Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Ooof, it had to happen sometime - I get to review what most fans kindly refer to as "A steaming load of crap". Some say it's genius, some say it's insufferably unwatchable. Is the truth somewhere in the middle?

For those of you just catching up - from 1963 to 1989 (and a couple of false starts thereafter) the BBC ran an immensely popular family program called Doctor Who. The main character is called The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He travels the universe in the TARDIS, a wondrous spaceship that can go anywhere in time and space - provided that the Doctor can steer it correctly. During his adventures, he and his companion (usually a young human female with weak ankles and good lungs) combat evil and injustice wherever they find it. Key to the longevity of the series - Doctor Who can do what the James Bond movies have done several times. When fatally injured, Time Lords have the ability to regenerate, totally changing their faces and personalities, allowing the ability to swap out the lead roll when the actor wants to leave the series. So there have been several Doctors with different faces (ten, so far), but all of them the same character.

Oh, and the name of the show is Doctor Who. The main character is simply called The Doctor.

An unknown force pulls the TARDIS off course and forces it to materialize on the planet Vortis a charming place with a thin-atmosphere, natural crag-like rock formations and what appear to be pools of acid.

The Doctor (the crotchety old man version) and Ian investigate and try to find the cause of the unexpected landing while Barbara looks after Vicki who has been affected by the natural high-frequency communications of the ant-like Zarbi monitoring the TARDIS.

As the travelers search for the cause of their predicament, they become separated, the Doctor and Vicki, Ian and Barbara become embroiled in the plans of the butterfly-like Menoptra to reclaim their planet from the parasitic Animus. Now the Doctor has stop an advance party of Menoptra from being wiped out, restore the underground-dwelling Optra to their proper place in the sun, destroy the Animus, free the ant-like Zarbi from its control and free the TARDIS all before the Animus envelopes the world with its web-like domain, the Carsenome. . . . .

The best work I can thing of to sum up the Web Planet is ambitious. The Web Planet is one of the most ambitious stories ever attempted in Doctor Who up to that point (and honestly for years to come). The problem is with great ambition comes the great potential to screw it up.

For starters, aside from the Doctor and his companions, all the characters are either giant ants, amorphous blobs of energy or human sized butterflies (that fly, no less). The planet Vortis is rocky, bleak, and dark. The set designs of the underground caves and Animus lair is impressive and grand. In short, it would have been a challenge for a blockbuster film of the day to pull all these elements off successfully. To attempt to do so on a tiny BBC television budget is really going for broke.

What really sells the Menoptra are the actors - the vocal inflections and odd dance like movements really gave them an unusual, alien quality about them. The costumes are well realized, with giant translucent butterfly wings and some great looking head piece makeup.

The giant ant like Zarbi are considerably less convincing. Despite the efforts of the production team, it's painfully obvious that the Zarbi are just actors with fiberglass ant costumes strapped to their backs.

The best of the lot have to be the cave dwelling Optra. Strange speech patterns with alien guttural voices, that weird leaping walk they have - the most effective alien on the planet. But even at that, the costume isn’t completely convincing - the four extra arms that don’t do anything but hang there look just damn silly.

Design work and realization aside, the story is a pretty typical Hartnell run around get captured and escape story line, but with random events thrown into the mix - TARDIS doors that open and close by themselves, that weird spinning console thing, Ian's magical flying pen - all there seemingly to add a sense of weird alien-ness to the proceedings. Episodes four and five drag a bit (but then what 6 part episode wouldn’t benefit from being only 4 or 5, really?), but the novel concepts and settings the show shoots for ideas make it worth viewing at least once.

One of the problems that modern viewers have with the show would be in how they watch it. Consider this - back in the sixties, a viewer would watch the Web Planet one episode a week in half hour chunks. To sit down today's with a DVD and watch all three hours in a row, with all the "capture-escape-capture-escape-runaway" plotting, is a bit unfair. If someone were to spread this out, even slightly - say an episode a day, I think the story would play stronger.

Not that I'm defending the Web Planet's story, mind you. The padding problems really become obvious in the later episodes and its the "few moments of silence pass so the episode is that much closer to filling it's run time" kind. Or just how many times can Vicki get put under control of the golden Zarbi collar?

Not to say that there are not bright points, mind you. The bit where the Menoptra land and fight the Zarbi are actually very well done. The scene where the Menoptra gets its wings ripped off by a couple of Zarbi is very intense, and the moment where an Optera shoves her head in a gap to stop a flow of acid from killing the entire party is really horrific and effective. Coupled that it comes out of nowhere really makes the point stand out. It's just a shame that the rest of the swamps such moments as these.

THE DVD -
Again we get a brilliant restoration from the RT. This episode must have been exceptionally hard to clean up the scratches and dead frames on for the way it was shot originally. The camera lens (well, a box over the lens) was smeared with vaseline to give it the footage a strange, otherworldly feel about it. While it does look good, clean up surely must have been a bear.

THE EXTRAS -
As usual, a commentary accompanies all six episodes, featuring William Russell and Martin Jarvis, producer Verity Lambert and director Richard Martin and moderated by Gary Russell. We get a documentary with interviews from Maureen O'Brien, Verity Lambert, William Russell, Martin Jarvis, Richard Martin, make-up designer Sonia Markham and designer John Wood.

William Russell reads The Lair of Zarbi Supremo, a short story from the first Doctor Who annual, presented as an audio feature on the disc. And as a start of including BDF scans from Radio Times and other cool documents from Doctor Who's past, the very first Doctor Who Annual is included on the disc. This would be a cool (and very welcome) extra from this point forward in the range.

Also, we get the a Spanish print of episode six, loaned from a private collection - so we get the soundtrack in Spanish, and a Give-a-Show slides based on this story - the whole 150-minute story condensed into 14 frames! We also get a photo gallery full of rare pictures and of course the text pop-up trivia subtitle track.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
The story is padded and filled with all kinds of non-sequiturs and bold concepts. The costumes often look like they were borrowed from a neighborhood theater group. There are nuggets of good ideas, but they're not fully formed or poorly executed. The Web Planet is ambitious, creative, and more than little crap. Full points for trying, but minus a whole bunch for bungling it.

OTHER DOCTOR WHO EPISODES ON DVD:

DOCTOR ONE -
* The Beginning * Doctor Who and the Daleks * The Aztecs * The Dalek Invasion of Earth * The Web Planet * The Lost in Time Collection *
DOCTOR TWO -
* Tomb of the Cybermen * The Seeds of Death * The Mind Robber * The Invasion *
DOCTOR THREE -
* Spearhead From Space * The Three Doctors * Carnival of Monsters*
DOCTOR FOUR -
* The Ark in Space * Genesis of the Daleks * The Pyramids of Mars * The Robots of Death * The Talons of Weng-Chiang *
DOCTOR FIVE -
* Earthshock * The Five Doctors * Warriors of the Deep * Resurrection of the Daleks * The Caves of Androzani*
DOCTOR SIX -
* Vengeance on Varos * Revelation of the Daleks*
DOCTOR SEVEN -
* Rememberance of the Daleks * The Television Movie*
THE NEW SERIES -
* Doctor Who - Series One * Doctor Who - Series Two * Torchwood - Series One * Doctor Who - Series Three * The Infinite Quest*


Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12