The Web Planet

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013 - The Web Planet
Doctor	William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Writer	Bill Strutton
Director	Richard Martin
Script editor	Dennis Spooner
Producer	Verity Lambert
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	N
Series	Season 2
Length	6 episodes, 25 mins each
Transmission date	February 13–March 20, 1965
Preceded by	The Romans
Followed by	The Crusade
IMDb profile

The Web Planet is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from February 13, 1965 to March 20, 1965.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Cast
- 3.1 Cast notes
4 Continuity
5 Production
6 In print
7 Broadcast and video releases
8 External links
- 8.1 Reviews
- 8.2 Target novelisation

[edit] Synopsis

The TARDIS is pulled off course by a mysterious force and trapped on the barren, desolate low-oxygen world of Vortis in the Isop galaxy. The Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Vicki are soon swept up in the struggles of the butterfly-like Menoptra, the original denizens of Vortis who were forced to flee the planet for the moon Pictos to escape the encroaching web of the Animus and its mind-controlled minions, the ant-like Zarbi and their living weapons, the Venom Grubs. With assistance from the caterpillar-like Optera, the devolved descendants of the planet's original inhabitants, the TARDIS crew and the Menoptra are able to destroy the Animus at the center of its web complex with the secret Menoptra weapon, the isotope-powered living cell destructor.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Doctor and Vicki captured by the Animus in a web.

An unknown force pulls the TARDIS off course and onto the planet Vortis. The Doctor and Ian investigate and try to find the source whilst Barbara tends to a dis-oriented Vicki who has been affected by the natural high-frequency communications of the ant-like Zarbi monitoring the TARDIS. Vortis is a thin-atmosphere planet with natural crag-like rock formations and what appear to be pools of acid. The Doctor recognises the planet from the remains of a dead grub-like creature, however he is puzzled by the presence of moons around what should be an otherwise moonless planet.

Meanwhile, inside the ship, Barbara is influenced by an unknown force through her gold bracelet. This force mesmerises her and draws her outside, leaving Vicki alone in the untended TARDIS. The Zarbi then drag the TARDIS away. In her trance, Barbara walks into a trio of Menoptra – all that remains of a reconnaissance force sent to prepare the way for an invasion spearhead. They free her of the trance by removing her bracelet, and then debate what to do with her. Barbara escapes; however, she is immediately captured by the Zarbi and brainwashed through the use of a gold neck-harness. The Zarbi take her back to the Menoptra, killing one and capturing another, whilst the third escapes. The Zarbi take Barbara and a Menoptra called Hrostar to the Crater of Needles, where they are forced to gather vegetation and drop it into rivers of acid, thereby feeding the central force of the Zarbi, called the Animus.

The Doctor and Ian, having discovered the theft of the TARDIS and a trail leading away, begin tracking it. They are captured by the Zarbi and are taken to the Carsinome, where they find Vicki and the TARDIS. There they indirectly meet the Animus, who talks to the Doctor through what appears to be a mental communications device. The Animus forces the Doctor to help it track down the Menoptra invasion spearhead and the following main invasion force of the Menoptra. Ian escapes, whilst the Doctor, who has already worked out the invasion plans of the Menoptra, and Vicki try to bide their time.

Ian, trying to find Barbara, meets with a Menoptra called Vrestin, the only escapee of the Zarbi ambush. He learns from Vrestrin that the Menoptra were native to the planet Vortis along with the Zarbi, until a great evil force, the Animus, slowly and gradually took control of the planet through the mindless Zarbi. By the time the Menoptra had noticed this it was too late, and they had to flee the planet. The Menoptra fled to the moons that had been pulled into orbit around Vortis by the great evil force of the Animus – the same force that had pulled the TARDIS off course. The Zarbi soon locate Ian and Vrestin, but they manage to escape by falling down into an underground tunnel, where they meet the Optera. Ian soon realises that the Optera are descendants of the Menoptra, who had fled underground. The Optera had lost their wings through the generations and consider the Menoptra as gods, although they don't recognise Vrestin as a Menoptra. Ian and Vrestin convince the Optera to join them in fighting the Animus.

Back in the Carsinome, the Doctor accidentally releases a bit of information about the Menoptra invasion force, particularly that the spearhead plans to land at Sayo Plateau just north of the Crater of Needles. The Animus uses this information to ambush the spearhead. Barbara and Hroster escape from the Crater of Needles and try to meet up with the spearhead and also to warn them of the ineffectiveness of their weapons against the Zarbi. They fail to convince the spearhead force of the uselessness of the weapons, and the spearhead Menoptra are massacred by the Zarbi forces. Only a few survive and manage to hide in one of the Menoptra's old temples. There they try, without success, to radio the main force and warn them that their weapons are useless against the Zarbi.

Meanwhile, the Doctor works out that the Animus uses gold as a conductor to channel a mesmerising force. He counteracts this force and then uses the hidden power of his ring to control one of the Zarbi. The Doctor escapes with Vicki and his captive Zarbi, and meets up with Barbara and the Menoptra. They all devise a plan to attack the Carsinome, with the Menoptra acting as a diversionary force whilst the Doctor and Vicki try to reach the Animus with the Isop-tope device, a living-cell destructor.

The Doctor and Vicki make their way back to the Carsinome, where they are taken to the centre to see the Animus, a great spider-like creature. Here they are mesmerised and made helpless by the Animus. Meanwhile, Barbara and the Menoptra attack the Carsinome from the outside, using the Doctor's ring to control a Venom Grub, the Zarbi's living weapon. At the same time, Ian, Vrestin and the Optera try to dig their way to the Animus from below. They all make it to the centre and to the Animus where, with a singular act of willpower, Barbara manages to use the Isop-tope device on the Animus, destroying it.

In the end, with the Zarbi free from the control of the Animus and the Menoptra and Optera free to live on Vortis, the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki leave in the TARDIS.

[edit] Cast

Dr. Who — William Hartnell
Ian Chesterton — William Russell
Barbara Wright — Jacqueline Hill
Vicki — Maureen O'Brien
Animus (voice) — Catherine Fleming
Vrestin — Roslyn de Winter
Hrostar — Arne Gordon
Hrhoonda — Arthur Blake
Prapillus — Jolyon Booth
Hlynia — Jocelyn Birdsall
Hilio — Martin Jarvis
Hetra — Ian Thompson
Nemini — Barbara Joss
The Zarbi — Robert Jewell, Jack Pitt, Gerald Taylor, Hugh Lund, Kevin Manser, John Scott Martin

[edit] Cast notes

Jacqueline Hill was not written into "Escape To Danger" in order to give her a week of vacation. She was not credited on the episode. She requested that the credits be amended for overseas sales; however this did not happen.
Noted choreographer Rosalyn de Winter was hired to create the distinctive movements and stilted speech of the Menoptra. She was so successful that the production team asked her to take on the role of the Menoptra Vrestin (which she accepted).

[edit] Continuity

In the Ninth Doctor episode Bad Wolf, the Face of Boe is stated to be the oldest living inhabitant of the Isop Galaxy. Venom grubs were referred to in the previous episode, Boom Town.
This is the first and only Doctor Who story in which all the characters, other than the regulars, are entirely non-humanoid.
The Second Doctor returned to Vortis in the Missing Adventures spin-off novel Twilight of the Gods by Christopher Bulis.
It was revealed in the Seventh Doctor Virgin New Adventures novel All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane that the Animus was actually a Great Old One, one of several supremely powerful creatures that escaped the destruction of the prior universe by shifting into a later universe. The Great Old Ones are from the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft and expanded by other writers. Specifically, the Animus was identified as Lloigor, a Great Old One created by August Derleth and Mark Schorer. In the Doctor Who Annual 2006 it is revealed that the Animus (here called the Greater Animus) was destroyed during the Time War. Like all spin-offs, the canonicity of this is debatable.

[edit] Production

The story had the working title of "The Webbed Planet".
The six episodes of the serial had individual titles. They were, respectively, "The Web Planet", "The Zarbi", "Escape to Danger", "Crater of Needles", "Invasion", and "The Centre". Episode six was initially titled "Centre Of Terror". The novelisation restores this title for the sixth chapter.
Daphne Dare created the unique costumes for the varied alien species.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who and the Zarbi
Doctor Who book

Series	Target novelisations
Release number	73
Writer	Bill Strutton
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
ISBN	0 426 10129 4
Release date	2 May 1973
Preceded by	Doctor Who and the Daleks
Followed by	Doctor Who and the Crusaders

The serial was only the second to be novelised by the publisher Frederick Muller. It was written by Bill Strutton under the title Doctor Who and the Zarbi in 1965. This novel introduced the concept of the "Zarbi Supremo", a vast Zarbi with a role similar to that of a queen bee. In 1973 Target Books acquired the rights to the novelisation and reprinted it as one of the first in their long running series of Doctor Who novelisations, although when the imprint began numbering the books in the series, The Zarbi was listed as Number 73 in the series. The novelisation breaks a cardinal rule by referring to the lead character throughout by the name "Doctor Who". A Dutch translation was published in the Netherlands in 1974, and a Portuguese one in 1983.

In 2005 the novel was also issued by BBC Audio as part of the "Doctor Who: Travels in Time and Space" audio book collectors tin, read by Bill Strutton.

[edit] Broadcast and video releases

The first episode of the serial was watched by 13.5 million viewers, the highest number for any Doctor Who episode in the 1960s.
Believed lost in the BBC's early 1970s purge, negative film prints of all six episodes were recovered from BBC Enterprises in the late 1970s. These prints appear to have stemmed from a 1973 sale to Algeria and as a result the final episode was amended so that the "Next Episode" caption referred to "The Space Museum" instead of "The Lion", as the next story The Crusade was not sold to Arab countries. There were also some edits to the first episode. Unedited prints of all six episodes were also discovered in Nigeria in 1985.
This story was released on a double VHS in 1990. It was released on DVD in 2005.