Synopsis:
The Doctor is examining the crates of explosives on the platform at Charing Cross Underground station, which have been smothered in a web-like substance by Yeti. Captain Knight is alerted to his presence in the tunnels too late as the explosives are detonated - and the Doctor is thrown to the ground by the blast.
Knight and Anne Travers are informed by Craftsman Weams that whilst the detonation took place, there was no actual explosion registered.
Staff Sergeant Arnold is sent to look for the Doctor but Knight suspects sabotage. He goes to confront Jamie and Victoria, who are distraught that they might have caused the Doctor's death by lying to the soldiers. Anne and Harold Chorley are also present when Knight begins questioning how they got into the Underground since all stations have been sealed. Weams then reports that a munitions convoy bound for the fortress has come under attack at Holborn, and Jamie reacts when he hears that Yeti are involved.
Knight elects to take some men on a rescue mission, but Chorley declines the opportunity to report on military activities first hand.
Arnold and Corporal Blake have arrived at Charing Cross to find that the web-like substance covering the crates has contained the blast. There is no sign of the Doctor.
Anne reports back to her father that the two young people who have just arrived seem to have knowledge of the Yeti, including that they are really robots - something which the authorities have never disclosed to the public. Intrigued he decides to question them himself.
It takes him a few moments to realise that it is Jamie and Victoria he is talking to - and they him, as he is so much older than when they last met. For them it was only a matter of weeks ago, but for him around 40 years have passed.
Arnold has returned and Travers insists he find the Doctor. Jamie agrees to join the search party.
After they have gone, Anne speaks with Victoria. She is told that she, Jamie and the Doctor had encountered the Yeti in Tibet, which is where they had met her father. Anne cannot believe that they have a time machine, and are the same people whom her father met in 1935.
Chorley wants to write a piece on the Doctor but he and Anne have an argument. He finds it suspicious that the Doctor should show up now, just as the Yeti have returned. He has also heard the rumour that the Doctor sabotaged the explosives at Charing Cross.
Knight and his men are bringing back some of the ammunition salvaged from the ambushed convoy when they come under attack by Yeti. Retreating, they come across Arnold's party. Knight decides to detonate the munitions to bring down the tunnel on the Yeti - only to see them use their web-guns to smother the boxes. The explosion is contained - just as the Doctor had witnessed at Charing Cross.
The group suddenly find themselves trapped between two advancing groups of Yeti. Recalling his experiences in Tibet, Jamie urges everyone to remain still.
At the fortress, Anne is telling her father about Chorley's suspicions. He momentarily thinks that the reporter might be right, before dismissing the idea as preposterous. Unfortunately this is the moment when their conversation has been overheard by Victoria. Thinking no-one here trusts them, she decides to slip out of the fortress to find and warn the Doctor.
The Yeti in the tunnels have paused and not attacked. They suddenly withdraw, acting on some signal.
Jamie wants to see where they have gone - but Knight insists that everyone return to the safety of the fortress.
Blake and Weams are discussing the situation, and the various theories as to what is going on, when they notice that the web has begun to advance along the tunnels - as illustrated on a large map of the network. It is moving along the northern section of the Circle Line, threatening to completely surround them. They report this to Travers and Anne.
It is then discovered that Victoria is missing.
Knight and his men hear someone singing in the tunnel ahead and come upon Private Evans, an army driver who claims to have been a survivor from the ambush at Holborn. He claims to have then got lost and has just seen the web moving along a tunnel near King's Cross. It was following a Yeti which was carrying a glowing glass pyramid. On hearing this Jamie insists on going to find it - recalling how smashing such a device had defeated the Great Intelligence in Tibet.
Knight refuses to mount an expedition so Jamie states he will go alone. Evans volunteers to accompany him.
Victoria thinks she hears someone in the tunnel. She calls out, and a figure pauses before hiding in the shadows...
However, after the others have gone, the cowardly Evans claims his only thought is to flee at the earliest opportunity.
They are on the southern section of the Circle Line, moving from Cannon Street towards Monument - unaware that the web is moving around the line towards them from both directions.
Knight and Arnold are back at the fortress where they learn that all three strangers are now missing in the tunnels. They see Cannon Street fall to the web advance on the illuminated map.
Jamie and Evans have just reached Monument station.
They look on in horror as a mass of glowing web pours from the tunnel towards the platform...
Written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
Recorded: Saturday 20th January 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 10th February 1968
Ratings: 6.8 million / AI 53
VFX: Ron Oates
Designer: David Myerscough-Jones
Director: Douglas Camfield
Additional cast: Derek Pollitt (Driver Evans)
In the draft script, Captain Knight speculated that the Doctor and his friends might be part of some protest group. There was a conversation between Chorley and Victoria in which she was continually evasive when questioned - leading to frustration on the reporter's part. Travers spoke to Anne in much greater detail about his experiences in Tibet, and the scene between Weams and Blake, in which they ponder the nature of the web-like fungus and the Yeti, was shortened.
The discussion between Anne and Victoria, in which the Tibet incident is dated to 1935, was only added just before recording. More on this below...
Filming on this episode began with tunnel sequences at Ealing on Friday 15th December. This saw Corporal Lane and two soldiers - Brown and O'Brien - attacked by Yeti.
Monday 18th saw sequences on the platform set being shot. This included Jamie and Evans at Monument station being confronted by the web for the cliff-hanger, and Arnold and Blake investigating Charing Cross in search of the Doctor.
Model shots of the web flowing through the tunnel into Monument station were recorded on Tuesday 19th, and more of the Yeti attack in the tunnels was completed on Wednesday 20th.
A BBC photographer was present for rehearsals on the afternoon of studio recording, taking a number of images of the Yeti surrounding the group comprising Jamie, Knight and Arnold. Frazer Hines can be seen to be wearing trousers in some of these images, not yet in full costume.
Patrick Troughton was on a much needed holiday as the Doctor does not feature in this week's episode beyond a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger. This followed a brief re-enactment of the operations room sequence from the previous episode, with Knight detonating the explosives.
Whilst the Doctor was absent, all four Yeti costumes were required in studio. Joining John Levene and Gordon Stothard were Jeremy King and John Lord.
A laboratory was added to the Goodge Street fortress set from this week onwards. Most of the recording breaks were to allow actors to move from set to set, including between the fortress rooms and the tunnels. One break was to remove a wall from the common room set to allow camera access.
As Victoria walks along a tunnel she thinks she hears someone, and we see a pair of army-booted feet. This is our very first glimpse of a certain soon to be famous army officer - but Nicholas Courtney wasn't contracted to start studio work until Episode Three, so extra Maurice Brooks provided the feet. He was already featuring as a soldier in the story.
For the web effect in the tunnels, a patterned gauze was hung and lit intermittently at close range to suggest a pulsing glow.
The episode ended once again with stock footage of cells reproducing playing over the credits before a fade to black.
It's a Doctor-lite episode, at a time when such things were extremely rare (as Troughton often complained). The focus is therefore on Victoria, Jamie and the Goodge Street fortress characters, so it's a chance to get to know the latter better. Jamie, in particular, gets to be more proactive.
Anyone unfamiliar with the previous Yeti story gets a quick resume as Travers and the companions catch-up, before Anne begins questioning Victoria.
Chorley comes across as even more obnoxious as he seems happy to spread malicious rumours about the new arrivals - and we learn from his confrontation with Anne that he is a representative of the gutter press.
We also learn that for all his talk of writing about real experiences here, he is a coward at heart.
The same word can also apply to new character Driver Evans, who no doubt annoyed Welsh viewers immensely. Truth be told, he is just generally annoying, though presumably included in the story as a comic relief figure.
Though it was reduced in length before recording, there is a nice scene between Blake and Weams in which they give their thoughts on what's going on. It's not important to the story, but is a good little character scene, showing us what the everyman thinks of the crisis. Such sequences are usually reserved for the regulars and / or guest stars.
We also have the first clue as to the identity of the Great Intelligence's agent, when Arnold claims to be sure that the Yeti haven't killed the Doctor - putting it down to a hunch. But then again, Travers knows that the Intelligence acts through human agency. Why has he not mentioned anything about this so far?
This is an element of the story which hasn't really been developed yet - just who is the Great Intelligence working through this time? It will only be when the Doctor returns - and another newcomer appears - next week that this plot strand will come to the fore.
What we really need to talk about this week, however, is that thing which is still referred to as the "UNIT dating controversy". It still lingers in Nu-Who as Kate Stewart persists in being vague about the dating of some of her father's adventures. However, the whole thing was definitively put to bed by The Sarah Jane Adventures when her date of birth and age when with UNIT were revealed on screen.
It all starts, technically with the previous Yeti story, as characters in The Web of Fear use that as a basis for dating current events in London.
Confusingly, we actually get two different statements about how long ago Travers was in Tibet. He says in this episode that it was "over 40 years ago", though he is a forgetful old man by this time. In the opening instalment, Julius Silverstein clearly stated that Travers sold him the Yeti 30 years ago. Did Travers wait a whole decade to sell it, or is he a little confused as to when he last saw Jamie and Victoria? The writers actually intended the story to be set some 50 years after The Abominable Snowmen.
The problem is, they never gave that story a definitive date - only coming up with 1935 here, in the conversation between Victoria and Anne.
If that was the case then this story is set in 1985 according to the writers, 1975 according to Travers, or 1965 according to Silverstein - give or take a couple of years.
On screen evidence will actually suggest that the museum proprietor is closest, as we can see from the illuminated network map that the Victoria Line does not yet appear. It opened on 1st September 1968, so this story has to be set prior to that date. The military would hardly be using a map 7 years out of date for so important a purpose as tracking the web.
There is also the fact that the Brigadier has retired by summer 1977 (according to Mawdryn Undead), there is pre-decimal currency in use in Season 7, and there are early 1970's car registration numbers and licence expiry dates throughout the Pertwee era.
The balance of probability is that the UNIT stories, of which this is the precursor, can be dated to within a year of their broadcast date.
- The ratings continue to drop, down by nearly half a million on the previous week.
- The sets were being praised at the BBC's weekly programme review meeting on Wednesday 14th February, after the head of design reported on London Transport's irate phone call about unauthorised filming on their premises.
- Derek Pollitt will return as UNIT's Private Wright in The Silurians, and the Think Tank scientist Caldera in the un-broadcast Shada.
- He is the brother of Clive Pollitt, who played Time Lords (the same Time Lord?) in The War Games and The Three Doctors.
- Evans can be heard singing the traditional Welsh folk song Sosban Fach, which translates as "Little Saucepan".
- Corporal Blake makes reference to "Fred Karno's Army" at one point. Karno (1866 - 1941) was an English music hall impresario who helped launch the careers of both Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, well before their move to Hollywood. He is famous for having popularised the custard-pie in the face gag, which appeared in a sketch written by him for the Hackney Empire in 1904.
- Chorley is dismissive of Anne's talents by describing her as having a "redbrick university" education. This term refers to a new group of universities founded around the turn of the 20th Century, mainly established in industrial cities. They were looked down upon by those who attended or taught at the more ancient institutions like Oxford or Cambridge.
- Radio Times this week featured a small item on Kit Pedler's money raising efforts, which involved taking to the streets with a Cyberman:
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