"The Web of Fear" - Episode 1

Doctor Who
Airdate: February 3, 1968
Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln
Produced by Peter Bryant
Directed by Douglas Camfield

Jamie manages to close the TARDIS doors before anyone follows Salamander into the void outside. But soon enough the TARDIS becomes stuck in space and covered by a strange web. After a time, the webbing clears, and the TARDIS arrives in the Covent Garden tube station. It's broad daylight, but it's deserted, and the street level exit is locked. Meanwhile, Prof. Travers and his daughter Anne are assisting the military, holed up in a fortress in the Goodge Street station. Back in the underground tunnels, the Doctor finds a length of wire and follows it while Jamie and Victoria follow a couple of soldiers in the other direction and our promptly captured. The Doctor discovers explosives at the next platform, but quickly hides as he sees two Yeti approaching. As the Yeti cover the explosives in webbing issuing from handguns, Captain Knight at Goodge Street fortress orders the detonation...

They weren't gone long enough to miss them, but the Yeti are back and better than ever! Well, they've been redesigned, anyway. That's pretty common for "Doctor Who". The Cybermen got a radical redesign for their second outing, which also came pretty fast on the heels of their debut. This redesign actually happens on screen, as we get to watch an original Yeti morph (through the magic of cross-fading) into a new and improved Yeti. There are two major differences, one good and one bad. The good one is that the Yeti are now sleeker and more distinctly shaped, rather thanthe big furry blobs on legs we saw in "The Abominable Snowmen". The bad one is that they now have two enormous, ridiculous-looking glowing eyes. C'est la vie.

Speaking of ridiculous-looking, we also have the return appearance of a now-elderly Prof. Travers. In fairness, he doesn't really look that bad, but Jack Watling's "elderly acting" is a bit hard to take. In his first appearance, he was solid, down-to-earth, and quite believable, which was a big asset in a story filled with British actors pretending to be Tibetan monks. Here, his performance feels cartoonish and overly broad. Still, it's nice to have him back, and it's surprising that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often in a show featuring time-travel.