Synopsis:
Jamie and Driver Evans have reached Monument Underground station - unaware that the mass of web is moving inexorably around the Circle Line towards them. They suddenly see it begin to pour from the tunnel mouth towards the platform...
A Yeti emerges, carrying a glowing pyramid, and Jamie urges Evans to shoot it. After a few attempts he succeeds and the creature pauses - but the web continues to flow forward.
Victoria at last comes upon the Doctor in one of the tunnels. He is accompanied by an army officer - Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. He demands to know where she has come from and when she explains that she has just left the Goodge Street fortress, he asks if she has anything to do with Professor Travers and his daughter. Victoria confirms to the Doctor that this is the man they met in Tibet.
The Colonel instructs them to come with him to the fortress. There, Captain Knight is informed of their arrival.
The Doctor explains to Victoria that the blast at Charing Cross had merely knocked him out for a few moments, after which he had wandered lost in the tunnels until found by the Colonel.
The Colonel informs Knight that he is his new commanding officer, and had been caught up in the ambush at Holborn. Knight is suspicious that Evans hadn't mentioned any other survivors but accepts his authorisation.
Travers then arrives, overjoyed to see the Doctor again. He is able to vouch for him and his companions.
Knight and Lethbridge-Stewart leave the scientists to get on with their work as they head for the laboratory.
There Travers and Anne apologise to Victoria for their earlier suspicions, and all agree that the Great Intelligence tried to bring the TARDIS here for a purpose.
Jamie and Evans, meanwhile, have managed to get onto the Central Line and are approaching St Paul's station.
Having observed the advance on the illuminated map of the Underground, Chorley is beginning to panic that they will soon be trapped here. He asks Staff Sergeant Arnold if there are any exits still free onto street level, and learns that there is only one in the Bloomsbury area.
Travers fills the Doctor in on how he came to reactivate one of the control spheres, which in turn made its way to the Yeti in Silverstein's museum - which the Intelligence would then have homed in on.
Knight appears and informs them all that the Colonel is holding a briefing session in the common room, which will allow everyone to get up to speed on developments.
Aerial photographs are able to show the spread of the dense fog patch covering central London as Lethbridge-Stewart runs through the timetable of events, which now includes the movement of the web through the Underground.
Chorley demands to know about the exit and if a helicopter could pick them up, but the Colonel is dismissive, claiming that the fog is too thick and Yeti roam within it.
Anne informs everyone that she and her father are working on a means to block the control signal to the Yeti. This will mean obtaining more electronic supplies, however.
Chorley plots to flee by himself, asking Private Weams about tall buildings in the area which would allow a helicopter to pick him up. Weams then spots that the web is now moving onto the Central Line, where Jamie has learned that Evans intends on abandoning him at the first opportunity. He tries to escape but finds the way barred, so reluctantly agrees to go with Jamie to the fortress.
The Doctor devises a scheme to hold the web at bay for a time at least, by blowing up the tunnel near the fortress. As the Yeti always smother explosives with their web-guns, it is decided that they should be loaded onto a trolley and detonated whilst on the move.
As everyone is busy, they fail to notice that someone has opened the main doors.
Victoria is examining one of the small Yeti models which the Intelligence used to position the robots, and the Doctor learns from Anne that one of these is missing.
A Yeti enters the fortress and goes to the munitions store.
Corporal Blake notices the broken padlock and the missing model in the corridor and brings them to Knight. He, the Colonel and Arnold go to the store and open the door - to find the room filled with glowing web.
The Doctor points out that they have an enemy in their midst. The Colonel leads the explosives party to the tunnel, leaving Weams behind to guard the others.
Chorley is speaking to Victoria and learns about the TARDIS from her, and that it is currently at Covent Garden. He notes that the Piccadilly Line is web-free. The Doctor appears as he leaves, and is horrified to hear that she told him about the TARDIS - especially when they realise that he has locked them in the common room.
Chorley exits the fortress just as Jamie and Evans arrive, and they free the Doctor and Victoria.
In the lab, Travers and his daughter hear a scream. They find Weams dead, his body smothered in web.
The Professor finds a Yeti model beside the corpse, and is suddenly attacked by one of the creatures...
Data:Written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
Recorded: Saturday 27th January 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 17th February 1968
Ratings: 7 million / AI 51
VFX: Ron Oates
Designer: David Myerscough-Jones
Director: Douglas Camfield
Additional cast: Nicholas Courtney (Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart)
Critique:Having reached the mid point of the story, this episode takes some time to remind the audience of events to date as Travers tells the Doctor of how the control sphere was reactivated and brought a Yeti robot to life. This is followed almost immediately by the Colonel's briefing, which allows for more backstory to what happened between the scenes in the museum and when we next saw Travers and Anne already established at the fortress.
Interestingly, the briefing includes the fact that the fog first began to emanate out from the area of the Natural History Museum. In the original draft the defunct Yeti had been on display there rather than in a private museum, so it's a throwback to an earlier version of the script.
In the first draft of the story, it wasn't until this episode that Harold Chorley was introduced. He arrived with the Colonel as part of the ambushed convoy, and was a politician charged with fact-finding for the Government rather than a journalist. A scene was also intended showing Jamie and Evans being pursued down a disabled escalator at Monument station.
Three short scenes were deleted before recording, in one of which Travers told Anne that he suspected the Colonel of being the Intelligence's agent.
This episode featured only a small amount of filming - model work depicting the web flowing into the Underground station, as already seen at the conclusion to Episode 2, plus shots of Evans and Jamie being confronted by this, filmed at Ealing on Monday 18th December.
Nicholas Courtney joined rehearsals on Tuesday 23rd February, having already portrayed the Colonel on film for the battle scenes at Covent Garden which would feature in the next instalment. The actor was already a good friend of the director and got on well with Troughton and Hines especially, joining in the games they always played during breaks. Douglas Camfield brought in his guitar to play at these breaks.
Ralph Watson became concerned at the number of notes he was receiving from the director and was worried that he was giving a poor performance - or that Camfield didn't like him. Troughton and Courtney took him aside and explained that their director had hoped to be a soldier and still maintained a very militaristic way of working - and Captain Knight was the character he most identified with. He was therefore giving Knight more attention. Courtney wanted to include some humour into the Colonel, and Hines ribbed him for his false moustache. (The actor wouldn't sport his own moustache as Lethbridge-Stewart until The Five Doctors, 15 years later).
Only a single Yeti was required in studio on the day of recording, played by Jeremy King.
A BBC photographer took several pictures of Jack Watling being attacked by a Yeti, as seen at the conclusion to the instalment.
For the briefing scene some stock aerial photographs of central London were used, which had been touched up by graphic design to show the fog bank. Other photographs were specially taken of certain London landmarks on a quiet Sunday morning - including St Paul's, the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Downing Street. Yeti were superimposed onto some of these, and not all of the photos were seen on screen. The Doctor identified the newly designed robots as "Mark II" Yeti.
The small Yeti models previously seen in The Abominable Snowmen were reused. This time they acted as homing devices, whereas in the earlier serial they had been used simply to move the robots from location to location.
The munitions store was a small set off a corridor, which was dressed with latex web for the conclusion of the episode.
Recording breaks were used to move cast from set to set only, five in total through the evening.
As is well known, Nicholas Courtney was originally cast by Douglas Camfield as Captain Knight in The Web of Fear, and it was actor David Langton (1912 - 1994) who was to portray Colonel Lethbridge.
Courtney was one of the director's repertory of favoured actors, and he had previously cast him as Space Security agent Bret Vyon in The Daleks' Master Plan - having previously considered him for the role of King Richard in The Crusade, should first choice Julian Glover turn it down.
Camfield had used him on other projects, including the starring role in the thriller Watch The Birdies, in which he played a fashion photographer. (It is now sadly lost).
Langton was best known as a film ad theatre actor at this point in his career, though appearing more and more on the small screen. Shortly before production on the Doctor Who story began, he was offered a role in a TV play and decided to accept.
Camfield then decided to ask Courtney if he wanted to take on the role, which he agreed to as it was a promotion - both in terms of the military rank he would play and because the Colonel was a more prominent character (and survived to the end of the story). Initial concerns that he might be too young to play a Colonel were dismissed as Camfield was thinking of Colin Mitchell - "Mad Mitch" - who had led British forces in Aden in 1967 whilst still in his early 40's. His regiment had been the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and, though born in Croydon, he had a Scottish father. Mitchell was famous for never asking his men to do something he wouldn't do himself.
Basing the Colonel on Mitchell led to Camfield and Courtney reasoning that Lethbridge would hail from an old Scottish family though educated in England. "Stewart" was added to the surname and his uniform gained a Glengarry cap - just as Mitchell had worn.
Ralph Watson was then brought in to play Knight.
Had Langton not decided to leave the production, the future of Doctor Who might have been very much different. There is no guarantee that he would have wished to reprise the role and another military character would have had to be created for The Invasion - again played by someone who might not have wanted, or been able, to come back for Season 7. We may have had a Brigadier - but not the Brigadier. It's now impossible to think of the character played by anyone other than Nicholas Courtney.
Sadly, the episode in which the Doctor first meets the future Brigadier remains lost to us - at least for now. Philip Morris rediscovered the episodes in Nigeria in 2013, along with all six parts of The Enemy of the World. He claimed that The Web of Fear was also complete when he first viewed the film cannisters - only for Episode 3 to have disappeared by the time he took possession of them. If true, then it would indicate that the thief was someone who knows the programme well and realised the significance of this particular instalment - so either stolen by a fan, or for a fan. Had the TV station simply retained it thinking it more valuable, I think we'd have heard about it by now.
Trivia:- The ratings see a slight improvement, but only by some 200,000 viewers.
- The series had now returned to its regular slot of 5.25pm. Competition on ITV consisted of Bugs Bunny, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and repeats of swashbuckler Sword of Freedom, a series which had originally run from 1958 - 1961.
- David Langton would go on to find fame as Richard Bellamy in Upstairs, Downstairs - a series co-created by Jean Marsh who had played Bret Vyon's sister Sara Kingdom under Douglas Camfield, and who would act opposite Courtney again in Battlefield.
- Coincidentally, the Edwardian drama series was set in Eaton Square, London - and this is where Langton himself actually lived.
- At least one of the Yeti control figurines still exists. It was auctioned by Bonhams in December 2013, fetching £8,125.
