Director Douglas Camfield
Stars Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines & Deborah Watling
Rated PG
Score 5/6

In order to escape an attack in space, the TARDIS makes an unscheduled landing and ends up deep inside the London Underground. Here the travellers soon find themselves engulfed in a terrifying battle against the Great Intelligence and the Yeti, a deadly enemy set to invade the Earth. As events progress and the menace spreads, it becomes clear that the Intelligence’s goal is not just possession of Earth, but the Doctor’s mind too.

Doctor Who: The Web of Fear is the fifth serial of the fifth season and was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 3 February to 9 March 1968. This adventure marks the first appearance of actor Nicholas Courtney as Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, subsequently better known as the Brigadier. It should also be noted that all but episode 1 were thought to have been destroyed, but on 11 October 2013, the BBC announced the previously missing episodes 2 and 4-6 were recovered from Nigeria. Episode 3, however, was reportedly stolen by a private collector on its way back to the UK, so an animated reconstruction had to be made for episode 3.On 16 August 2021, a special edition Blu-ray and DVD release of the serial saw the missing episode reconstructed using 3D motion capture animation. Though if you watch a non-special edition episode 3 is more of an audio driven slide show.




The Web of Fear has another great example of why I love the earlier episodes of Doctor Who so much, I find it really interesting seeing some of the effects used for the monsters and aliens. In the adventure there was a fungus that was spreading through the London underground, there is at least one instance where the ‘fungus’ looked like soap suds. While the Yeti’s looked like they could have been overgrown fat Ewoks. I found that I enjoyed Jon Rollason’s performance as Harold Chorley and Jack Watling’s performance as Professor Edward Travers and I loved the seen where Jamie and Victoria (played by Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling) realize that they had ment Professor Travers during a previous adventure (The Abominable Snowmen).