The Web of Fear

I can now definitively say that the best way to watch The Web of Fear is in bed, in the dark, with a large mug of hot chocolate.

Web is as beautifully restored as Enemy of the World was. It is as stunningly clear as if it was filmed yesterday. It's wonderfully atmospheric, with the echoing of underground tunnels. They look exactly like the tunnels I've seen through the windows of the underground in Glasgow. And the set designers have put in a couple of fun little background pieces. At one point the Doctor confronts some Yeti in front of a poster for a film called "Blockbuster", whose tag line describes their own base under siege situation. And when Jamie is alone on a platform, he stands next to a Scottish Nationalist Party poster (what that would be doing in London I've no idea). 

The let down is episode 3. The telesnaps do not appear to have been cleared up in any way. The ones of characters in motion are blurred, the rest simply fuzzy. There are a couple of snaps of scenery that are nice and clear, but any with characters or yeti are disappointingly unclear. At one point the people who put together the telesnaps acknowledge that you can't tell what's happening and subtitle them to tell you! The BBC web page that talks about the discovery of the episodes and announces a DVD release for then (25th November for Enemy and 24th February for Web) makes no mention of whether this episode is being animated, but the deadline for release suggests it might not be, which is a shame. I hope for the DVD release they do at least clear up the snaps. I'm sure it's a very different job from cleaning up film, but there must be some way to at least decrease the fuzziness.

Ten years ago, this was voted DW's tenth greatest ever story, despite no one having seen it in full since it's first transmission.  I can honestly say that it can now move up that list. It is a wonderful threatening story. Other than some hamming from the actor playing Evans (who also insists on calling everyone "boyo" to prove his Welshness), the cast are strong.  Everyone takes their job seriously and they really sell the fact that London has been taken over and they are trapped in the underground. 

As Lethbridge-Stewart's (you can't really call him "The Brigadier" yet) first appearance, you can see why they brought him back, though having watched him since I was small, it's odd now to see him under suspicion of being a traitor. He shows a despair in episode 4 that I can't ever recall seeing in him in later stories.  He also immediately trusts in what the Doctor is saying ordering a rescue attempt for the TARDIS, without really knowing whether or not to believe the Doctor's assertions of its ability to help them escape.

I'm just so happy to have been able to watch this at last, and it didn't let me down. It was as fantastic as I always hoped it would be. Today's children will be watching it from behind the sofa just like the children who watched it in 1968. 

The Enemy of the World

And that was The Enermy of the World.

Patrick Troughton is fantastic in his duel role as Salamander and the Doctor. The scene of the Doctor trying to find his way into imitating Salamander's accent after watching a single video is just brilliant. As the Doctor he gets to be funny, silly and occasionally serious and brave. Playing Salamander, he gets to be despotic, cruel and violent. After watching Troughton playing the Doctor for a year and a half, this would have been a chance to show the audience his brilliant range. I did notice the Salamander accent slip once or twice, but how little it did is remarkable given how many scenes there were where he started as the Doctor, slipped into pretending to be Salamander, then went back to being the Doctor. It's especially impressive given that these stories were filmed "as live" and retakes were only allowed for catastrophes (and those mostly of a technical nature - actors just had to muddle along as best as they could if they made a mistake).

Technically the episodes are beautifully remastered. This morning I saw some clips from before the cleaning up process began and the difference is incredible. The restoration team have done a brilliant job and deserve all the praise they can get. It looked wonderful on my laptop. The only technical issue I did notice is that the audio is about half a second behind the picture. In some scenes, particularly in the last couple of episodes characters were still speaking after their mouths had stopped moving (it's particularly noticable with Benik as the actor has a tendency to snap his mouth closed when he's finished speaking). But that is a minor issue and it really doesn't detract from the story at all.

Deborah Watling looks just gorgeous throughout (I want her hair!) and Frazer Hines in a kilt is just good for the soul. I'm definitely remembering my crush on the dashingly brave Jamie.

And now I'm torn. Do I save it for tomorrow? Or do I take my laptop up to bed with me, knowing that I can only watch maybe half of Web of Fear before I have to go to sleep? Will I even be able to stop once I start? Damn weekend working.

To hell with it - I might just watch the whole thing!

Found!

They've found them! All but one episode of The Web of Fear and all the missing episodes of The End of the World. I got up this morning, turned on the TV and that was the first report I saw.

It's impossible to express just how happy this makes me. I've heard what I think are fairly reliable reports of a large cache of missing episodes, but when I asked was told that The Web of Fear was not among them.

The Web of Fear is one of my favourite ever episodes of Doctor Who. Despite never having seen it. The copy of the book I had as a child is just about falling out of it's cover from being read so much. The audio recordings of the story that exist are the most listened to story on my iPod. It's frightening, exciting and is the first story to feature The Brig (though at the time he is still Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart). It will be wonderful to finally see if it lives up to my imagination.

And they're downloading onto my laptop NOW! 

The Beeb have really done their job this time. The episodes are already available officially on iTunes with DVD releases promised for next year. But making them available to fans now is a fantastic move on their part. Though I am tempted to skip work to watch them. For the still missing episode of Web they've synched the audio files with the telesnaps they have of the episode, in a similar way to what they did with Marco Polo for the In the Beginning box set - though with a whole episode rather than a condensed version of the whole story. I do hope that they animate it for DVD in the way they did with The Reign of Terror and The Invasion.

Now, this is not what I've heard about a find of missing episodes. What I have heard was that an extremely large find had been made completing a large number of stories with missing episodes and an official announcement would be made in the anniversary week. I think my source is reliable. It's the same one that I heard about the Galaxy 4 and The Underwater Menace find before the official announcement.

My hope is that the source I heard from is not mistaken. Rather, the BBC have been unable to suppress the rumours that have been sweeping through fan circles and this is a way to excite the fans while quieting the rumours. They may hope that people will think this is all the rumours were talking about. But I, for one, will continue to hope for an announcement closer to the anniversary of more finds.

But, for now, I know how I'll be spending my Friday night.