197 The Web of Fear: Episode Six

EPISODE: The Web of Fear: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 197
STORY NUMBER: 041
TRANSMITTED: 09 March 1968
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
TELESNAPS: The Web of Fear: Episode Six

Evans and Arnold escape the fortress' destruction with Evans fleeing from the sergeant. The Doctor returns his Yeti to Intelligence control until it's needed. They meet first the Colonel & Jamie then Arnold and move towards Picadilly Circus. They are soon captured by Yeti as is the lone Evans. Arnold manages to escape. Travers and Victoria are brought to the ticket hall at Picadilly Circus where they catch sight of a figure in the shadows. Dominating the hall is a large glass pyramid which Travers thinks the Intelligence will use to drain the Doctor's mind. Arnold find the long missing journalist Harold Chorley in the tunnels and takes Chorley with him. Evans is brought in to the prisoners and The Doctor taken away. He immobilises the Yeti and alters the helmet apparatus they're carrying before reactivating the Yeti and continuing. Everyone is brought to the ticket hall. Chorley enters propelled into the room by the Intelligence's servant: Staff Sergeant Arnold. Jamie is brought in by a Yeti. The Doctor is placed in the pyramid and the machine activates. Jamie orders his Yeti guard, the one brought under control earlier, to attack the Pyramid and the Yeti. The Doctor is rescued and the Pyramid destroyed, killing Arnold and immobilising the Yeti. The Doctor is distraught: he'd altered the device so the intelligence would be drained into him and not the way the Intelligence had planned. Now it's free to wander again. The Travers praise him as a hero. Making their farewells the time travellers return through the now clear tunnels to Covent Garden.

A great final episode with the Doctor cooking up a plan that gets ruined by his companions! You feel sorry for him at the end, but he's known Jamie long enough to know this is exactly what he'd do. This whole story is cracking, sounds superb, looks great in it's one surviving episode and the Telesnaps.

Both of the Haisman & Lincoln six parters are cracking, probably the best Doctor Who stories I've encountered so far. They're great 6 part stories, the best examples in Doctor Who where instead of sagging in the middle or suddenly changing direction they just increase the tension a some more. I waver between the two though as to which is better! At the moment Abominable Snowmen probably has a slight edge but that's no slight on Web of Fear. They're both magnificent and it's a shame just one episode of each remains.

All six episodes of Web of Fear were issued as a soundtrack cd with narration by Fraser Hines which was released on 6th March 2002. The Soundtrack was re-released in a 2-pack with the previous Yeti story, The Abominable Snowmen, called Yeti Attack in 2003.

I first encountered The Web of Fear as a novelization, by Terrance Dicks, in my local library. They had an extensive range of Doctor Who books (for the time: 1981-4 ish). These are what I can recall reading there:

An Unearthly Child (Paperback)
The Daleks (Hardback)
The Tomb of the Cybermen (Hardback)
The Web of Fear (Hardback)
The Claws of Axos (Hardback)
The Sea Devils (Hardback)
The Mutants (Hardback)
Carnival of Monsters (Hardback)
Frontier in Space (Hardback)
Planet of the Daleks (Hardback)
The Time Warrior (Paperback)
Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Paperback)
Death to the Daleks (Paperback)
Planet of the Spiders (Hardback)
Robot (Paperback)
The Sontaran Experiment (Hardback)
Genesis of the Daleks (Hardback)
Revenge of the Cybermen (Hardback)
Terror of the Zygons (Paperback)
Pyramids of Mars (Hardback)
The Android Invasion (Paperback)
The Brain of Morbius (Paperback)
The Masque of Mandragora (Hardback)
The Deadly Assassin (Hardback)
The Stones of Blood (Paperback)
Destiny of the Daleks (Hardback)
State of Decay (Paperback)
Logopolis (Paperback)
Castrovalva (Paperback)
Four to Doomsday (Paperback)
Kinda (Paperback)
The Visitation (Hardback)
Earthshock (Paperback)
Warriors of the Deep (Paperback)
The Awakening (Paperback)

The Web of Fear Hardback sits on my shelves at home to this day, as do the Paperbacks of Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Castrovalva. As we'll see later on it's rather appropriate that my local library, in Tudor Drive, Kingston Upon Thames, should have a copy of Invasion of the Dinosaurs....

Several other Who novels were read from other locations:

The Daleks (School)
The Cave Monsters (School)
The Terror of the Autons (School)
The Doomsday Weapon (School)
The Dæmons (School)
The Green Death (School)
Genesis of the Daleks (School)
The Talons of Weng Chiang (Mobile Library)
The Horror of Fang Rock (Kingston Library)

And of course my parents were busy buying them for me too :-)

196 The Web of Fear: Episode Five

EPISODE: The Web of Fear: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 196
STORY NUMBER: 041
TRANSMITTED: 02 March 1968
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
TELESNAPS: The Web of Fear: Episode Five

I'm writing this sat at my Mother's house: she has a classical music concert on (She tells me it's Swan Lake) and as I sat down to write this episode a quiet piece started with a beat sounding exactly like a Yeti control sphere!

The Intelligence relays it's instructions through Travers: The Doctor will surrender himself and have his knowledge drained by the Intelligence, which has built a machine for this purpose. They abduct Victoria and give the Doctor 20 minutes to surrender himself. Evans suggests the Doctor give himself up. Jamie wishes to rescue Victoria so he and the Colonel go on a scouting mission. However on reaching the surface they find the fungus outside. Unable to seal the outer doors they make do with closing fire doors. The Doctor gets one of Travers' broken control spheres working by thumping it and is then able to test his machine to control it. Evans confronts the Colonel & Jamie believing one of them to be a traitor. Victoria & Travers have been brought to Picadilly Circus where the Intelligence releases the professor. Hiding in the tunnel beyond the station is the wounded staff sergeant Arnold. Victoria gets him to take a message to the Doctor telling him where they are. The Doctor has perfected his device and is now able to voice control a Yeti. He goes north to Warren Street to find a Yeti. Arnold is found by Jamie & the Colonel and returned to the Goodge Street HQ. The Doctor's path is blocked by fungus, and his way back by a Yeti which he takes control over. Evans tends to Arnold's wounds but as he goes to fetch something the wall of the fortress disintegrates letting the fungus in.....

Am I reading this right? Is everything the Intelligence has done in this story an attempt to gain the Doctor's knowledge? That's what it seems like here. That explanation has come a little from left field here and changed the track of where we're going, almost forming the "change of location" used by many six part stories to stretch it out. Another cracking episode though with the survivors all at their wits end and suspicions being pointed all over the place.

The Web of Fear isn't the only station to use the London Underground as a setting: the resistance have a base in a disused tube station in Dalek Invasion of Earth, then Doctor and (the by then promoted) Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart visit Moorgate where they fight a dinosaur in the Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Moorgate's situated on the city branch of the Northern Line and was the site of the 1975 Moorgate Underground Crash, the most serious accident on the London Underground. The Doctor mentions an Tube station in the Sontaran Experiment but I can't remember which one while the Mysterious Planet, parts 1-4 of The Trial of a Timelord are located in the remains of Marble Arch station. The Doctor has even availed himself of another city's Underground Railway: he visits several Paris Metro stations during The City of Death.

195 The Web of Fear: Episode Four

EPISODE: The Web of Fear: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 195
STORY NUMBER: 041
TRANSMITTED: 24 February 1968
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
TELESNAPS: The Web of Fear: Episode Four

Knight's party are stopped from reaching Holborn by Fungus as is the Doctor's attempt to get to the Tardis. The Doctor takes a sample of the Fungus in Evans' tobacco tin. Returning to HQ they find the soldiers, including Weems, dead and Professor Travers missing. The Ops room map shows more stations have fallen to the fungus with just a few left. Lethbridge Stewart speculates on who the traitor is, thinking it may be the abducted Professor Travers while the Doctor feels the absent Chorley is a much more likely candidate. The Doctor tells them about the Tardis and the Colonel decides to mount a rescue mission. The Doctor and Anne work on a device to override the Intelligence's signals and control a Yeti. Evans finds one of the missing Yeti models which the Doctor deactivates. Arnold, Lane & Evans are to take a trolley to Covent Garden while he takes the majority of the soldiers overground to the station. Examining Evans' tobacco tin The Doctor finds it empty, casting suspicion on the Welsh driver. Arnold & Lane don respiratory gear and venture into the fungus with the trolley. Hearing screams Evans drags the trolley back finding Lane's dead body on it. Lethbridge Stewart's party are ambushed by Yeti. Captain Knight accompanies the Doctor to the surface to fetch electronic spares. While they are raiding a shop a Yeti enters, killing Knight before leaving. Searching Knight's body the Doctor finds one of the other two missing Yeti statues. He returns to Goodge Street just before Lethbridge-Stewart, the sole survivor of the surface expedition to Covent Garden. Searching the Colonel's pockets they find the final Yeti statue as two Yeti enter with an Intelligence possessed Professor Travers.

It's a bit of a bloodbath this episode with virtually the entire supporting cast wiped out. Suspects for the traitor are few and you can make an excellent case for it being the missing Chorley. The fight scenes sound good, look great from the telesnaps (this is the first time I've seen them) and there's even a few moments of the battle preserved thanks to the Australian censors which gives us our first surviving glimpse of Lethbridge Stewart.

There's some excellent location work in this episode involving the battle scenes in Covent Garden. More of the story would have been filmed on location, but famously Douglas Camfield was denied permission to film on the Underground. However we'd already seen filming involving London Underground locations in a previous Doctor Who story. In the first episode Dalek Invasion of Earth the river bridge, under which a roboman throws himself to death on location which is then recreated in studio, was Kew Railway Bridge which carries the District Line over the Thames between Kew and Gunnersbury. Later that same episode there's location filming of Barbara & Susan crossing a deserted London including some filmed at the abandoned Wood Lane Central Line station. In Web of Fear the Army's fortress is the Deep Level Shelter at Goodge Street. Another Deep Level Shelter, at Camden Town, provides a location in The Sunmakers. Incredibly the country railway station seen in Black Orchid was at one time a London Underground station! Quainton Road Station was once served by Metropolitan line trains. The Met terminates now at Amersham, but once upon a time continued north, through Aylesbury to Quainton after which it branched to either Verney Junction or Brill, which is in Oxfordshire!

If you'd like to see The London Underground's homage to Doctor Who then visit the Jubilee line station at London Waterloo. The panels used on the wall there are suspiciously Tardis like as you can see in these photos.

194 The Web of Fear: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Web of Fear: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 194
STORY NUMBER: 041
TRANSMITTED: 17 February 1968
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
TELESNAPS: The Web of Fear: Episode Three

We're half half way through the Troughton episodes today, though of course the production team didn't know that at the time. Neither did they have an idea quite how important today's episode would turn out to be. You'll know why virtually immediately.

Evans shoots at the glass pyramid shattering it but the fungus web in the tunnels continues to advance. Victoria is calling for the Doctor in the tunnels when she is waylaid by the soldier "One Moment" he says stepping out the shadows, but he's accompanied by the Doctor. Learning they're connected with Travers he takes them back to Goodge Street. Anne reports to Captain Knight that the circle line is completely enclosed with fungus now. Arnold delivers word that Victoria has returned, with the Doctor and a Colonel. The Doctor tells Victoria he was knocked out by the explosion and then met the Colonel in the tunnels. Blake guards the Colonel waiting for Knight. When he arrives the Colonel introduces himself: He is Colonel Lethbridge Stewart and presents his authorisation papers to take over command of the Goodge Street fortress. Travers and Ann apologise for the misunderstanding that led Victoria to go into the tunnels. Now on the Central Line, Jamie & Evans have reached St Paul's. At the fortress Chorley is trying his best to leave. Travers recounts how one of the control spheres brought back from Tibet was reactivated. Reaching Chancery Lane, Evans and Jamie part company with the Welsh driver attempting to return to the surface. Knight & Lethbridge-Stewart hold a briefing bringing the Doctor up to speed on how the mist and fungus appeared and spread. Chorley interrupts proposing they be air lifted out, but the Colonel dismisses the idea. Jamie is reunited with Evans: he couldn't get out because the gates were locked. Queensway, Lancaster Gate, Strand and Chancery Lane all fall to the fungus as it works it's way inwards from the circle line. The Colonel gives Chorley the job of liaison officer to keep him occupied and out of the way. The Doctor suggest a way of remote detonating some explosives in the tunnel to seal themselves in. Someone is opening the main door to the fortress. Victoria finds the Yeti models in Travers' lab - however one is missing. Elsewhere the missing model is placed on the floor, making a bleeping noise summoning a Yeti. Victoria is horrified by the plan to blow up the tunnel: Jamie won't be able to get to them. The Yeti enters the base. Knight finds the padlock for the door and the Yeti model at the explosives store and leaves Lane guarding it. The Doctor opens the explosive store to find it full of web: the Yeti have destroyed their means of attack. The Colonel and Knight take a squad to Holborn to attempt to recover the explosives there. Victoria accidentally tells Chorley about the Tardis at Covent Garden and he leaves to find it, shutting the Doctor and Victoria in a room. They're released by Jamie and Evans. They all depart to find Chorley. There's a scream in fortress: Travers finds Weams's body with a Yeti looming over him.

You can't get round it, what you have to talk about this episode is the first appearance of Lethbridge Stewart, here still ranked as Colonel. He'll be back more often than any other character in Doctor Who and Nicholas Courtney would have a job for life. But it could all have been so different: Originally cast in the role was David Langton, who backed out in late November after being offered other work. Camfield instead offered the part to Nicholas Courtney, who he'd previously used in Dalek Masterplan, and he had planned to have played Captain Knight. The script, as written, calls the character Colonel Lethbridge: Douglas Camfield altered the name to Lethbridge Stewart. Of course *knowing* that Colonel Lethbridge Stewart would go on to become such a huge part of the show does rather defuse an aspect of the story here: he shows up, with slightly flimsy credentials, and suddenly things start going wrong in the fortress. Someone's under the intelligence's control and, without the knowledge of the future, Lethbridge Stewart is your number one suspect. Once you know who the traitor is it's worth going back and listening to the episodes again: they do drop some little tiny hints on the way. Your main alternate subject at this stage is Chorley, new holder of the "most annoying character in Doctor Who" trophy. He's busy going to pieces here and looking for a way, any way, out of the situation he finds himself trapped in.

We've got a station mentioned in this episode that you won't find on any present Tube map: The Strand was then the name for the Northern Line station that now forms part of Charring Cross.

The cast of this story features some familiar faces from other Doctor Who productions. As we've noted, Nicholas Courtney was previously Brett Vyon in Dalek Masterplan and Jack Watling was Edward Travers in his previous appearance in Abominable Snowmen. Ralph Watson's already been a scientist in The Underwater Menace before he featured as Captain knight here and will be back as Ettis in Monster of Peladon and Ben in Horror of Fang Rock. Under one of the Yeti costumes is John Levene, previously a Cyberman in Moonbase. But this role brings him into contact with Camfield which will be useful a year or so down the line..... Richardson Morgan, as Corporal Blake, will be back as Rogin in Ark in Space. Derek Pollit, Evans, will return as Private Wright in Doctor Who and the Silurians, and A. St. John D. Caldera in Shada. Where's Walter Randall? It's not a proper Camfield production without him!

193 The Web of Fear: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Web of Fear: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 193
STORY NUMBER: 041
TRANSMITTED: 10 February 1968
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
TELESNAPS: The Web of Fear: Episode Two

The soldiers have discovered the Doctor was at Charring Cross. Captain Knight dispatches Staff Sergeant Arnold to find him. Weams reports that blast recorder has measured no damage. Word comes in that there is trouble at Holborn and Jamie, to his alarm, overhears the word Yeti. On the phone line gunfire is heard and a roar before the line goes dead. Knight takes a team of soldiers to Holborn to see what's happened. Arnold & Blake find the destroyed explosive boxes under the Yeti's web: both suspect the Doctor of interference. Travers is reunited with Jamie and Victoria, vouching for them to the soldiers. Arnold returns, sure that the Doctor has sabotaged the explosion. Jamie, insisting that the Doctor didn't do it, says he suspects he knows where the Doctor can be found. The journalist, Chorley, is suspicious of the Doctor & his friends as well. Falling back from Holborn Knight's party have been engaged by Yeti, with several soldiers killed by the web guns. They attempt to build a barricade, packed with explosives which they detonate but the Yeti are unharmed. Victoria overhears Ann Travers accusing the Doctor of being responsible for the Yeti and leaves the fortress to find him, not hearing Professor Travers robust denial and defence of his old friend. Arnold & Jamie have met Knight & Lane in the tunnels but all are captured by Yeti. Blake & Weams speculate about the origins of the Yeti, with the Doctor being accused of responsibility again. The illuminated underground map on the shelter wall suddenly starts to shows the Yeti's web fungus advancing round the circle line at both the top and bottom of the loop. Travers is informed and is astonished at the rate of progress. Chorley suggests the Doctor's responsible. Victoria has become lost in the tunnels. Meanwhile the Yeti guarding Jamie and the soliders suddenly are summoned away and walk off abandoning their prisoners. They hear a welsh voice singing in the tunnels and meet Evans, the driver on the ammunition truck. He has seen the web advancing following a Yeti holding a pyramid. Remembering how the Pyramids helped the Intelligence maintain it's earthbound presence in Tibet, Jamie leaves with Evans to destroy the pyramid. Evans meanwhile intends to do a runner at the earliest opportunity. They proceed to Cannon Street and onwards to Monument. Chorley wants to evacuate the base. Knight and Arnold return to base with no news: all three of the time travellers are now missing in the tunnels. An unknown soldier stalks Victoria in the tunnels. Jamie and Evans hear a noise, then see a light: the Fungus is advancing down the tunnel towards them!

This episode, with it's battle with the Yeti in the tunnels sounds superb. Like Abominable Snowmen we've got an early episode existing so we've got a decent idea of what everything looks like, helped here by (if you're a Londoner) familiarity with the location. When Haysman and Lincoln last did a Doctor Who story they had accusations been flung at the Doctor that he's responsible for the alien menace. The same trick is used again here. Last time suspicion passed round the cast when we knew who was responsible: this time it's slightly different. Patrick Troughton's on holiday this week but unlike Evil of the Daleks 4, where all his material was pre filmed, he doesn't appear at all. Similarly the Army boots seen in the tunnel towards the end aren't filled with their usual owner but instead are occupied by by Maurice Brooks, saving the cost of hiring the actor in question for a cameo scene.

Right lets get the changes in behind the scenes personnel out the way: It's Peter Bryant's first show as producer proper, after a trial run on Tomb of the Cybermen. The new script editor is Derrick Sherwin, an actor turned writer. He'd been working on the popular soap opera Crossroads and brought with him to Doctor Who a writer he'd worked with there to act as his Assistant Script Editor: Terrance Dicks, who'll we'll here much, MUCH more from later.

As we've already said, returning to Doctor Who for this production are Douglas Camfield, absent since the 12 part Dalek Masterplan two years earlier, and Melvyn Haysman & Henry Lincoln, who wrote the Yeti's previous appearance, The Abominable Snowmen. There's an indication in the script that Haysman and Lincoln might be Pink Floyd fans: Web of Fear features characters named Arnold & Lane. Seeing the names together makes you think that inspiration may have come from the Floyd's 1967 hit Arnold Layne.

The main location for this story is the Deep Level Shelter at Goodge Street Tube Station. Constructed at various points along the Northern line these shelters exist bellow the level of the tube stations to offer a good level of protection in the event of an air raid. People had been sheltering in Tube stations since the start of WWII, indeed Churchill used the disused Down Street Tube Station as a shelter. If you watch the James Bond film, Die Another Day, the fictional Vauxhall Cross station Vauxhall Cross Tube Station shown in the film occupies the space where Down Street would be on the Picadilly Line map. For more information on deep level shelters see http://underground-history.co.uk/shelters.php. Ten years later the Camden Town deep level shelter would be used in a location during Doctor Who: The Sunmakers.

The London Underground Tube Map features prominently in this and subsequent episode, particularly in the form of an illuminated version on the wall of the Goodge Street Fortress showing the progress of the web fungus. The tube map is a piece of iconic design created by draftsman Harry Beck that's become an icon of London in it's own right and a template for public transport maps everywhere. Mr. Beck's Underground Map is a great read on the development of this important document.

The map at Goodge Street helps us date this story: No Victoria line is shown so it's prior to 1st September 1968 when the branch from Walthamstow Central to Highbury & Islington in North London opened.

192 The Web of Fear: Episode One

EPISODE: The Web of Fear: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 192
STORY NUMBER: 041
TRANSMITTED: 03 February 1968
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Web of Fear: Episode One

As I write this it's Wednesday 4th May 2011. Yeah I'm a few days ahead but there's a couple of trips away coming up and a hospital visit so having a few (29) blog entries in the bank won't hurt. Besides it means I can spend the morning of my Birthday watching one of my favourite surviving episodes of sixties Doctor Who. And as a bonus I get to talk about the London Underground too! RESULT!

Jamie closes the doors on the Tardis sealing them off from the forces pulling them outside. At a museum in London the elderly Edward Travers is arguing with the museum's owner, Julius Silverstien, for the return of his Yeti when Travers' daughter Ann arrives. Travers tells her that he has reactivated a Yeti control sphere but it's gone missing. She persuades him to come home with her. The museum's owner goes to lock up when he hears a crash. The Control Sphere has broken through a window, reactivating and changing the Yeti. The beast comes alive killing Silverstien. The Tardis materialises in space but finds itself quickly coated in a web like substance. In London some soldiers are in an underground shelter Corporal Lane is on the telephone as Corporal Blake searches for Captain Knight. Knight is giving an interview to journalist Harold Chorley, paying tribute to their commanding officer, Colonel Pemberton, who has been recently killed. Travers is brought in by some soldiers: his presence has been requested by his daughter who is working here. The Web clears a little allowing the Doctor to move the Tardis half a mile from where they were expected to land. They are in a tunnel. Exploring they find they are on the platform of Covent Garden Underground station. The Doctor believes it's night time but walking to the locked surface gates they find it's broad daylight. A news paper seller sits against the gate, but when Jamie taps him on the shoulder he topples over dead, revealing a sign reading "Londoners Flee! Menace Spreads!" Retreating to the tunnels Jamie steps onto the track but fortunately for him the power is off. As they walk down the tunnels to the next station suddenly the tunnel is illuminated. Hiding, they are passed by three soldiers unravelling a drum of cable. Jamie & Victoria follow the soldiers while the Doctor traces the cable back to it's source. Craftsmen Weams thinks he hears something in the tunnel but Staff Sergeant Arnold dismisses his fears. However Victoria then walks into a cob web and screams, allowing the three soldiers to capture them. The Doctor follows the cable to Charring Cross station where he finds in wired to boxes of explosives. He hears a familiar beeping sound and ducks under the platform as a Yeti walk onto the station. Back at the base Lane is unable to contact Holborn to find out what's happened to their ammunition truck. Ann Travers tells him and Captain Knight that she's repaired the blast recorder. Another Yeti joins the first, both pointing guns at the explosives box which cover it in a web like substance. Arnold brings Jamie & Victoria to the fortress where Knight hasn't got time to question them. They tell Arnold they were alone, trying to stop them hunting for the Doctor. However now he believes there's nobody in the tunnels Arnold reports to Knight it's safe to detonate the explosives. There's a small blast on the platform and the web covering the boxes starts to glow.....

LOTS to talk about today :-)

Watching this I almost resent the intrusion of the cliffhanger from the previous episode and the lengthy Tardis scene at the start because it keeps the Doctor & co out of the Underground for so long. The scenes in the Underground are so atmospheric, it's just such a natural location for Doctor Who to be set in with enclosed dark tunnels. I say location, but it's isn't, this is all Studio Sets. Returning director Douglas Camfield had his production assistant Gareth Gwenlan, later to be Head of Comedy at the BBC, enquire of London Transport as to the possibility of filming there. They said no, so designer David Myerscough-Jones created the distinctive Underground tunnels in the studio. So good was his work that London Transport wanted to know how Camfield et al had managed to gain access to their premises without their knowledge and court action was mooted. The character of Edward Travers returns in this episode, at least 30 years after the events of the Abominable Snowmen. He's the second non regular character, after the Meddling Monk, and the first non regular human character to appear in two different stories. Oddly enough the program's MOST regularly recurring character makes his debut later in this story. At the start of the episode Captain Knight is paying tribute to Colonel Pemberton, his recently deceased CO. This character is named after Victor Pemberton, Doctor Who's occasional Script Editor who was at the time writing the next story: Fury from the Deep.

The geography in this episode is a little bit wonky at first glance: How can the Doctor & co step onto the track on the station where the Tardis lands and end up where they do? A little interpretation makes sense of it. We see three locations: The shelter, which we later find out is the deep level shelter at Goodge Street Tube Station. The Tardis materialises at Covent Garden tube station. The explosives are found at Charring Cross Tube station. So although the story makes it seem that Jamie, Victoria & The Doctor have just walked into the tunnel and found the cable the likelihood is they've walked south on the Picadilly Line, and then at Leicester Square walked through the station to the Northern Line tunnels - the Northern line connects Charring Cross & Goodge Street stations - and walked from there. But Charring Cross in the story isn't the present day Charring Cross tube station: the Northern Line station there was at the time named The Strand and not connected to the Bakerloo line as it is now which stopped at a separate Trafalgar Square station (now absorbed into the present day Charring Cross station). "Charring Cross" then is the present day Embankment tube station, serving Nortern, Bakerloo, District and Circle lines.

The Army's 2nd base at Holborn, lies on the Picadilly Line one stop north of where the Tardis landed at Covent Garden. It also has platforms for the Central Line which intersects the Northern Line between Goodge Street & Charring Cross at Tottenham Court Road, for many years the tube station closest to most of London's comic and sci fi shops. Interestingly between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn lies the disused "Ghost Station" of British Museum. Sadly Web of Fear goes nowhere near ghost stations which is a fascinating subject in itself.

This is one of the stories that everyone remembers: Yeti on underground, Daleks in London, Cybermen coming up out of Sewers and "the one with the Seaweed and foam" are probably the four most mentioned sixties stories amongst non fans. The Yeti become the series third returning monster with this story a mere 12 episodes between the end of their last story and the beginning of this one (The Cybermen had a gap of 14 episodes between Tenth Planet and The Moonbase. Although memorable they're probably some way down the all time Doctor Who monster listings due to not having appeared since 1968.

Web of Fear was the first episode of Doctor Who to be returned to the BBC Film and Video library. In 1978 Sue Malden, BBC archive selector, made a visit to BBC Enterprises and found a batch of returned films from Asia TV in Hong Kong. Amongst these was one episode of Doctor Who: Web of Fear 1. She contacted Asia TV but they said they had no other old episodes of Doctor Who. However 14 years later the same television station found prints of all four episodes of The Tomb of the Cybermen in it's vaults. 13 episodes of Season 5 remain. 2 were always known to be at the BBC, four more were actually at the BBC all along but lost. So of the episodes returned from outside sources this season, most of them come from Asia TV. Further searches of their archives have been made and they insist nothing else is there. The only problem with this story is that in 1976 a list of episodes held by the BBC was produced in order to make the Whose Doctor Who documentary. That list includes a lone episode of the Web of Fear: episode one....

I wanted to see Web of Fear 1 when I was younger. I was very fond of the book of this story which I'd read in my local library dozens of times (said Hardback copy now sits on my shelves here) and I knew this episode existed. Anticipation was heightened by watching Abominable Snowmen 2 on Doctor Who - the Troughton Years in 1992. As we saw it wasn't released with Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors in 1998. In fact it didn't come out on video till the very last Doctor Who video release The Reign Of Terror, which Blackstar very helpfully failed to send me necessitating a run round several shops hunting a copy down (thank you HMV in Richmond). Since the soundtrack for the whole story was released on 6th March 2002 that makes this one of four episodes of Doctor Who that I hear before I saw them (the others are Dalek Masterplan 2 and Faceless Ones 1 & 3). Of course it's now available on DVD as part of Doctor Who - Lost In Time.

Sadly this is the only episode of this story to exist and the last episode we get to watch for a bit. We're entering our joint longest run of missing episodes at 13 episodes, equalling the run from Tenth Planet 4 - Underwater Menace 2. Here it consists of Web of Fear 2-6, Fury from the Deep 1-6 (the whole story) and Wheel in Space 1 & 2. But after that there's just NINE missing episodes of Doctor Who.

191 The Enemy of the World: Episode Six

EPISODE: The Enemy of the World: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 191
STORY NUMBER: 040
TRANSMITTED: 27 January 1968
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World
TELESNAPS: The Enemy of the World: Episode Six

Bruce is having difficulty believe the Doctor, Jamie & Victoria when Benik arrives with papers for "Salamander" to sign. The Doctor examines them and finds they're for food deliveries for 30 people which is suspicious because only a dozen work at the centre. As he dies Swann gets Astrid to promise to rescue those in the shelter. The Doctor arranges for Bruce to release Jamie & Victoria: they're told to contact his deputy Forrester with a code word summoning him to the research centre. Astrid arrives at the shelter: the inhabitants initially are scared of her, fearing Radiation contamination but she proves to them that Salamanders radiation detection instruments are faked. She, Colin and his wife Mary return to the surface. Giles Kent has entered the research centre and goes to confront Salamander in the records room but it's the Doctor he meets. Astrid arrives with Mary & Colin who identify Kent as the man that took them to the shelter. He set the scheme up with Salamander but they disagreed and parted company: Colin & Mary believe he'd been killed. The Doctor was suspicious of Kent from the start. Kent escapes into the lift to the underground tunnels where he intends to detonate explosives stored there. Forrester arrives and under Bruce's orders arrests the research centre staff including Benik. Salamander is waiting for Kent, having observed the confrontation in the records room. They fight and Kent is killed detonating the explosives. The people in the shelter survive the blast as do those on the surface. Astrid explains the shelter can be reached via the tunnel she found and Astrid & Bruce lead the rescue attempt. The Doctor, seemingly wounded returns to the Tardis where Jamie & Victoria are waiting and beckons Jamie to take off. Jamie is suspicious: he was told never to touch the console. Rightly so: This is Salamander exposed when the real Doctor arrives. In a scuffle the Tardis starts to take off with it's doors open and Salamander is sucked out leaving the time travellers at the mercy of the forces pulling through the open doors.....

Not a bad climax to a story that's proved much better than I recall it being. The plot twist half way through the story is barkingly mad and completely unforeseen: here Kent's true motives have at least been hinted at with his quickness to violence. It's by no means a typical Doctor Who story being more closely related to a James Bond spy thriller with just the hint of science fiction with the villain's ability to cause natural disasters, his Suncatcher energy satellites are mentioned in the first episode - if I was re-writing I'd make them involved in the process some how and connect them with the work being done by the people hiding in the shelter from the war that never happened. This plot element reminds me of something I saw in my younger days but I can't think what. It's a little similar to the Silurians in Hibernation waiting for the Earth to recover from the moon hitting it, the people in the "Spaceship" in Invasion of Dinosaurs and of course Japanese soldiers marooned on remote islands convinced the second world war goes on, but the "sheltering from the nuclear war that never happened" idea rings big clear bells.

A couple of changes behind the scenes happen at the end of this story. Innes Lloyd departs the producer's role. Never happy with science fiction he was more than willing to vacate his seat for Peter Bryant. Despite his feelings about the show Lloyd did a top job, producing many memorable stories and introducing several important elements to the series. It's also the last story overseen by Head of Drama Sydney Newman, who'd helped create the series. After leaving his post he returned to his native Canada.

This story was followed by a specially recorded trailer for the next story, The Web of Fear, featuring Patrick Troughton warning children at home that their parents may find it frightening.

Enemy of the World was novelised by Ian Marter in 1981 during a period when few Hartnell and Troughton stories were being produced by Target Books. It's television author David Whitaker had started work on it but died before much could be produced. The Soundtrack was released on CD in 2002 with narration by Fraser Hines. Unlike the stories either side of it, it can be currently had for pennys. The soundtrack to the Web of Fear trailer is included as a bonus.

Next up I get to spend six days talking about two of my favourite subjects at once: Doctor Who *AND* the London Underground. Be here tomorrow as we WATCH Web of Fear Part 1.