‘Forty years the Yeti had been quiet – Collector’s item in a museum. Then without warning it awoke – and savagely murdered.
At about the same time patches of mist began to appear in Central London. People who lingered anytime in the mist were found dead, their faces smothered in cobwebs. The cobweb seeped down, penetrating the Underground System. Slowly it spread…
Then the Yeti reappeared, not just one but hordes, roaming the misty streets and cobwebbed tunnels, killing everyone in their path. Central London was gripped tight in a Web of Fear…’
Note. This review was originally written as part of a tribute to Terrance Dicks upon his passing in 2019. With gratitude for everything he did for us young fans in the 1970’s.
I have a book in front of me now. It cost a whopping 45p. I was surprised. Actually, I was surprised that I had 45p to spend in 1976, I don’t know how – probably I was allowed to buy something because we were going on holiday. Some of the earlier books that I later picked up second hand, cost a mere 30p (actually most were 5 or 10p second hand). I suppose Britain was in the grip of inflation and Target book prices just reflected that. Whatever, it was 45p well spent. I am not entirely sure why I chose ‘Web of Fear’ out of all the Target books available at that point. I mean there were quite a few books with ‘My Doctor’ – Jon Pertwee, including favourite old stories like ‘The Sea Devils’ or ‘The Green Death’. Also out was ‘The Loch Ness Monster’, which I’d missed three episodes of the previous year and was still really disappointed about, as it looked great. It was a straight choice between those two books I think and I chose ‘Web of Fear’. It was the cover I think, with Sergeant Arnold enveloped in a beam from the Yeti’s eyes and an entirely new exciting Doctor looking down on events. I think it was probably the army against the Yeti looked that swung things in its favour – but the cover blurb quoted above – I mean how exciting and scary does that sound?
The Return of Evil
Then there is the opening chapter – ‘Chapter 1 – The Return of Evil’ – the Return of Evil – blimey that sounds exciting:
‘The huge, furry monster reared up, as if to strike. Well over seven feet tall, its immensely broad body made it seem squat and lumpy. It had the huge hands of a gorilla, the savage yellow fangs and fierce red eyes of a grizzly bear. There was no fear in the face of the white-bearded old man who stood looking up at it, just a yearning curiosity. He knew the monster wouldn’t move. It had stood like this, in the private museum, for over forty years, ever since he had brought it back from Tibet. He reached up and opened a flap in the monster’s chest. Beneath was an empty space, just large enough to hold a small sphere.’
I had to ask my Mum and Dad what a sphere was. Blimey though a cross between a Gorilla and a Grizzly Bear – blimey.
Now episode One of ‘Web of Fear’ is one of my absolute favourites. Even here though Terrance does a little bit of tidying up and housekeeping. Julius Silverstein, a caricature of an Eastern European Jewish émigré, instead becomes Emile Julius. He also effortlessly sketches in the events of ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ and provides us youngsters with the story of how the Yeti comes to be in the museum, it’s relationship with Professor Travers, that they are actually robots and gives us the information that will be useful later that he already knows the Doctor. When I first read this book, I hadn’t read ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ and the two stories, separated by a few months on TV, both aired a couple of years before I was born – there was no chance that I was ever going to see them (actually that is probably still the case with most of ‘Abominable Snowmen’).
And then we get one of those great memorable ‘Doctor Who’ deaths:
On his way out of the hall, he stopped for another look at his beloved Yeti. He gazed proudly up at it. The Yeti’s eyes opened and glared redly into his own. Appalled Julius took a pace back. The Yeti stepped off its stand, following him. Its features blurred and shimmered before his horrified eyes, becoming even more fierce and wild than before. With a sudden, shattering roar the Yeti smashed down its arm in a savage blow…
And a passage that tells us everything that happens in between the Yeti coming to life and the point at which we’ll join the story properly with the events at Goodge St:
‘In the weeks that followed, the story was driven from the headlines by an even stranger mystery. Patches of mist began to appear in Central London. Unlike any natural mist, they refused to disperse. More and more patches appeared, linking up one with another. Most terrifying of all, people who spent any time in the mist patches were found dead, their faces covered with cobwebs. Central London was cordoned off. It was still possible to travel by Underground Railway—until a strange cobweb-like substance started to spread below ground, completely blocking the tunnels. It was like a glowing mist made solid, and anyone who entered it was never seen again. The combination of mist above and cobweb below became known as the Web. Slowly it spread. Then the Yeti reappeared, not just one but hordes of them, roaming through the misty streets and the cobwebbed tunnels, mercilessly killing anyone in their path. Central London was gripped tight in a Web of Fear…’
So, by the end of chapter one, we know everything we need to start the story. Terrance has sketched in quite a complicated backstory with great economy and skill.
Chapter two has to introduce our leads and the military investigation team. Now I’d only ever seen the second Doctor when I was very young – four in fact – in ‘The Three Doctors’, so I vaguely knew he existed, but I’d never met Jamie or Victoria, when I joined the show it was Jon, Jo Grant, the Brigadier, Benton and Yates. For each of the earlier team we get a lovely little pen-sketch that tells us all we need to know about them:
‘One was a small man with untidy black hair and a gentle, humorous face. He wore baggy check trousers and a disreputable old frock-coat. Towering over him was a brawny youth in Highland dress, complete with kilt. The smaller man was that well-known traveler in Space and Time called the Doctor. The other, whose name was Jamie, had been the Doctor’s travelling companion since the Doctor’s visit to Earth at the time of the Jacobite rebellion. A small, dark girl entered the control room. Her name was Victoria, and she was the Doctor’s other travelling companion. Rescued from nineteenth-century London during a terrifying adventure with the Daleks, Victoria had joined the Doctor and Jamie in their travels. Usually she wore the long, flowing dresses of her own age, but they were cumbersome and impractical during the strenuously active adventures in which the Doctor tended to involve her.’
These aren’t quite as economical as Terrance’s writing would eventually become – with his stock Doctor descriptions (‘pleasant open face’, ‘shock of white hair’ etc.). They are however confident and concise. In the following scenes, Terrance is pretty lucky in that the TV story provides pretty much everything you need to know about the relationships between the leads and their gentle teasing of each other.
Going Underground
Another key feature of the story is the location, the London Underground is almost a character in itself in this story. Now I’d been to London by the time I read this book, for the 1974 FA Cup Final (in case you are interested, Bill Shankly’s Liverpool gave Newcastle a bit of a footballing lesson), but many children wouldn’t know anything about it. For many, a trip on the underground would have been incredible exciting – just as it was for me, not an everyday event. Here, we have a useful setup where Jamie doesn’t even know what a train is and even Victoria only comes from a time at the start of the railways and so the whole concept of electric, underground trains can be explained through the dialogue of the TV story and Terrance’s lean prose. Just for good measure, youngsters are given a warning about not touching electrified rails!
Terrance only holds the youngster’s hands so far though. As in many of these books, there is an air that they have been written for adults or at least an older audience than I was, there are phrases used that would stretch very young minds and belong in more adult books. For example, Sergeant Arnold is described as ‘a tough old sweat’ and we have references to concepts and phrases that a child would have to ask their parents about. Like Mac Hulke in his books, we get taught a few life lessons as the characters are sketched in, take a look at this passage which completely nails Harold Chorley and tells us youngsters how to be wary of appearances:
‘He was an impressive-looking man with a stern, handsome face, and a deep, melodious voice. He was also extremely photogenic. On television he gave the impression of a sincere, wise and responsible man. Unfortunately, his looks were deceptive. Chorley was weak, vain and in reality rather stupid. But appearances count for a great deal in public life. Chorley’s voice and his looks, together with a certain natural cunning, had enabled him to establish himself as one of television’s best-known interviewers and reporters. He had one other useful attribute for success— he was extremely lucky.’
We learn to have a healthy skepticism about the press and handsome, overly confident people. In the scene where Chorley interviews Captain Knight we get a contrast between the awkward sincerity of the Army captain talking about his recently killed superior officer and the media soundbites of Chorley. Thanks for the tip Terrance!
Yeti in the London Underground is one of those bizarre ‘Doctor Who’ ideas that works because everyone decides to play it with utter conviction. Terrance knows this and acknowledges the oddness of this up front, in the process concisely telling us about the modus operandi of the Great Intelligence:
‘Incongruous at they were, in the setting of the London Underground, the Doctor felt no great surprise at seeing the Yeti again. Ever since that mysterious Web had held the TARDIS suspended in space, the Doctor had suspected that the Great Intelligence had returned to attack him. Exiled from some other dimension, the Intelligence was a malignant disembodied entity, condemned to hover eternally between the stars, forever craving form and substance. It possessed the power to take over human servants, who became totally subservient to its will, their own personalities utterly swallowed up. Yeti provided the brute strength and terror, human puppets supervised and controlled their actions. That was how the Great Intelligence had operated in Tibet, and the Doctor felt sure the same pattern would be repeated.’
Stanley and Livingstone
If the TV story throws away the first meeting of the Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart (not knowing how important he will become to the show), Terrance comes from the future and he knows it is something that he must mark:
‘Suddenly a light-beam flashed out of the semidarkness and a clipped voice spoke. ‘Stand perfectly still and raise your hands.’ The Doctor obeyed. A tall figure appeared, torch in one hand, revolver in the other, covering the Doctor. It was a man in battledress, the insignia of a Colonel on his shoulders. Even through the semi-darkness the Doctor caught an impression of an immaculate uniform and a neatly trimmed moustache. The soldier peered down from his superior height at the small, scruffy figure of his captive. ‘And who might you be?’ he asked, sounding more amused than alarmed. Feeling at something of a disadvantage the Doctor answered sulkily, ‘I might ask you the same question.‘ I am Colonel Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the precise, military voice. ‘How do you do? I am the Doctor.’ ‘Are you now? Well then, Doctor whoever-you-are, perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’re doing in these tunnels?’
Although neither of them realised it, this was in its way as historic an encounter as that between Stanley and Doctor Livingstone. Promoted to Brigadier, Lethbridge-Stewart would one day lead the British section of an organization called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), set up to fight alien attacks on the planet Earth. The Doctor, changed in appearance and temporarily exiled to Earth, was to become UNIT’s Scientific Adviser. But that was all in the future. For the moment the two friends-to-be glared at each other in mutual suspicion.’
I love the ‘sounding more amused than alarmed’ – which very much describes Nick Courtney’s acting style – that wry smile and amused look that would elevate him above a more stereotypical portrayal of an army officer. As a youngster, I had to ask who Stanley and Livingston were – these books and the TV stories often food for an enquiring young mind and lead to a generation of Who fans with an unlikely collection of arcane knowledge and a strange vocabulary! The word capacious makes an appearance here – as ever as part of a description of the Doctor’s pockets.
Reading the book as an adult and having now seen most of ‘Web of Fear’, if I have a criticism of the novelisation, it is that it doesn’t quite capture the punch that the ‘Battle of Covent Garden’ or it’s aftermath. Episode 4 is desperate stuff, some of the bleakest scenes in the programme and for a moment Lethbridge-Stewart is almost a broken man after losing all of his men in the attack and the Knight too. Terrance cuts out some of the dialogue and the Colonel’s despair is skipped over, maybe he just didn’t think that it fitted the character he spent time developing. For me it works extremely well in the TV version and really raises the stakes seeing the impact that the loss of pretty much all of his men has on the cool and collected young officer.
“I want your mind”
If the events of episode 4 aren’t maybe quite as effective as they could be, the ending is very nicely done and is probably more effective than the TV version. Although again the death of Sergeant Arnold – which is really horrific on screen – is quite simply done in the book ‘The Doctor turned over Arnold’s body which as lying face down. The features had crumpled into a horrifying death mask’. I can imagine that the Ian Marter description of the blackened, burnt corpse would have been a bit more horrific than Terrance manages!
With the Intelligence defeated, Terrance wraps things up. Again tidying up, he adds a little bit of dialogue to dovetail into the creation of UNIT:
“Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart was lecturing Professor Travers. ‘What the world needs is a permanent International Organisation to deal with this sort of thing. A kind of Intelligence Task Force… I think I’ll send the Government a memorandum…”
and I had my first encounter with what would become an old favourite Terrance phrase:
‘The door closed and after a moment a strange wheezing, groaning sound filled the tunnel. Slowly the TARDIS faded away. The Doctor and his two companions were ready to begin their next adventure.’
And so was the younger me. My next book would be ‘Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster’ and my love affair with these stories would continue. I soon found a treasure trove of them in a secondhand book shop – 5 or 10p each, but usually with other kids names written in them – presumably those who had decided they liked ‘Thunderbirds’ more? Over the next 8 years I would rarely be without one of these books – I even remember running home from school eager to read the next exciting chapter of ‘The Auton Invasion’. One of the chapter titles in this book is ‘I want your Mind’, that could have been the Target motto – after this book there was no turning back – I was both a Doctor Who fan and a fan of these novelisations for life.
I’ve just finished listening to David Troughton’s terrific reading of Terrance’s novelisation and very enjoyable it was too. However, that slightly battered, yellowing, original copy of ‘Web of Fear‘ from over 40 years ago, retrieved from it’s resting place in my parents loft and in front of me now, is probably my equivalent of Charles Foster Kane’s Rosebud!
Flashback August 1976: It is a sunny summer day and I’m reading my new book on the back seat of an old Ford Cortina, my sister is asleep and it’s a long way to Norfolk, not once do I look up to ask ‘Are we nearly there yet‘!
A Journal of Impossible Things 