Escape to Danger (The Web Planet Episode 3)

The one where we finally begin to find out what the heck is going on...

Fair's fair, I love the voice of the Animus. Catherine Fleming was a vocal coach who trained actors at RADA and the National Theatre, so her work here is predictably effective. Her hoarse but breathy voice is really quite unsettling and gives the idea of a great intelligence at work behind these crazy giant ants. In the 1970s, Fleming gave politician Margaret Thatcher vocal coaching to "reduce her annoying shrieking", and also help reinvent her as a strong and stable Conservative leader, and eventually Prime Minister. So we have the Animus to blame for Thatcher!

Escape to Danger is the strongest of the three episodes so far because we get to find out an awful lot about what's going on, rather than just watching a load of monster insects bump into each other. The Doctor communicates with the Animus via a drop-down hair-dryer (love the bit where Ian says he hopes the Doctor's asking where Barbara is. She's on holiday this week, that's where!), and the disembodied voice tells him that it wants the Doctor to help locate the swarming Menoptera in space as it says the giant wasps are planning to invade Vortis. It's a clever twist to paint the gentler creatures as the invaders, but as we'll find out, this isn't strictly true.

The Doctor agrees to help the Animus and trundles his Astral Map machine (don't unplug it!) out of the TARDIS to try and focus in on the Menoptera's communications. The Menoptera voice he tunes into is quite different to the ones we heard in The Zarbi, much spookier in fact, so maybe there are some tougher, more monstrous giant wasps in orbit just waiting to swoop in?

Well, I say "swoop" but when we see the Menoptera fly it's more like a desperate crash landing. Roslyn de Winter (she of the "insect movement") is flung around the studio on wires and just manages to take off and land safely, if not convincingly. All credit to the production team for trying though, because it would have been so easy to depict their flight with them leaping off camera or back into shot (rather like Superman used to do). The fact they used wirework to show the Menoptera in flight is typical of the insuperable ambition behind this story, from the writing to the direction to the design to the execution. It might not all have paid off, but credit where it's due for trying.

That ambition slips on a banana skin at 5mins 38secs into this episode when a Zarbi comes barrelling across the screen and crashes headlong into the camera. This blooper is (in)famous in Doctor Who fandom and acts as a stick to beat The Web Planet's reputation with. It's probably one of the worst mistakes left in an episode of Doctor Who, and simply because they were so short of time. Yes, it's funny, but I suppose it's not a world away from those fourth-wall breaking effects you see in today's films where they CGI in a splash of blood or goo on the camera lens on purpose!

William Russell gets much more to do in this episode, even to the extent of writer Bill Strutton giving him things to say that seem quite out of character. "Do you think that kid'll be alright out there?" he says to the Doctor, referring to Vicki. Does he not like the girl? Has he not bonded with her enough to use her actual, proper, given name? He also refers to the Zarbi as "beasties", a charmingly twee word that only ever sounds right coming out of Jamie McCrimmon's mouth.

Ian's escape to danger is fraught with clumsy Zarbi action. I like Richard Martin shooting him through webbed gauze, and Ian's exploration of John Wood's impressive sets is enjoyable. You can tell the walls are just painted flats, but the design really does look like a webbed labyrinth or insect nest and it's quite effective. It's not as effective when the Zarbi chase after and corner Ian in an antechamber, the door of which flops down lamely in front of him, but he escapes in the end amid a cacophony of confusion and chaos. I had to chuckle at the sight of William Russell wrestling a Zarbi to the ground, and then seeing it waggling its legs in the air because it can't get back up. Are we to believe these are real giant monster ants, or little men in fibreglass costumes?

Who needs jelly babies? The Doctor offers a piece of chocolate to the perturbed Vicki in this episode, in a perfect evocation of what everybody's grandfather would probably do in a situation like this! Although it hasn't been seen much in this serial, the delightful relationship between Hartnell and Maureen O'Brien continues to shine, including the bit where he sends Vicki to the TARDIS for a red box, and when she comes back with it, insists he actually sent her for a white box! Again, highly realistic batty granddad behaviour that we can all relate to!

Ian teams up with Vrestin and convinces her to join him in trying to free the innocent from the Crater of Needles. Roslyn de Winter's performance is very good here, because as well as the otherworldly insect movement, she gives a sensitive vocal performance which helps flesh out the Menoptera. We learn that the giant wasps aren't the invaders at all, but that Vortis is their planet and they have been driven off it by the appearance of the cancerous Animus (note that the Animus's domain is called the Carcinome, as in carcinogenic: having the potential to cause cancer). The Zarbi were perfectly harmless creatures until the Animus militarised them and the Menoptera were forced to flee to one of Vortis's moons, a "dim half-world". It feels so good to actually have a plot at last!

The cliffhanger involves Ian and Vrestin being chased by a gang of scuttling Zarbi and a larvae gun which nonchalantly walks onto the set over the rocks (it might look ridiculous but not once have I spotted a human form under that coffee table on wheels). There's an unexplained rockfall as we head into the end titles. All a bit confusing, but then I'm very used to that feeling by now!

First broadcast: February 27th, 1965

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Catherine Fleming's vocal work is genuinely spooky.
The Bad: That poor Zarbi who bumps into the camera. At least he's still remembered all these years later!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Crater of Needles...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Web Planet (episode 1); The Zarbi (episode 2); Crater of Needles (episode 4); Invasion (episode 5); The Centre (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/2013/07/the-web-planet.html

The Web Planet is available on DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Web-Planet-DVD/dp/B0009WT5BY