Season Two@60 - The Web Planet

 

Long before I saw this story I read the Target novel upon which it is based, `Doctor Who and the Zarbi`. That book’s strange Chris Achellios cover and descriptive Bill Strutton prose conjured up a totally alien world for young me. For ages I imagined that the televised episodes were as elegant and bizarre and imaginative as that book. So inevitably when I eventually saw it on a grainy video it was hugely disappointing. I wanted those descriptions; I wanted it to look like that book cover and it just didn’t. So, I sort of left it to one side.

 

Clips from the story have often been used on programmes to support the idea that Doctor Who was a cheap silly programme and compared with some million-dollar modern show and though out of context those clips certainly appeared to support that view.  However, if you approach it without prejudice and think about what was achieved and how it was seen by millions, `The Web Planet` actually is sometimes elegant, bizarre, and imaginative. It’s a production whose team went the extra mile to really create something alien. Perhaps the kids of 1964 did feel the same excitement about this story seeing it on the televisions of the time just the once as I did reading the book. Certainly, it looks like the Zarbi made more impact than most of the monsters from that period, after the Daleks of course. Yes, I am sure had the production team enjoyed more time and money it would be a bit better visually but so would any story from any era. Instead let’s take a look, not at what they could do, but what they did do.

“The light on this planet was pale and cold, like moonlight and peopled with harsh shadows” wrote Strutton in the novelisation and the tv version certainly matches that. While some stories try odd things to make a scenario appear more alien (markets on faraway planets are always a favourite alongside prosthetic heads) Vortis as presented here is completely alien. Even the dialogue in the early episodes has an eerie echo (they do seem to forget this as matters progress) while visually we have bleak crags and sandy ground. On modern TVs the fact that the horizon is a backdrop is easier to see yet it is such a well created one that it doesn’t matter. If you stop actually staring at it the landscape soon seems three dimensional. Later in the Animus’ lair there are some very interesting designed walls again adding to the other worldliness. The inhabitants of this bizarre place are inspired by giant insects and some of the costumes are excellent.

The best are the Menoptera in which the actor is totally enclosed in a sort of butterfly/ bee combo without even visible eyes or mouth. Through movement and wispy speech, they really do successfully convey an alienness. This is completed by their nomenclature which give us such unusual names as Hroster or Vrestin. Bill Strutton’s dialogue makes them poetic and wistful at times, their fight to regain their planet an obligation that doesn’t really suit such a species but they are going to do it anyway. It’s remarkable that under all that costume we are soon able to pick out individual characters. As the story progresses you come to realise they each look different too, subtle alterations in the costumes provide individuality. In the novel of course they soar and zip about yet the flying moments in the story are really well achieved. I wasn’t looking and couldn’t see the wires and the actors land as you might expect flying beings to do so, with confidence. By the climax of the story you feel for the Menoptera, some of whom have had their wings removed by the Animus and who mourn their losses with whimpered cries. 

I’d always thought that perhaps the Zarbi looked better as artwork than on screen but even so they still impress particularly if you don't look at the very human legs. The movement is key as they scuttle about and they do have at least two working pincers. What really makes them though is the high-pitched chirruping prevalent whenever they appear and the story’s audible signature. The Animus itself is quite a gruesome idea. Essentially an allegory for a virulent disease it has turned Vortis from a planet that the Menoptera used to farm into a sterile, bleak world. Catherine Fleming provides a menacing undertone to her civil tones and voices a worthy foe. I do like the actual creature as well when we see it in episode six, all writhing tendrils and strong light.

Less successful are the Optera, pigmy like subterraneans who for no real reason jump a lot and whose costumes’ cloth origins would surely show up on even the grainiest Sixties tv set. I do sort of like them though and they too are given their own urgent speech patterns. In the novel there is more emphasis on the fact they are diggers. The venom grubs puzzled me as their weapon which fires electrical charges seems in built so exactly what purpose did it usually serve? It’s with these creatures that the serial’s reach finally exceeds its grasp but nonetheless like everything here there is no faulting the ideas and the skills at play.

Richard Martin directs the earlier sequences with confidence helping to build up the mystery of this strange place though later on there are a number of scenes where there just seems to be too much going on. What with the fact that some of the dialogue is spoken from under all those costumes and the barrage of sound effects plus the awkwardness of the Zarbi costumes in confined sets some moments seem a bit like a children’s party that’s got out of hand. Kudos though for the superb sequence where the Menoptera land to start their take back of the planet; a series of good edits and choreography mean this still looks great implying there are more Menoptera than there actually are.

All that being said I have to admit the story can be heavy going. World building that works so well in the novel is harder to appreciate when its being relayed from under tones of latex and rubber – the sequences where the Optera and Ian are underground are particularly difficult to get into. I was puzzled too by the way the Doctor is written in this story; his reactions to their initial exploration have him puzzling as much as Ian is, yet he has recognised Vortis early on. Its inconsistent and William Hartnell’s performance is equally so though I imagine this was quite a disconcerting production for everyone. Strutton doesn’t quite get under the skin of the regulars either, while there’s some fun banter between the Doctor and Ian in episodes one and two, neither Ian nor Vicki are penned with the same verve as in the last couple of stories. Jacqueline Hill has the best arc, despite being absent for an episode, and turns in a heroic, sympathetic performance when mixing with the Menoptera. 

It’s a violent story really; several characters don’t make it to the end though the deaths are handled without showing too much while the concept of the Animus is certainly grim. There’s also an environmental undertow with the descriptions of what the planet used to be like. I wonder too, given Bill Strutton served for the Australian army in the second World War, whether he wrote this story as a fantastical version of the liberation of Europe.

There is no evidence to suggest this serial was unpopular at the time, quite the opposite in fact. Two of the episodes topped thirteen million viewers. So quite why it’s been used shorthand for the cheaper end of Doctor Who productions in more recent decades is a mystery really. Sixty years on it seems high time to acknowledge that `The Web Planet` is a visually ground breaking production and an example of how bold some programme makers were in the Sixties.