Today I have Doctor Who #13 - The Web Planet from Season 2 to watch. It's a 6 episode serial that was originally broadcast from February 13 to March 20 1965. It's still William Hartnell playing the first Doctor. We've got Barbara and Ian from season 1 but the other younger person is now been replaced with a gal named Vicki. Ian is played by William Russell who had played the lead in the 1956 Brit tv series The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot. I watched that short series a while back. There's a cheapish dvd set of it available in the US. Barbara is played by Jacqueline Hill and Vicki is played by Maureen O'Brien.
We have the Tardis pulled down to the desert planet Vortis by some powerful force. There doesn't seem to be anything there, just sand and rocks. We see some giant ants and millipeds come out and observe the Tardis. Inside the crabby old Doctor and the crew are all trying to figure out what's keeping them there. The Doctor, Ian and Barbara leave the ship for a look around. It gets stolen with Vicki sleeping in it. Then Barbara gets kidnapped by the Menoptra who are human size butterfly people. They have an enemy, the ant like Zarbi, who turn out to be the ones who have stolen the Tardis. The Zarbi capture the Doctor and Ian and bring them to the city where the Tardis and Vicki are held. The giant ant costumes aren't that great and the giant butterfly men are kind of silly. They still get the job done. The sets are slightly more interesting and as the show progresses more elaborate. Sadly the quality of the video is lacking and the detail is hard to see at times. The featurette has a bit about the problems of set storage at the BBC. It wasn't very reliable and panels were kept simple so they survived to be used the following week.
Vortis was originally inhabitied by the Menoptra and most of them were driven off by the Zarbi who turn out to be slaves under the control of a giant spider creature called the Animus. Well, you know the Doctor and pals are going to help free the Zarbi and get the down trodden butterfly guys their home back. I don't think it was much better or worse than the serial I saw last week. Sometimes the script isn't very interesting then random bits are actually better than average. I notice my mind wondering while watching. I think because they're trying to fill a large 6 episode hole with a story that isn't 150 minutes long. The story moves slowly as they stretch it to fill the time allotment. The production value is of mixed quality but not surprising since it's a fairly low budget program. There's a fairly ambitious fight between the Menoptra and the Zarbi that ranges from fairly good to piss poor. It does have butterfly guys flying through the air. They used a guy who flies people in ballet shows. The scenes on the planet surface have been optically treated so there's a bit of a light flare on everything. They mention the process on the commentary. It's a piece of expensive optical glass, clipped to the front of the camera, with some jetroleum jelly rubbed on it. It becomes annoying after a while.
The interviews and stuff about the show were, once again, almost more interesting than the story. There's a 37 minute featurette on the show with people from the original cast and crew talking about working on the show. They have fond memories. William Russell reads The Lair of Zarbi Supremo. It's the first short story in the 1965 Doctor Who Annual. The dvd has a PDF, that you access through a PC, of the whole Annual. I couldn't figure out how to get to it right away so I quit bothering with it. There's a weird little slide show with some bad art depicting a very abbreviated version of The Web Planet for the Kenner Give-A-Show Projector. I had one of those as a kid. There's a nice photo gallery that lets you see good clear pictures of the sets and props and cast. There's commentary on the episodes with William Russell, producer Verity Lambert, director Richard Martin and actor Martin Jarvis. It made me laugh a few times. All in all a nice package from the BBC. I can't see buying them. There are just too many to think about it. Nice to see that the library and NetFlix have more than I'll probably ever want to watch.
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