DOCTOR WHO MARATHON 38th MEET-UP - THE WEB OF FEAR

Sunday 6th July 2015

And so we advance into the heat of summer to our next meeting!  I was slightly worried.  The last time we had watched a six-parter, when it was really hot, had been during The Web Planet - which made everyone thoroughly miserable.  The previous few days had been such a hot few days that I was worried how we'd fair with today's story...

Not only that but I'd only just bought the DVD and it hadn't arrived in the post yet....


...I needn't have panicked!  The DVD arrived on Friday, Sunday actually turned out to be a cooler day than the days before - and the story turned out to be a lot of fun!

Photo 1: Jason (holding the sign),
Leigh (holding the DVD Cover)
and Mark (holding his eyes open!)
around MJ's house!

Re-discovered (minus one episode) back in 2013 the story starts with the TARDIS crew being nearly sucked out of the TARDIS doors (like Salamander was at the end of the previous story).  Thankfully they manage to close the doors and the story continues!

So this story take place nearly 40 years after The Abominable Snowmen, and we see an elderly Professor Travers (replete with white beard and extra grumpiness) who has reactivated a control sphere (the shiny, metal balls that controlled the Yeti Robots) during his studies.  He goes to warn his friend (Julius Silverstein - a collector of unusual objects), who actually has one of the de-activated robot Yeti's, that the sphere has re-activated and that he should hand him back the Yeti saying it's dangerous.  Silverstein (a funny little fellow with big glasses) refuses thinking that it's all a scam and that Travers must have found out that the Yeti is worth a lot of money and wants it back!  Travers's daughter then comes along and takes away her supposedly confused father...leaving Silverstein to be, surprise surprise, attacked by the re-activated Yeti!

Photo 2: Leigh (holding the sign),
Mark and MJ (holding the DVD Cover)
around MJ's house!

And so follows 5 episodes and 1 re-con (an official high quality re-con, don't you know!) of Yeti's (redesigned with big glowing eyes) on the London Underground shooting guns that make webs.  Yes, webs!  Webs that cover lots of London!  As Russell T Davies would later say "Web guns?  Surely that should be a spider-story?" - but isn't it even more fun that it's not!?  I think we should keep spiders out of Doctor Who until, say, the next Doctor's last story?....

Photo 3: Jason (holding the sign),
Leigh (holding the DVD Cover)
and Mark around MJ's house!

Other things of note in this story are the soldiers that the Doctor meets - especially one in particular: Colonel (later Brigadier) Lethbridge Stewart.  He would play a MUCH bigger part in Doctor Who mythology - but more on that at a later date...!  We'd also seen the actor before as he had played Bret Vyon in the Daleks Master Plan.
 

Photo 4: MJ (doing his best menacing Yeti impression),Leigh (holding the sign) and Mark (holding the DVD Cover)
around MJ's house!

I'd never seen the story before and would have to re-watch it to get a better idea of it all but I really enjoyed the tale myself.  There were some great locations, some great characters (the smarmy TV reporter was quite fun and Travers was great as an older grumpier man).

Photo 5: MJ (sneering whilst holding the sign AND the DVD Cover)
around his house!

I think the story went down well with all of us and the re-con was done so well that I almost forgot I was watching a re-con.

A bit of fun trivia was that the production team at the time asked to use an ACTUAL London Underground station but got refused permission.  So the team made their own version in the studio which was SO realistic that London Underground got in touch with the BBC and had a go at them for filming at a real station when they had already been refused permission!

Idiots.

Anyway that's it until next time when we shall be furious about deep stuff....

Until then, I shall return, yes I shall return!

MJ - 14-07-15