The Web Planet

When I first started my journey of Doctor Who, I tried to keep open minded about certain things, and I still do. I tend not to let the opinions and views of other fans cloud my judgement of any particular adventure. However, I must be in agreement with fandom regarding 'The Web Planet'; it is simply, without a doubt, the worst adventure ever created. 

I first viewed this 6-parter on Christmas Day with my girlfriend three years ago, and we nearly didn't survive the experience because we nearly died of absolute boredom. 

However, I must say that recently I have watched 'The Web Planet' with a mission in mind; to write responsorial dialogue in the fashion of Mystery Science Theater. Most of the crappy films that exist are usually made enjoyable thanks to MST3K. And so I painstakingly wrote some rather funny lines to say at certain junctions of all 6 episodes, and it does make the experience a bit more enjoyable, simply because you can delight in taking a piss out of what is undoubtably a bunch of great ideas poorly executed. This is my suggestion to everyone, if you wish to enjoy 'The Web Planet', view it and attempt to develop your own witty responses, it's fun. 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that many of the ideas were good when they were written on paper, and a great deal must be commended to going above and beyond the call of duty to attempt a truly alien landscape and environment. However, what ruins it is the pacing, because it literally takes forever for anything exciting to happen. By the time you get to episode four, you really don't care if the Menoptra overthrow the Zarbi and the Animus, you just want it all to be over and done with. What also ruins it are those annoying sound effects used for the Zarbi, they sound like video game sound effects from Atari or even KalicoVision. Not only that, but there are so many fluffed lines, I totally lost count. In addition, what was the deal with the weird hand movements by the Menoptra, it looked like they were conducting an orchaestra or something. 

I feel sorry for Martin Jarvis, a highly respected and talented actor, for having to play one of the Menoptra. Then again, this could have been one of his first acting jobs, who knows? Luckily he makes up for it with a marvelous performance years later in 'Jubilee'. I also felt sorry for the regulars for having to trudge through such a horrendously plodded adventure. I feel bad for Bill Sutton, who recently passed away, he had a lot of great ideas. They just weren't translated well to television. I think his ideas were overly ambitious and were a bit too big for the timeframe in which they were used. If his script were proposed a little later on in the years, the result probably would've been slightly better than what we ended up with at the time. Then again, who knows for certain. But take my advice, if you intend on watching this, you may like it, you may not. But first watch it, come up with some cool lines to shout at the screen at appropriate times, then sit back and enjoy your very own MSTied version of 'The Web Planet'.