The Web Planet

Information

Writer: Bill Strutton
Director: Richard Martin
Script Editor: Dennis Spooner
Producer: Verity Lambert, Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive Producer(s): None

Originally Broadcast: 13th February - 20th March 1965
Episodes: 6
Duration: 25 mins each episode
Production Code: N
Series: 2
Story Number: 13
Enemy: Animus
Setting: Vortis

Synopsis

On the planet Vortis, the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki are swept up in the struggles of the butterfly-like Menoptra, the original denizens of Vortis who were forced to flee the planet for the moon Pictos to escape the encroaching web of the Animus and its mind-controlled minions, the ant-like Zarbi and their living weapons, the Venom Grubs.

Cast

The Doctor - William Hartnell

Ian Chesterton - William Russell

Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill

Vicki - Maureen O'Brien

Zarbi - Robert Jewell, Jack Pitt, Gerald Taylor, Hugh Lund, Kevin Manser, John Scott Martin

Animus Voice - Catherine Fleming

Vrestin - Roslyn De Winter

Hrostar - Arne Gordon

Hrhoonda - Arthur Blake

Prapillus - Jolyon Booth

Hlynia - Jocelyn Birdsall

Hilio - Martin Jarvis

Hetra - Ian Thompson

Nemini - Barbara Joss

Other Cast - Jane Bowman, Ken McGarvie, Len Russell (all uncredited)

Story Notes

• This story was originally entitled The Zarbi and was made under the working title The Centre of Terror.
  
• The Centre was initially titled Centre of Terror. The novelisation restores this title for the sixth chapter.
  
• The first and so far only television story in which all the characters, other than the regulars, are entirely non-humanoid.
  
• Jacqueline Hill does not appear in Escape to Danger as she was on holiday while it was filmed. She is not credited in this episode's closing credits and later complained to the production team about this.
  
• Noted choreographer Rosalyn de Winter was hired to create the distinctive movements and stilted speech of the Menoptra. She was so successful that the production team asked her to take on the role of the Menoptra Vrestin (which she accepted).
  
• The costumes for all of the aliens who appeared in this story were created by Daphne Dare.
  
• Believed lost in the BBC's early 1970s purge, negative film prints of all six episodes were recovered from BBC Enterprises in the late 1970s. These prints appear to have stemmed from a 1973 sale to Algeria and as a result the final episode was amended so that the "Next Episode" caption referred to The Space Museum instead of The Lion, as the next story The Crusade was not sold to Arab countries. There were also some edits to the first episode. Unedited prints of all six episodes were also discovered in Nigeria in 1985.
  

Preceded by: The Romans - Followed by: The Crusade