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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 348: The Web of Fear, Episode Two (Revisited)

Dear diary,

“In some ways, this episode is absolutely made to be listened to as just the audio.”

I feel like I should regret saying that, now that I've just sat and watched the episode play out, but actually I think I stand by it. A lot of this episode is just ripe for audio. The dialogue between Jamie and Evans as they look at the Tube maps and emerge into stations is still very descriptive, but I think it's sticking out so much simply because I noticed it last time around.

By the same token, getting to see this one unveils things that I'd not really gotten from the audio. The key thing is the way that Camfield shoots Chorley throughout. You're bout supposed to like the reporter. He's infuriating, rude in places, a coward, a potential suspect once the grip of the Intelligence starts to close in… and yet when you can actually see the man on screen, all of this gets heightened. He's always a presence in the scenes in a way that he simply isn't on the soundtrack. When he questions Jamie and Victoria, the microphone is right up tight into their faces (and taking up a good deal of the shot). He's always hovering in the front of the shot, or hiding in the background chiming in with a quip here or there. When the sound of gunfire and a battle is heard down the end of a telephone, he makes sure to lean in with the microphone to get a good recording of it. It adds a whole new dimension to the character that I'd simply not seen before, and the story is all the better for it.

Now… you'll have to forgive me a bit today. I've just re-read my original entry for this episode, and there's so man things I want to bring up that it's going to sound like I'm simply answering myself. It's like a conversation through time!

“I also spent some time thinking that it was a good job we couldn't see the huge battle between the Yeti and the soldiers, until I remembered that it's a Douglas Camfield episode we're dealing with, and hurried to go through the tele snaps. It's hard to tell, because so many of the snaps catch people mid-action, but the impression I get is that it looked brilliant. The setting really helps, too, the cramped tunnels really helping to give the Yeti a kind of scale that was completely lost out on the Welsh hillside.”

Oh, Douggie. I do love you. My impression was right. The battle was lovely to watch. I was torn between a desire to make notes or simply sit and watch the action with a sense of absolute wonder. I plumped for the latter in the end. It's so wonderfully down from start to finish, and it really does make the Yeti look imposing… and actually quite scary! I can quite imagine being five or six years old and being absolutely struck by this sequence.

It's not just the tunnels that give these creatures a sense of scale, but the skill with which Camfield has shot them. The cameras aimed in their direction are almost exclusively placed low down, shooting up at the beasts, and making them look even bigger than they really are. The cramped tunnel does then help to accentuate this, and they just keep on coming. As if to really hammer the point home, they proceed to batter their way through the pile of explosive charges in a sequence which should look rubbish (no, really, it should. At one point, a Yeti stumbles trying to get over the props, but then it finishes the manoeuvre, straightens up, and carries on. Under a lesser director this could have been another 'Zarbi hits the camera' - well, not quite that bad - but here it seems to add to the threat!)

It's not all praise, though. The Yeti leaving their prisoners and simply wandering off when they think of something better to do seems even more odd on screen, because they really do just walk away when the moment comes, Still, that's a relatively minor niggle at the end of a very lovely sequence…

“I think it's probably a testament to how much I'm enjoying this one that it was fifteen minutes or more before I noticed the complete absence of the Doctor.”

And it's probably rather telling that I didn't notice it again this time around! Well, ok, that's not strictly true. I did notice, but only in the last couple of minutes when attention was drawn to it once more. For the rest of the episode, I was too busy enjoying the rest of the cast.

The one who needs extra special praise from me today is Deborah Watling. I wan't all that fond of Victoria during my first run-though of Season Five. By the time she left at the end of Fury From the Deep, I was rather glad to see the back of her. Now though, with these episodes coming free from all the others around them, I'm rather liking her once more. And I'm enjoying Watling's performance more than I have for a while, too. I think she really does suffer from having so much missing from the archives (not any more! For the first time in 40 years, we've more of her episodes in the archive than not! Hooray!), because when we can watch her performance, it's so much easier to appreciate.

There's two lovely moments from her today. The first has to be when she slowly comes to the realisation of who the blustery old man they're talking to is - while Jamie continues to put his back up and argue back, and beautiful smile breaks out across Victoria's face and she excitedly announces that they're back with Travers. Jamie soon swings round to a similar joyous reaction, but it's not a patch on hers - a simply fantastic piece of acting. After this we've got her listening in on the accusations against the Doctor and quietly excusing herself from the room again to go off in search of him. I'm so pleased that she's given these wonderful moments in the recovered episodes, because I'm pleased to think that I'm not the only person re-evaluating her now…