In the very final analysis, this is a bit of a cop-out ending. The Doctor’s spent the last week and a half coming up with a clever plan to foil the Intelligence, but ultimately he doesn’t get to carry it our because Jamie jumps the gun, uses the hacked Yeti to attack its peers, and wreck the Intelligence’s machine. There’s a lot of chaos, a big explosion, and then it all wraps up in about three minutes as the Doctor bemoans Jamie’s actions and warns that the Intelligence is still out there: ‘It might come back.’

Continue reading →

Intriguingly, this episode explicitly takes place in real time: near the start the possessed Travers, moving awkwardly as a puppet controlled by the Intelligence, warns the Doctor that he has 20 minutes to make up his mind whether he will give his mind to the Intelligence for the sake of all the human lives, and be forced to live as a child with Jamie and Victoria as “parents”. And then, at the halfway point Anne remarks that they have 12 minutes remaining to come up with a way to re-wire a Yeti control sphere to regain the initiative.

Continue reading →

The episode begins with Professor Travers being dragged away from the Goodge Street base by Yeti, and concludes with his return, escorted by them. In between are some of the most visceral action sequences and gruelling horror the show has attempted to date, including the massacre of nearly all the supporting cast in a Yeti attack that shows off Camfield’s dynamic film direction and ability to make about four Yeti costumes look like a horde. Shock moments include the sight of Lane’s corpse shrouded in cobwebs, and Captain Knight’s body left, eyes wide open, where a Yeti leaves it.

Continue reading →

Of the 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who, this is perhaps the most keenly felt because for a brief moment it wasn’t missing. It was found, but then lost again. At the time this made me unaccountably furious, to the extent that I’ve never actually seen The Web of Fear until now, stubbornly holding out until this one was handed over. But short of the winds blowing in another direction, it remains firmly in the clutches of some private collector, and me having a sulk about it won’t change that fact.

Continue reading →

It’s Troughton’s first week off in a while, and Haisman and Lincoln use his absence to their advantage – his mysterious disappearance makes him a suspicious person of interest to Captain Knight and his men, none of whom knows exactly who or what is behind the Yeti attacks. This is made clear in an effective scene between soldiers Blake and Weams, who dismiss the idea that they’re ‘abominable snowmen’ for the more prosaic explanations of a foreign power’s robot army, or creatures from outer space

Continue reading →

There’s something refreshing retro about this episode. Not only does it follow directly on from The Enemy of the World, like the old Hartnell stories, but the Doctor is back to his old ways of indignantly defending his control of the Ship, which then goes wrong and starts flashing a warning light, before something disturbing appears on the scanner. And when the TARDIS does land, in a deserted London, the crew promptly find a dead body and an ominous poster just like in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Continue reading →

The conclusion to the story is largely perfunctory, which only adds to the sense that beyond giving Troughton the opportunity to play the Great Dictator, Whitaker didn’t really have much idea what to do with this. The introduction of the secret bunker filled with middle class people never gels with the rest of the less absurd plot elements; Giles Kent’s unmasking is a bit clumsy, and rather than providing any sort of satisfactory denouement, Whitaker just blows everything up.

Continue reading →

The story is pretty clearly pitting those who countenance killing as a means to an end – Salamander, Benik, and Kent – against those who value life more highly: the Doctor, Bruce and Swann. An unlikely alliance between the Doctor and Bruce to expose Salamander starts to come together at the moment when Salamander’s own carefully-laid plans begin to fall apart because of his own over-confidence.

Continue reading →

‘I can only die once,’ Fariah sneers having been shot in the back, just like Denes last week, by an over-zealous guard. Her last words consciously evoke the most recent Bond movie You Only Live Twice – which is incredibly appropriate given this episode finally reveals the secret of Salamander’s power over nature – hidden in a secret underground lair straight out of the Blofeld Handbook.

Continue reading →

Although it’s a fairly connective middle episode, this continues to showcase both Whitaker’s talent for pithy dialogue and Letts’ good casting choices. In tandem, these give us Griff the lugubrious chef – a pretty minor role made interesting by Reg Lye’s world-weary performance. It also means Benik, a petty functionary in the scheme of things, stands in for Salamander’s whole approach: placing vindictive Little Hitlers in authority knowing that they will dance to his tune, while they revel in the power they hold. And when Salamander is unable to manipulate someone because, like Fedorin, they’re too basically decent, he assassinates them safe in the knowledge there are plenty of Beniks in the world to fill the vacancy.

Continue reading →