Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (22 page)

I suppose it could be that no-one really looks all that good in a big butterfly costume. I have to be honest – there are a few stories out there I was rather dreading watching again, and The Web Planet was one of them. I’ve really been enjoying it, though, and that’s probably because as I watch the series in order, I’m seeing it in the right context, and can appreciate just how the series is building. But The Crater of Needles is pretty much what I remember from the last time I gave it a go, some 15 years ago: lots and
lots
of characters I can’t tell apart all chatting away to each other in furry costumes. What stands out to me now is just how many of them are rebelling against the attempts to make their speech artificial, and give it a bit more distinctive oomph. Martin’s really very good as the haughty and regal Captain Hilio; Jocelyn Birdsall clearly has decided she can’t possibly echo Roslyn de Winter’s mannered Vrestin, and makes her own Menoptra much more naturalistic. It’s a relief, because when you
do
get performers like Ian Thompson as Hetra – who is really getting his teeth into the alien rhythms – you better appreciate their efforts as a contrast to those about him.

The Crater of Needles is a tough episode, because it’s really the first of these Vortis episodes where a lot of strange aliens with subtly different characterisations and motives repeatedly outnumber the regular cast. But there’s a real chutzpah to a lot of it, and sequences like the one at the episode’s climax – where there’s a pitched battle between Zarbi and the Menoptra invasion force – have a certain grandeur to them. It may be a folie de grandeur, but the flying of the butterflies – with those camera pans as you see Menoptra battling ants and dying elegantly after being shot by woodlice – is like nothing else. And it works a lot better than it has really any right to.

Oh, and I love the way the Optera manacle their captives by having them dip their hands into some strange liquid gunk that hardens. It’s those little touches of originality that make Vortis
interestingly
alien, rather than merely a bunch of actors jumping about in boiler suits. (Poor old Optera. Martin shouldn’t complain – at least his costume was better.)

I feel guilty seeing Martin there on screen. I’m supposed to be writing a radio commission for him this very moment, and instead I’m watching Doctor Who and the Antmen. But if I try, I just pretend that isn’t my commissioning boss on screen at all. Actually, I don’t need to try
that
hard.

T:
My nervousness about watching The Web Planet hasn’t yet gone away, and I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to get awful... but do you know, it hasn’t – it really hasn’t. Okay, I continue to think that Richard Martin is a clumsy director; there are moments where it’s really not clear what the hell is going on, or where it’s only possible to discern what the action is because I’ve read the book. And astonishingly, the cliffhanger here is possibly
more
inept than the one before it! The clear intention was that the climax was meant to entail Babs and everyone with her trapped against a rock as the venom-grub charged up its nose-gun. It sounds so simple, and yet we don’t actually cut to the titles until they have started to run away and thus... escaped the danger. It’s not exactly a successful cliffhanger if you see the heroes elude the threat, is it? For all of Martin’s high-falutin’ and often impressive ideas, his basic storytelling is appalling.

But visually, there’s more than enough to keep me interested. The Menoptra and Zarbi both look good enough in long shot, and for all I’ve just complained about him, Richard Martin tries to keep his camera back to overcome the limitations imposed by the cramped studio conditions. I also like how there are two sorts of Menoptra here – the ones recorded on film and ones in the studio have differing masks. (My favourites, though, didn’t actually make it to screen... photos exist of a third type of Menoptra with furry cowls.)

And the more this story continues, the more Vortis’ ecosystem seems textured; the idea of the vegetation being broken down by the acid and channelled into the Carcinome, which explains why the planet is becoming barren, is a smart and well-described idea. The tunnelling Optera are a nice addition (and not part of Strutton’s original scripts, apparently) and even if their appearance and gait is somewhat laughable, in concept they’re a credible and interesting extra layer to this world. It jars a little when Vrestin compares the Opera to slugs – she’s describing them in Earth terms, which is a bit like the Judoon announcing themselves as space rhinos. Vrestin is pretty cool when she displays her wings in full spread, though.

One more thing... there’s a great moment where it’s postulated that the Doctor might be helping the Zarbi; Barbara says she’s certain he would never do such a thing, but Jacqueline Hill puts enough doubt into her voice to suggest that Barbara might be lying to herself. It’s a clever choice that re-injects some of the crew’s earlier, more ambiguous dynamic.

Invasion (The Web Planet episode five)

R:
Back in 1982, to commemorate the return of the Cybermen to our screens, the BBC produced a special documentary about Doctor Who’s monsters on a magazine review programme called Did You See? And those clips they used on it for a long time were the only taster I had of the show’s black and white era. I couldn’t keep the documentary on video – they were so expensive in those days, and I was only 12 – but I copied it all onto audiotape. And I listened to it so often when I was a kid, over and over again, trying to imagine what these strange stories from the past could possibly be like. There’s a scene from this episode that I suddenly found I could recite, word for word – and the joke was, of course, that for so many years I had no understanding whatsoever of this rather dry scene in which a bunch of Menoptra discuss their invasion plans. Oh, the stories I imagined around that little scene during my childhood! “They too will be massacred. The Menoptra will be no more!” Gave me nostalgic shivers that did. Lovely.

The deeper you get into The Web Planet, the narrower the tightrope it walks between wonderful ambition and toecurling clumsiness. To be fair to it, it’s only here in episode five that it finally falls off. But look past the scenes of all the Optera bouncing up and down, or the long dialogue bits where Menoptra argue about Isoptopes and electron passwords, and there’s still much to admire. I love the way writer Bill Strutton has tried to give the story a language of its own – from the way that no-one can say Ian or Barbara’s names correctly, to Hetra’s description of digging as trying to make something talk with light. Yes, it’s all a bit mannered, even a bit pretentious – but it suddenly contrasts with the dispassion shown when poor little Nemini saves everyone’s lives by using her body to block a flow of acid, and the way that only Ian is moved by the sacrifice. The
effort
that has gone into making this an alien culture is almost bonkers in its detail – and yet, every once in a while, there’ll be a scene where the emotional reaction shown by characters is so skewed, and you realise they really are
alien
.

T:
I’m increasingly starting to think that I didn’t enjoy this story previously due to the muddied, grotty print I had – now that The Web Planet has been all spruced up on DVD, it’s so much easier to follow, and there are so many interesting visual touches that the longueurs aren’t quite so painful. Even things that had annoyed me before – such as Ian Thompson’s very odd performance as Hetra – now work much better. His face is constantly twitching, struggling to form the words, which makes his guttural drawl a much more understandable acting choice. He seems to be giving the impression that his character is just learning how to speak and to enunciate – in other words, his speech is evolving in the same way that his species soon will. That may sound a bit strange, but it’s no less believable than aliens speaking RP, so good on him for having a bash at something different. His references to smashing teeth of stone and the hole being a mouth which speaks more light are brilliant – it’s an inventive approach to creating an alien viewpoint that we can translate and understand.

The set for the Temple of Light is very impressive, especially with those mummified Menoptra cadavers spookily hanging about the place. Likewise, it’s no mistake that the centre of the Animus – the “Carcinome” – has a cancerous moniker, meaning that the Isoptope is a kind of portable chemotherapy machine. This disease analogy helps the audience to understand the sci-fi concept of the Animus and its baleful effect on the planet.

And while you praised some of the guest-cast last week, notably your mate Martin Jarvis (you wait till The Time Warrior episode three and
I’ll
start the name dropping – oh yes indeed, I was once in a play with the non-speaking mate of the sentry in that brilliant scene where the Doctor is disguised as a friar), I here note that Jolyon Booth (playing Prapillus) gets lots of lyrical language to chew on and does it brilliantly. In contrast to all the visual oddities, there’s a poetic beauty in his descriptive vocabulary that’s most pleasing. But it’s perhaps no surprise that Booth handles such words so well – a friend of mine from university went to a posh public school (Winchester, I think) and Booth was one of his teachers.

I must stop to mention the very bizarre moment where a tendril appears to fart at the Doctor, and he ripostes “And the same to you!” But on the plus side – hurrah, we’re back to having successful cliffhangers! The Doctor and Vicki are here shown shrouded by web, in what’s a startling, chilling image.

February 1st

The Centre (The Web Planet episode six)

R:
The Animus is defeated quite early in the episode, which leaves lots of time at the story’s end for Vrestin to teach the Optera how to enjoy the bright lights, and to give flying a go. It’s all done with much conviction by Roslyn de Winter – and then it dawns on you that this is probably
exactly
how she’s been treating the cast these past six weeks! “Be brave, be brave!” It’s so easy to picture her, leading masterclasses on hand waving in the mornings, and speech inflection in the afternoons.

“Be brave!” It’s not a bad way to approach The Web Planet, all told. There’s much here to admire, but let’s face it – it is (deliberately) the most alienating of all Doctor Who stories
ever.
(There are one or two of the Virgin New Adventures novels which come close, but even the ones which deal with the psi-powers arc aren’t as much of a culture shock as this.) And it’s also (not deliberately) one of the most dated. The latter is hardly the story’s fault. Indeed, if anything, it’s something to be cautiously admired.

Certainly, Doctor Who never even attempted to be quite this extreme ever again; there will never be another story without humanoid characters within it. That makes sense – at its best, the series is always
about
humanity, even if only in a form that is symbolic. But in a funny way, by attempting something as bold as this – to see whether Doctor Who could possibly survive without any of the familiarities that give it tone and theme – it shows just how limitless its scale can be. Doctor Who never
needs
to do anything like this again; now it’s been done the once, we can imagine, should we want to, that the strange adventures the Doctor often alludes (but which we don’t actually witness) may all be like this. Consider the off-handed mentions of the planet Quinnis where they nearly lost the TARDIS, the planet Esto where everyone communicated by thought – or even, in the new series, the planet Woman Wept, where the waves are like rock. The Web Planet conjured up all these imaginings, and serves as the bedrock for the breadth of its ambition.

Now let’s get away from those talking butterflies and get back to Earth. Pronto. What’s this? Next Episode: “The Lion”? I hope it’s not a talking lion.

T:
Much of what goes on here at the end, I’m sorry to say, and with the best of goodwill, probably earns this story its brickbats. The Menoptra actors have previously done well enough with the odd speech patterns and the “Insect Movement” by Roslyn De Winter, but the way they clamber around the set screaming “Zaar-biiiiii-eeeeeee-eeeeeeeee” probably didn’t make it onto any of their showreels. I suspect that Ian Thompson’s copy of this episode had a suspicious looking edit just before Hetra decides to have a go at flying, and the final confrontation with the Animus is a mess – Barbara’s gun doesn’t work, then Ian appears, then Barbara perseveres with holding the weapon whilst everyone else falls over.. and then suddenly the Animus dies, with the camera apparently picking out random bits of action. It’s all very confused.

But, look! There are still plenty of good moments – Hrostar and Hilio clearly don’t like each other and have a little ritual hissing as they face off, and Prapillus has a sweet “dotty old man” moment where he bustles about the Doctor’s astral map and then tells everyone to hurry, unaware that they’ve already buggered off. (He also calls the “Sayo Plateau” the “Isop Plateau”, but you can’t really blame him for getting confused.) And as we finally see (or rather, can
actually
see, in this sparking new DVD print) the water breaking out onto the surface of Vortis, the leisurely pace at the end is quite welcome after what has been a bustling two and a half hours.