The Web of Fear Episode 5

The one where the Doctor gains a pet Yeti called Fred...

"I. Am. The Intelligence!" The first five minutes of this episode comprise one scene in which the Great Intelligence - now possessing Professor Travers' body - imparts its dastardly plan to the surviving band of heroes (and Evans). Jack Watling is genuinely unsettling as the possessed Travers, with staring blank eyes and laboured blinks, and a rasping, croaky voice which sounds like it's being forced out of a dead man's throat. His zombie-like performance, complete with awkward motor control as the Intelligence deals with an unfamiliar human form, reminds me of that given by Dinsdale Landen 21 years later in The Curse of Fenric - and especially when we see Travers moving along gloomy tunnels with Yeti in tow, just like Fenric and his Haemovores.

The bit where the Doctor asks what the Intelligence wants, and Travers rasps: "Yooouuuuuuu!" has given me chills ever since they used it in the trailer for the DVD back in 2013. This is a lengthy scene, but the tension never lets up, thanks to the intensity of the acting and the subtle use of a twinkling, ethereal soundscape (Martin Slavin's ubiquitous Space Adventure (Part 2)) beneath it all. The whole thing must be horrifying for poor Anne, to see her father being used in such a way.

Disappointingly, the Intelligence resorts to just the kind of B-movie behaviour that I hate, whether it's used in Doctor Who or elsewhere. The Intelligence inexplicably gives the Doctor 20 minutes to "make up his mind" as to whether he'll cooperate. Why?! The Great Intelligence is supposed to be an almighty omnipotent super-being, with an unstoppable robot Yeti army, and an all-consuming fungal mass in reserve. It can possess human minds and use them as slaves. Why on earth would it decide to award its enemy 20 whole minutes to make a decision? A proper evil entity would just forge ahead with its plan and force everybody to its will.

This lazy plot device always irks me. Twenty minutes is basically the time left to the end of the episode, and consequently the rest of episode 5 is a rather humdrum attempt to tread water until the finale (the fate of so many Part Threes and Fives in Doctor Who). The Doctor and Anne (who is a five-star companion in the same league as The Enemy of the World's Astrid) take the rest of the episode to tinker with the control sphere and turn it into a Yeti remote control, while the revived Travers and Victoria get to just sit about at Piccadilly Circus waiting for the 20 minutes to elapse. Meanwhile, Jamie and the Colonel wander around the tunnels achieving next to nothing except letting the fungal infection further into the base (well, I say fungal infection. It actually looks more like a big sheet of back-lit bubble wrap!).

It's lazy writing from Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, but they're not the only culprits of this. There clearly isn't enough story to fill six whole episodes, but to make it so obvious with an episode full of time-wasting is pretty shameful. After the exemplary episode 4, it's such a disappointment to be reduced to watching the Doctor spend an inordinate amount of time explaining his remote control sphere to every other character he meets.

In many ways, cowardly Driver Evans has the right idea. He reckons that if they just let the Great Intelligence have the Doctor, they could all go home! Derek Pollitt is so great as Evans, gurning his way through every scene and delivering his lines with lashings of Welsh hwyl! The moment where he suggests the Doctor's voice-activated sphere will make a "smashing toy" is lovely (and he's right - the BBC could have licensed those ready for Christmas '68!). Still, everything the character does feels justified, even down to him pointing a rifle at the Colonel and Jamie after working out that one of them must be the traitor. This in turn sows a seed of suspicion in Jamie's mind when he's out in the tunnels alone with the Colonel.

At the end of the episode we see the Doctor and Anne appropriate their own Yeti slave (aka Fred) by swapping its control sphere for their own remote control one (and Troughton's delight that it all works is infectious), while back at Goodge Street HQ, the miraculously returned Arnold and Driver Evans witness the fungus tumble its way through the walls and into the inner sanctum (thanks to Jamie and the Colonel's early failure with the fire door). Things are moving forward at last!

Let's just hope episode 6 doesn't include another shot as interminable as watching a silver orb roll slowly along a studio floor for a full 22 seconds.

First broadcast: March 2nd, 1968

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Jack Watling does good "possessed".
The Bad: "You have 20 minutes to make up your mind!"
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode 6...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 6

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-web-of-fear.html

The Web of Fear is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Web-Fear-DVD/dp/B00FRL73G6.