Run! It's the Yeti!

As Web of Fear creeps gradually closer on DVD, I'm keen to look a bit more at the Yeti themselves.  I've recently bought some old Harlequin Miniatures Yeti hoping they could be used in some sort of Web of Fear game (I've even found 28mm scale tube station scenery online).  The miniatures themselves are fairly generic looking, lacking the pear shaped body of the Abominable Snowmen version (below) and the facial features of the Web version.

The costume was changed for their second appearance after a gap of only two stories since Abominable Snowmen, at least in part because the originals were too cuddly.  They lost a lot of weight around the waist and gained a large mouth and glowing eyes, also bigger claws to hold the web-guns.  Web of Fear as a story seems like the creation of a D&D random events table; "I roll a die, the story takes place in the London Underground...(roll a die)... and it's the Yeti, armed with... (roll a die)... err, web-guns"

The change in costume is clearly shown in episode 1 as the museum yeti is reactivated.  The Discontinuity Guide lists this as a 'goof' commenting "not intentional surely".  It's clearly intentional, as the Abominable Snowmen costume was obviously brought to the studio and a transition scene filmed so that it morphs into the Web of Fear version.  In fact this is one of a very few times that a monster costume changing is actually acknowledged/explained on screen.  It could be to do with these stories originally airing only weeks apart, but compare to Silurians and Warriors of the Deep, or the reworked versions of several New Series monsters which are not commented upon.

Some of the best photos of the Yeti costume come from set photos on location rather than the story themselves.  All were taken around Covent Garden on Sunday, 17th December 1967.  Probably a quiet morning, judging by the fact the only person around is one guy walking a dog.

From this photo though you get a good impression of size, and they are pretty big.  John Levene is probably under one of those.  Long after filming I saw an original Yeti prop in 1993 at the previously mentioned Museum of the Moving Image.  And t'was a sad sight, little over 25 years later it was terribly moth-eaten looking and balding.  It's clearly a Web of Fear yeti, looking at the eyes and overall shape.  It has an energy sphere lodged in its chest, these can't be seen in any photos from Web of Fear I've seen so if the suits all had them hidden among their fur it shows how much hair loss this yeti has suffered.  There are photos from filming of Abominable Snowmen that clearly show them having an energy sphere in the chest when the costume is only partially being worn.

Recently, I thought that by now, this costume is about 45 years old and surely will have nearly completely disintegrated.  Some online searches found recent photos of a yeti at the Doctor Who Experience looking almost in the same condition as my photo, but I'm not sure if it's the same one.  In fact, the Experience one might have more fur on the head.  But either way, there's still at least one survivor, and 60s monster costumes are quite rare.

Family photo; husband and wife?

As great as the Yeti look, I'm not sure they would work on modern TV, they're just a bit too cuddly looking (particularly when one puts his arm around another above) and would seem more like a huge teddy bear than actually menacing.  They don't look like much in Downtime, but that doesn't have the budget to give them a fair crack.  I think the black and white does them a lot of favours, perhaps the atmospheric approach taken to older stories works too especially the claustrophobic gloom of the tube.  They certainly look more imposing in the dark than out in the streets.  Still a classic monster which I'll be coming back to shortly when my miniatures are delivered.

Omni-rumour of the World

If this time last year you'd told me we would find both Enemy of the World and Web of Fear complete before the end of 2013 I wouldn't have given it much credibility, it wouldn't have even got my hopes up. Previously I've written about the rumours around Power of the Daleks, but it's just that, a collection of rumours and supposed conversations. These two stories appeared rather unexpected up until the days prior to the announcement.

Where this leaves what is now being described as the 'omnirumour' I'm not sure, but there are very strong rumours that Marco Polo is among further finds, at least one person claiming they've recovered multiple copies.  It's the way, you wait decades for a missing story and three copies appear at once (supposedly).  I also mentioned the fuel added to rumours by the disbelief in BBC statements because they're clearly designed to mislead.  This is especially the case after the reveal of EotW and WoF as denials were put out in the days prior to the announcement and even the company led by Phil Morris (the man scouring these archives abroad) flatly denied ever holding any material.  The result is that no rumour can be quashed, people just don't believe denials by once trusted people in the know and pick apart their wording for any ambiguity. That someone put in a Freedom of Information request to force out emails about missing material from the BFI shows the desperation some fans are showing to get solid answers, which if we're honest they have no actual right to have; the result was nothing useful learned and probably a number of very annoyed people involved in the recovery process.  That said, the BBC seems to be a very leaky ship spilling out quite a lot of rumours that turn out to be true, even on the production of the New Series episodes.

If the Omnirumour is to be believed in full, as Ian Levine first claimed many months ago, they've found almost everything - 90 episodes.  That defies credibility.  In recent months I've seen almost every missing story being suggested as having been found, other than the Ice Warriors which is not long out on DVD with animated episodes.  Rumours seem to be getting increasingly bizarre, apparently Phil Morris isn't responsible for all the finds, bits of Dalek Masterplan have been found on very early off-air recordings.  But episodes 11 and 12 are stuck together and separating them will be very difficult.  

My feeling is that there are more episodes to come, there could be quite a few if the claims that Phil Morris has recovered thousands of film cans from Africa.  But with a stock that large it will take time to open the cans and check the contents, and then find out if the contents can actually lead to something recoverable.  It wouldn't be the first time that what is in a can doesn't match the label on the can, and it is possible that the contents have spoiled leaving them unwatchable.  Though there's not just Doctor Who to enjoy, I've heard that Adam Adamant episodes have been found, and I'd like to see those too.  So hopefully, fans of many shows will have some surprises.

Both Enemy of the World and Web of Fear were available right off the bat for £10 on iTunes, that's quite magnificent when you think of it.  Never has a missing episode been announced and then made immediately available and restored.  Compare to the second episode of Underwater Menace announced a couple of years ago which is yet to receive a release.  I didn't bother buying them on iTunes because I'd rather have them on DVD.  Clearly it suits all those involved for people to buy the download and then get the proper DVD release, but I'm happy to wait as my first viewing on DVD on a big TV will undoubtedly be better than any download on a computer.  Excited as I am for these stories, I can wait.  Knowing they're safe at the BBC and restored is enough.

Enemy of the World was a story I knew nothing about, beyond it having a duplicate of the Doctor called Salamander.  I think I'm going to have to watch it again to take it all in actually.  The whole production was of a high standard, clearly some money had gone into it, and it shows what a loss some of these episodes are.  Some of the set materials in the underground base were of such a complex standard and seen for such a short period, I feel sure they must have been taken from another production.  The first episode was quite wild with a helicopters and a hovercraft on the beach and introducing Salamander speaking from the UN, Troughton putting on a dubious accent.  Episode three is probably the weakest, which is why this story has been overlooked in the past, with a small budget someone is held prisoner in a corridor saving the cost of a cell.  It's six episode story, it has padding.  Milton Johns is wonderfully slimy and over the top camp.  But the twist reveal of the underground base with people tricked into living out an apocalypse is great and unexpected, also it pre-dates the likes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs by quite a few years.  Note that Enemy of the World is written by David Whitaker, Invasion of the Dinosaurs seems to heavily borrow from that with the lead villain being called 'Whitaker'...  Overall a great story, a great find and I just can't get the image of Troughton puffing away on that cigar.

We have to wait a lot longer for Web of Fear (end of February 2014).  It's not clear exactly why, when Enemy of the World was rushed to DVD three months earlier (late November 2013) the same could not be done for Web; both were released simultaneously on iTunes.  It makes sense that Enemy is released first as it's episode 6 cliffhanger feeds into Web of Fear, but the gap has led to speculation that they have also recovered episode 3 and have been trying, and possibly failing depending on the rumour, to restore it for the DVD, or maybe they are preparing a higher quality reconstruction than that provided on iTunes.  Still that's the one I'm really excited to see, but I'm happy to wait for the DVD.

Web of Fear

So the blog has been unused for a bit after a very busy period, after which I didn't get back to it. The second half of series 6 has come and gone, and I suppose my thoughts will go up about that. The christmas special didn't have much of anything about it but I'll think of something.

But for now, I'm stepping back to look at the Web of Fear. I have the audio, but today I saw the first episode for the first time and there's so much promise. The underground sets are of a very high quality as I have read elsewhere. It is often reported that London Transport denied them the right to film (or perhaps simply wanted too much money) and then complained after airing of the episode that they had made unauthorised use of the underground for filming. The sets are good, but Covent Garden doesn't have plain tiled walls, and did they really think the BBC managed to sneak a film crew down there and run around on the platform and tracks?

The Great Intelligence is back and using Yeti again. This made sense in the Himalayas so now I assume they are just copied from the single robot Yeti that Travers brought back. Well that was a wise thing to do. Who built these extra Yeti? Did the Intelligence possess a few people into doing its bidding like WOTAN did in the War Machines, and churn a few out? The Yeti have taken to the London Underground, their eyes now glow and they have guns that shoot out endless amounts of web that covers everything. Oh and there's a lethal fog that gets everyone else. This web fills up the Underground, disables explosives, kills people when sprayed at them and moves around at fairly high speeds of its own accord, going from Queensway to Chancery Lane in under half an hour. The fog hangs around and swallows people up without trace. Is it poison gas, produced by the Yeti's weapons or part of the Intelligence itself? The Yeti are a menace often in the background, sometimes characters venture out safely, sometimes there's one lurking around the next corner. It's the base-under-siege stuff that defines this era of Doctor Who.

Talking about oddities on the Underground, there are a few suspect moments where characters get around awfully fast between locations that are quite far apart, and the progression of the fog/web doesn't entirely make sense. It's also surprising the Victoria react with incredulity at the idea of underground trains, the Doctor says that it's 'a little before your time'. But wait, isn't she from London 1866 (Evil of the Daleks), the Underground first opened in 1863 and was having extensions made frequently. It's not as if they kept quiet about it prior to opening, so this doesn't make sense unless she's very sheltered. How long did the Daleks keep her locked up?

This is of course the first story with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, sorry, that's Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. He obviously got a promotion after saving London and setting up UNIT, but he then never received another. UNIT were notorious for not promoting any of their staff, Benton went up twice, but no one else did. That, along with the minimal command structure and the high fatality rate of squaddies, it's a wonder that they got any recruits at all. Maybe the hazard pay was particularly generous. Anyway, heading off the point now but I'm inspired to write a whole piece about UNIT...

Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart is at his most credible in his first appearance. He takes the Doctor's story about a time and space machine in a Police Box almost at face value. Strangely his further encounters with alien life would seemingly make him more and more sceptical until unable to accept the bleeding obvious (The Three Doctors). In later years he would loosen up and become a bit more open minded.

The story builds gradually to a climax, I wish we had it all because it sounds wonderfully eerie on the soundtrack and the single remaining episode offers so much. The Great Intelligence has a plan to drain the Doctor's mind using a headset attached to some machine. But the Doctor has a plan to reverse this and drain the Intelligence by switching the wires around on the headset. Lets think about that for a moment. I really hope that there's a bit more to it than the Doctor suggests, because simply swapping the jacks around to put the 'output' into the 'input' and vice versa is a pretty silly way to beat a villain known as the 'Great Intelligence'. But unfortunately before this is put to the test, the Doctor's fellows trash the machine and the Intelligence's grip on London is broken. Defeated, but far from destroyed.

People complain about the ending of some New Series stories, but Web of Fear is held as a classic and yet has a very lazy way to defeat the villain, all in all. I suppose a lot of the difference is in the way the story is told and the characters that make up the piece. Troughton is amazing, and turns even rubbish into great entertainment, much as Matt Smith and co achieve at the moment on the show. Also the story would have been spread out over six weeks, and the somewhat dubious ending is the climax to 20 minutes of a single episode, rather that two hours as is the case from watching/listening in a single sitting. This isn't to say this *is* rubbish, it's got it all. A classic base-under-siege story, great monsters, wonderful creepy setting, a great cast with Prof Travers back (I've not mentioned him but Jack Watling puts in a great second appearance as the aged Travers) and introducing the Brigadier. It's a terrible shame that it is lost to us.