The Web of Fear Episode 6

The one where the Doctor is about to have his mind drained by the Great Intelligence...

A feeling of suspicion runs deep through The Web of Fear as each character has their own idea about who the traitor in their midst is. The viewer is constantly being fed red herrings by writers Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, so we're never quite sure who to not trust. Is it Evans, whose cowardice may all be a smokescreen? Is it Chorley, who has mysteriously reappeared after two episodes? Or is it Arnold, another sudden returnee?

The Doctor trusts nobody, especially the Colonel, but seems to blindly believe that Anne and Jamie couldn't possibly be the culprits. Yes, he trusts Jamie as a friend anyway, and Anne appears to be completely benign (albeit with very long claws), but how can he be sure that neither of them have been taken over by the Great Intelligence, as Professor Travers was?

The return of Harold Chorley is a very clever move on the writers' part, because his reappearance seems unnecessary. The fact he is back means there must be a reason, or so you think. Jon Rollason shrugs off the mild caricature of earlier episodes and puts in a sterling performance as a man visibly shattered by his experiences alone in the tunnels, and up top, in the misty, Yeti-infested streets of central London. His distraught scene with Jack Woolgar's Arnold is beautifully done, the actors' faces right up close, almost intimate.

The truth is, the real traitor in the ranks is not Chorley, or the Colonel, or Driver Evans (who, amusingly, actually runs away at one point!). It's Staff Sergeant Arnold, of course it is! He went into the thick of the fungus in episode 4 and seems to have survived, so the clues were there all along. There have been clues throughout in fact, very small and subtle ones, such as a little smug smile from Woolgar as the screen fades to black, or a sudden change of demeanour once Arnold is out of sight of the others.

Unfortunately, Woolgar isn't quite as creative in his portrayal of the Great Intelligence. Where Jack Watling was throaty and awkward, all staring, empty eyes and rasping vocals, Woolgar opts for the more traditional depiction of villainy - cold, calculated, clipped tones and a calm demeanour. It's a nice little performance in itself, but doesn't pack the necessary punch for the grand finale. Woolgar's Great Intelligence is not so great, and certainly nowhere near as spooky as Watling's, or as magnificently chilling as Wolfe Morris's in The Abominable Snowmen.

There's a fair amount of padding in this final episode, just as there was in episodes 3 and 5, and so we're subjected to scenes of the Doctor and friends being held prisoner at Piccadilly Station again, like it's some kind of Yeti Waiting Zone (ref: The Happiness Patrol). The Doctor sits cross-legged, doing nothing except playing The Skye Boat Song on his recorder (an interesting musical choice, it has to be said, seeing as the song's lyrics refer to Bonnie Prince Charlie and his escape from the Jacobite uprising of 1745 dressed as a serving wench - echoes of The Highlanders!).

A little side-step... the film poster seen on the wall of Piccadilly Station is for a movie called Blockbusters, but there was no such film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. It's actually a doctored poster for the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night, but of course if the production team had left it like that, we'd be wondering why there was a poster for a 1967 film in the Underground in 1975 (wouldn't we?). In the Heat of the Night was released in cinemas in August 1967, several months before The Web of Fear went before cameras.

There's also some very convenient plotting from Haisman and Lincoln, allowing Jamie to slip away from Piccadilly, despite several Yeti monitoring them. If Jamie could slip away without any trouble, why can't all of them? Well, it's because the plot resolution requires it, not because it's realistic. Jamie's escape does allow us a wonderfully spooky scene where he's trying to summon Fred the friendly Yeti, but a puzzlingly benign Intelligence Yeti comes along instead. Then all of a sudden, as Jamie turns round, there's another Yeti rearing up behind him! John Carpenter would be proud of Douglas Camfield's jump scare here!

The finale sadly degenerates into yet another Troughton era explosion, but quite how it all comes to an end is confusing. All that actually happens is Jamie sets Fred the friendly Yeti on the bad Yetis, pulls the Doctor out of the glass pyramid, and then pulls out a couple of wires, resulting in - yes, you guessed it - a big bang. When the smoke clears, all the baddies are dead (Arnold is particularly dead, inexplicably charred to a crisp). But how does it all happen, and why?

It seems Haisman and Lincoln decided that it just does, and that's that. The Doctor is rightly annoyed that he was unable to put an end to the Great Intelligence once and for all by draining it off, but perhaps Jamie is right when he says he wouldn't have been able to take the strain. What it does mean is that the Great Intelligence is still out there, somewhere, ready to regroup and perhaps attempt a third assault. The truth is, of course, that a third match between the Second Doctor and the Great Intelligence would never come to pass. There was one planned for Season 6, but that fell through after Haisman and Lincoln fell out with the production team over their third Doctor Who script, The Dominators.

Forty-five years later, the Great Intelligence would make a somewhat underwhelming return to Doctor Who in Series 7, but sadly not with Yeti in tow (instead it had some non-abominable snowmen, and some short-lived Whispermen). However, there is a Yeti-shaped side-step in the Doctor Who universe in the form of the 1995 direct-to-video story Downtime, also featuring Victoria Waterfield, Professor Travers and Sarah Jane Smith, as well as a pre-2012 version of the Brigadier's daughter, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

Overall, The Web of Fear is not as fantastic as fandom often believes. It's masterfully directed, lit and acted, but it drags terribly, and the backwards-and-forwards nature of a lot of it means it can actually get a tad boring at times (shock-horror!). The excitement when it was recovered in 2013 rightly meant that the story was lauded as an instant classic, and in many ways it still is. But with familiarity comes a more balanced critique, and I have to say that it's not as gripping as other stories in the season. It would benefit enormously from being just four episodes (as would most stories), and so by that token, in my mind, fails where The Tomb of the Cybermen succeeds.

To be fair though, The Web of Fear remains a spooky, sometimes scary, exceptionally good example of Doctor Who from this time, and if nothing else, the fourth episode lifts it to near greatness.

First broadcast: March 9th, 1968

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Jon Rollason's broken Chorley is beautifully done.
The Bad: More waiting around for the finish to get nearer... ho-hum...
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 8.0 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: Fury from the Deep...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5

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.