Review The Web Planet (1965)

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
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Your thoughts on this story......


The TARDIS is drawn by a mysterious force and lands on the alien planet Vortis. There the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki find themselves caught up in a war between an evil force known as "The Animus", its ant-like Zarbi allies, and the butterfly-like Menoptra race and their allies the subterranean Optera.






On to the next story.....

THE CRUSADE

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/the-crusade-1964.3396/


Back to the previous story....


THE ROMANS


https://www.imdforums.com/threads/the-romans-1965.3346/
 
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Of course, my first exposure to this story was in the target novelisation by Bill Strutton, which was notorious for calling him DOCTOR WHO throughout. But the Zarbi and Menoptra also appeared in the first annual in a couple of text stories, so I knew them well before finally seeing a proper photo of the Zarbi in the Doctor Who Monster Book and Doctor Who Weekly.

So, it was actually many years before I saw the actual serial itself.

It cannot be faulted for it's ambition and is, in my opinion, a very interesting failure. The first episode is good, but the suspension of disbelief is truly challenged by a further five episodes.

A brave attempt though and, I think, deserving of our indulgence.
 

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
VIP
I too first found this story in the target novelisation, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However even reading the book I realised that the ambitious nature of the story must have been almost impossible to film for television with any real adequacy. Watching the episodes many years later I admired the attempt by the cast and crew with an extremely limited budget to make this work but had to accept that the story was (at least visually) a failure. To be honest I'm not sure what the script writer or any of the production crew were thinking when they gave this story the green light. Surely they had to have realised that there was no way to make this work. Even now it would be a challenge without a Game of Thrones level budget.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
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The second Doctor returns to Vortis with his companions Jamie and Victoria. But the Web Planet is not the world he knew, and the peaceful Menoptera are caught up in a bitter interplanetary war between opposing factions of an alien race.
 

ant-mac

Member: Rank 9
I always thought the novelisation was better than the TV serial - and I still do - but I have grown fonder of the TV serial in recent years...

Since about 2005 in fact.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
The constraints of television of that era meant, of course, that this was doomed to partially fail in being what it wanted to be: a completely convincing visual depiction of a totally alien world.

Where it does succeed, I think, is in depicting aliens who think differently to us, speaking in metaphor, etc.

And, in terms of being a young fan, the novelisation was complemented by the first Doctor Who Annual, which fired my imagination with further stories of Vortis and Marinus......


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Certainly I would take this brave, bold, mad serial, this tele-visual folly, with it's huge ambitions, over a large majority of the timid, bland, generic, disposable, interchangeable offerings that have passed for DOCTOR WHO since 2005.

Serials such as THE WEB PLANET will still be being rediscovered, discussed and analysed in the decades and generations to come, while the one with the cubes of fat that came alive and that stupid one with the pregnant bloke or the much hyped one where
River Song shoots a robot on a beach
, will be quietly forgotten.
 

ant-mac

Member: Rank 9
The constraints of television of that era meant, of course, that this was doomed to partially fail in being what it wanted to be: a completely convincing visual depiction of a totally alien world.

Where it does succeed, I think, is in depicting aliens who think differently to us, speaking in metaphor, etc.

And, in terms of being a young fan, the novelisation was complemented by the first Doctor Who Annual, which fired my imagination with further stories of Vortis and Marinus......


View attachment 15858





Certainly I would take this brave, bold, mad serial, this tele-visual folly, with it's huge ambitions, over a large majority of the timid, bland, generic, disposable, interchangeable offerings that have passed for DOCTOR WHO since 2005.

Serials such as THE WEB PLANET will still be being rediscovered, discussed and analysed in the decades and generations to come, while the one with the cubes of fat that came alive and that stupid one with the pregnant bloke or the much hyped one where
River Song shoots a robot on a beach
, will be quietly forgotten.
As much as I enjoyed the longer six-part TV serials from this era, I think if THE WEB PLANET had been tightened up, it would've been the perfect four-parter.

Mysterious first episode, increasingly alien and wierd middle two episodes and a fast finishing fourth episode.

And keep all the set-pieces, like the battle with flying participants...
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
I agree, I think that first episode still stands up. THE SPACE MUSEUM, similarly, has a great, mysterious first part that really works.
 

ant-mac

Member: Rank 9
I agree, I think that first episode still stands up. THE SPACE MUSEUM, similarly, has a great, mysterious first part that really works.
I enjoyed listening to the soundtrack. Now I'm listening to the soundtracks from THE CAGE and WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE.

I rather like TV music from that era. It wasn't wall-to-wall and so overbearing.

I like some music from New Who, but I still think it's overused and too loud. Half the time, I need sub-titles just so I know what they're saying...
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
I have found a lot of New Who music to be either too whimsical in a Sub-Harry Potter, flutes and oboes way - or far too manipulatively-sentimental.

And yes, the orchestra goes into full overdrive at other times, with people not being able to even run quietly down a corridor anymore.
 
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