselves with the Menoptera, but the web around Vortis is closing fast.

That's an interesting shirt. No I don't know his name or number.

The Web Planet is bloody amazing. The sheer ambition of the production crew is to be admired as they created an entire alien world and monsters to fill it with the only humanoid cast being the TARDIS crew. Visually that's pretty damn impressive, and they even went so far as to create an entire philosophy of movement for the actors playing the Menoptera, credited to the actress Roslyn de Winter who played Vrestin. The Zarbi costumes look a real chore to act in with the actors stooped over and shuffling about thudding into each other and colliding with the cameras here and there; word was they were going to be made as a marketing alternative to the Daleks but with only one appearance it wasn't likely they would take the same spotlight. On the downside of the design angle, though there's the third Vortis species, the underground dwelling Optera who have their own gutteral primitive dialogue but their design is.... kinda sloppy. Whereas the Menoptera are elegant and have giant wings (and in some sequences we get to see them in flight) the Optera hop around and have two real limbs and four obvious dummy limbs on their bodies. And yeah there's the question of the sets... the planetscape of Vortis is a vast painting on the wall of the studio and when the actors get a bit too close they cast obvious shadows on it, and the corridors inside the Animus' lair, the Carcinome, are a bit wobbly and flimsy, but really it was 1965 it wasn't going to be a CGI masterpiece. Naming the lair as such plays into the notion of the web spreading across Vortis as an actual cancer and that it is killing the planet. Some of the design shortfalls are hidden by the atmospheric effect of petroleum gel smeared on glass and placed in front of the cameras, so we get a real feel for the alien nature of the planet.

Over the six episodes of the story the characters are once again split up; the Doctor and Vicki spend a lot of time in the power of the Animus with the Doctor speaking to its disembodied voice through a tube hanging from their ceiling which he at one point refers to as a hairdryer. Ian and Vrestin fall into the depths of the planet and meet the Optera, and Barbara after an absence of an episode is jailed with a group of Menoptera who have had their wings torn off and are slaves workers for the Animus. Split up though they are they all make their way to the final confrontation with the Animus and arrive together by separate means, but it's not the first time they have managed that feat. And as for the Animus itself... well have you ever seen It? Nuff said.

There's really no new ground covered for the regular characters this time, just the Doctor implying that he has a source of great power available to him through the ring he wears and uses it to open the TARDIS doors when the ship's power is sucked dry. The klutz of the story award goes to Vicki who in her panic starts to push all the buttons on the console, which could have led to some terrible consequences. Continuity is held up well as the opening of the story leads right in from the end of The Romans, and there is the odd reference back to that story through the gold bracelet Nero gave to Barbara.

At the end of episode six the NEXT WEEK titles promise the first episode of The Crusades, which goes by The Lion. Before tackling that episode it's back to printed adventures with another feline in the title...

NEXT EPISODE: THE ELEVENTH TIGER