Tuesday 2 November 2021

What's Wrong With... The Web of Fear


The Web of Fear is a sequel to The Abominable Snowmen, written by the same authors, and before the latter had even been fully broadcast. You'd therefore think that continuity between the two would be seamless. Even though there weren't any home video recorders at the time, or Target novelisations, the viewing public would have remembered a fair bit about the earlier episodes.
In Part One Victoria is quick to recognise Professor Travers, and reminds Jamie about him. For them it may only have been a few days since they last saw him, but for him it has been... well he says 40 years, and it is claimed by Anne Travers that that first encounter in Tibet was in 1935. That would make this around 1975 - yet the Victoria Line doesn't feature on the Goodge Street Underground map. It opened on 1st September, 1968. 
Just because the Victoria Line isn't open, so not featuring on maps for the general public, the actual tunnels would already have been there for the army to move around in - so why don't they use them?
The posters on the platforms, and the pre-decimal currency needed to buy chocolate bars, all suggest that this story is set around the time of broadcast, and no later. (We will return to this dating issue later. It's all sorted now, but we need to consider how these stories were viewed at the time).
In The Abominable Snowmen, the Doctor goes out of his way not to tell the Professor anything about the TARDIS and time travelling. Yet Travers now seems to have been told all about the TARDIS and the Doctor being a time-traveller here.
London has been invaded by an alien menace, which might conceivably threaten the rest of the country, or even the whole world. The UK government employs two scientists to fight it - a doddery old man and his daughter. No-one else in the entire country around who could help?

When they hear about it later both Harold Chorley and the Colonel seem to accept what is claimed about the TARDIS remarkably quickly.
The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria walk up to street level in the first episode, which is when they discover that it is the middle of the day. The old newspaper vendor who has been smothered by web and is sitting on the far side of an open lattice gate, so should have been in clear sight of them as soon as they came up the stairs.
Julius Silverstein is a horrible stereotype. He lights his museum with candles. Not only would this take ages to light each day, then snuff out each night, but it would be terribly dangerous to his precious exhibits. He clearly doesn't have any burglar alarm for his establishment. (Probably doesn't have a fire alarm either, judging by all those candles).
The Yeti are elaborate robots, created by an alien intelligence. Even if the government didn't believe Travers' story when he brought it back from Tibet, they should have recognised the advanced technology and no way would they allow if to sit for decades in Silverstein's private museum.

Just how do the Yeti change their shape for this story? It doesn't look like any form of mechanical process - more like magic. The Great Intelligence spent 200 years, with only Padmasambhava for help, making a handful of Yeti in Tibet. Where do all these new Yeti come from, built in only a couple of weeks? It made sense to use Yeti to scare people away from a mountain in Tibet, but why use them in 1960's London? Big mice, rats or spiders would be better suited to the London Underground - or robot ticket inspectors.
It's not just how the Yeti change form - it's why? What possible difference does it make to the Intelligence what the Yeti look like, since the plan is that no-one is supposed to be left around to see them.

A common problem with the series so not just this story (though it becomes much more common from this point on) - just because you are a scientist in one field of expertise means you must be an expert in every sort of field. Travers was an anthropologist, yet the next thing we know he's an electronics expert.
So that's Episode One...
Actually, most of the problems with this story lie with the set-up in the opening instalment. One problem from later in the serial is the Intelligence stupidly giving the Doctor 20 minutes in which to work out a way of beating it - and the fact that the 20 minutes on screen last about 40 minutes.

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