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| The Doctor and Vicki: Prisoners of the Zarbi! |
6 episodes: The Web Planet, The Zarbi, Escape to Danger, Crater of Needles, Invasion, The Centre. Running Time: Approx. 147 minutes. Written by: Bill Strutton. Directed by: Richard Martin. Produced by: Verity Lambert.
THE PLOT
The TARDIS is dragged down to Vortis, an alien world with a thin atmosphere. The planet is populated by man-sized insects. The Doctor and Vicki are captured by the ant-like Zarbi, who serve an evil being known as The Animus (alas, not the one from Assassin's Creed). The Doctor is able to convince the Animus of his value, and he and Vicki are allowed to remain alive and free if he helps thwart an invasion force.
The invasion is by a butterfly-like race known as The Menoptera. Vortis was their planet before the Animus came, but the evil intelligence forced them to flee to a nearby moon. Now they have developed a technology that will allow them to destroy their enemy - But only if they can get into direct physical proximity. No easy task, particularly when the Zarbi are impervious to their weapons!
As the Doctor tries to misdirect the Animus, Barbara falls in with the Menoptera. Meanwhile, Ian finds himself underground, with yet another band of insects, plotting an attack of his own...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: Another strong showing for the First Doctor. Yes, there's an infamous bit early on that sees Hartnell visibly blank on the script, covering by chortling like a lunatic while William Russell gamely steers him back on track. But once that moment has passed, Hartnell is on form for the rest of it. Particularly good are the scenes in which the Doctor negotiates with the Animus, playing for time and opportunity by teasing out just enough information to keep himself and Vicki alive. I love the moment when Hartnell (almost certainly ad-libbing) refers to the interface with the Animus as a "hair dryer."
Vicki: Maureen O'Brien is wonderfully expressive. A scene late in the story has her pretending to be under the spell of the Zarbi's, uh, halter/stick thing (don't ask). Vicki cocks open one eye, then makes a subtle but very funny face before carefully freeing the Doctor and working with him to figure out their next move. Her tendency to make pets of strange creatures pops up when she and the Doctor capture a Zarbi, and she takes time to name it! O'Brien continues to have great rapport with Hartnell, and their pairing is so much fun to watch.
Barbara: Despite Jacqueline Hill being absent for Episode Three, Barbara ends up being central to the story. She teams with the Menoptera reconnaissance party, leading an escape from the ominously-named Crater of Needles in an attempt to stop the massacre of a Menoptera invasion force. The attempt is unsuccessful (in no small part due to the idiotic stubbornness of the force's leader), but Barbara quickly takes charge of the survivors, pushing them to regroup and carry on with an attack on the Animus.
Ian: Once again gets stuck with the weakest strand. After tagging along with the Doctor for the first two episodes, he's sent off to "find Barbara" ; apparently, searching an entire planet on foot for a single person is considered a simple task. Unsurprisingly, Ian does not find Barbara, but he does fall in with the "Optera," caterpillar-like aliens who communicate by grunting broken English and move by hopping. Ian convinces the Optera to take a perilous underground route to the Animus, in a subplot that in no way feels like a retread of the closing episodes of The Daleks. He reaches the Animus just in time to... watch as Barbara saves the day, while it becomes clear that his entire subplot existed only to pad the story out to six episodes.
WELL, THAT HAPPENED.
Um.
Readers of my reviews will know that I'm an unabashed fan of the Hartnell era. So many decades later, the First Doctor remains my favorite Doctor. Ian and Barbara are a serious contender for all-time best companion team, and I absolutely adore Vicki. I will defend the overall quality of the Hartnell era to the hilt, and I remain nothing short of in awe at the miracles Verity Lambert and her crew were able to pull off with such limited resources. I love the Hartnell era, pretty much unreservedly.
Except for The Web Planet. This is only my second time watching this serial, and I am fairly certain it will be my last. Ignoring all other issues, this surely is the most migraine-inducing story Doctor Who has ever produced. A rough text recreation of entirely too many scenes would run something like:
"Zarrr-BEE!" <<Pulsating Zarbi Chirp>> "Zarrr-BEE!" <<Alarm chimes>> (People in butterfly costumes inflict interpretive dance on the audience for entirely too many unbroken seconds.) "Zarrr-BEE!" <<Alien gun noises. Pulsating Zarbi Chirp.>> Repeat as needed to pad out runtime.
THOUGHTS:
The Web Planet represents an attempt to create a completely alien world. Doing so on a 1960's Doctor Who budget was arguably ill-advised in much the same way that it might be ill-advised to bungee jump over metal spikes. Without a cord. Attempts to showcase the alien nature of the atmosphere are conveyed, in part, by slathering enough vaseline on the camera lens to supply a 1970's porn extravaganza. This does create distortion... But also means that at least one entire dialogue scene plays out with a visible, static glob of stuff overtop William Hartnell's face.
Bizarrely, the vaseline misstep aside, the story's problem really isn't the realization. The sets and backdrops are surprisingly effective by the show's standards, comparing positively against those used in The Daleks. The Menoptera flying effects are passable, the ant-like Zarbi honestly look pretty good, and even the shoddier props convey a unified, organic feeling.
What lets it down are some bad directing decisions and some glaring weaknesses in the script.
BARRIERS TO ENJOYMENT:
I've mentioned elsewhere that director Richard Martin liked to push the envelope in his serials. More often than not, I quite appreciate his efforts to back up solid storytelling with cinematic technique. But in The Web Planet, he gets it badly wrong. I've already mentioned the vaseline, a decision which makes an already difficult story physically hard to watch. The choreography of the Menoptera is a good idea, but is taken much too far, with their swaying and hand-waving distracting from the story rather than enhancing it.
Then there are the sound effects. The Zarbi chirps, the alarms, the bizarre laser sound made by the one beetle-like creature (that looks more like a mop)... It creates a sensory overload that isn't particularly alien, but is definitely unpleasant. If the production team was actively trying to make the story impossible to enjoy, they couldn't have done a better job of it.
TOO MANY EPISODES, TOO LITTLE STORY:
Bill Strutton's script does have some good scenes. Pretty much everything involving the Doctor and Vicki works, and the Doctor's negotiations with the Animus are a joy to watch. Some of the scenes between Barbara and the Menoptera are quite well-written, though they're undermined by the excess choreography. Even in the Ian/Optera thread, there's a memorably gruesome moment in which an Optera sacrifices herself by using her body to plug an acid leak - A genuinely disturbing moment in an otherwise tiresome subplot.
But everything that's good is buried underneath so much junk! There simply isn't enough story to fill six episodes; I'm genuinely uncertain there's enough to fill four. As a result, each episode crawls by at an increasingly attenuated pace. On both of my viewings, I've found the first two episodes to be just about OK... But it gets ever more slow-paced, duller, and noisier as it goes.
THE ENDING:
The whole thing ends with the Animus defeated several minutes before the end of the final part, leaving a seemingly endless epilogue. The time travelers leave, and the last couple minutes are taken up by the Menoptera and Optera singing/grunting at each other, followed by another bit of choreographed hand-waving. I half-expect them to break out into a full-on dance number!
It's a mercy when the camera finally tilts up to the sky and the "Next Episode" caption appears, announcing the end of the dreary slog that was The Web Planet.
Overall Rating: 2/10.
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