The one thing that does benefit from Strutton’s novelisation is the parable underlying the story. Phil Sandifer suggests there’s no politics in The Web Planet but, certainly in the book, there are definite grounds to think Strutton is running a line about rulers and workers through the tale. The mistake is to look to the Zarbi for your proletariat whereas it is entirely among the different Menoptera that ideas of class seem to get worked out. The Menoptera introduce themselves as ‘Lords of Vortis’ and behave accordingly, certainly in as much as the idea of work is a threat worse than death for them. Being a lord on Vortis is intrinsically tied to the ability to fly, something that bestows a ‘god-like […] confidence’, so that the Zarbi slaves and the Menoptera’s underground descendants, deprived of this ability, no longer hold this status. However, the Menoptera come to realise that being a lord is not a positive thing because flight allowed them to ‘rise above any difficulty, instead of solving it’ – in other words, lords are useless when it comes to actually doing anything. It is the slaves who have been ‘forced to use our brains’ and it is Prapillus, the main slave who we come to know, who is, at the end of the book, recognised as possessing ‘the wisdom of a ruler’. The slave becomes the king of the lords.

There are hints that the Intelligence might be a more elemental force, somewhat equivalent to the Tardis and in some way employing the magnetism of the planet. Aside from the fact that Vortis seems to have just the one ‘magnetic pole’ and that this would rather disappointingly posit that the force at the heart of the Tardis is simply, for example, South to Vortis’s North, the big problem with this model of the villain is that, in Strutton’s world, magnetism is actually gravity, responsible for drawing moons into orbit around the planet. So, the Intelligence is a parasitic super-power carcinogenic bladder that harnesses the force of gravity, the opposite of which powers the Tardis, by sitting on a planet’s magnetic pole and spreading webs across its surface to absorb the surface to feast on the knowledge and skills of its inhabitants, which can only be defeated by giving it cancer with a gun that destroys webs.

The leads’ behaviour isn’t the only thing turned strange in Strutton’s unrestrained hands. Attempts to offer more detail on the exact nature of the villain of the tale very much create more questions than answers. It might be a ‘cosmic spider’ that ‘draws its victims in, and when it feasts, it acquires their knowledge’, which would make sense of all the webs on a planet ostensibly populated by ants and bees and of the fact the Zarbi are so afraid of Vicki’s little spider – in fact, it nicely excuses the fact that Vicki’s spider is never used against the Zarbi since their reaction to it is more a clue to the identity of the villain than some sort of Chekhov’s gun to be used in a later act. The only problem with this comes when we meet the Intelligence and it’s ‘an enormous oval bladder […] composed entirely of light [which swells and shrinks] like a living lung’. This would suggest that the Zarbi have a seriously overdeveloped sense of metaphor, able to fear a thing they’ve never seen before because it functions (when alive, which they never see) in a way that is vaguely analogous to the way their ruler operates. As well as a spider, a bladder and a living lung, it appears the Intelligence is a ‘parasite’, a ‘super-parasite’ and a ‘super power!’ before being explained as ‘organic matter that grows — and spreads its evil around Vortis’ like cancer just as the Web Destructor is described in equally carcinogenic terms: ‘the cells will mutate’. As it happens, discussion of the Web Destructor throws up a whole new strange detail about the Intelligence as it also appears to have a dark side, a quality which generally has more to do with a light source than the object on which it casts light and which, anyway, seems especially baffling with regards to an object that’s been established to emit light. To be fair, Barbara does later make clear that it doesn’t actually have a dark side.

That said, one area in which it keeps faith with the first novelisation is in the slightly off characterisation of the male leads. Ian becomes a knuckle-headed idiot who instinctively dismisses anything alien ‘Fascinates you? […] It just gives me the creeps!’ and can’t help but impotently wriggle and fight on every occasion he encounters Zarbi. The Doctor’s not far behind in his attitude to the Zarbi and even has a moment of coming over all Clarkson: ‘we’ll try maximum power. Switch on boosters’. Suddenly, Whitaker’s portrayal of Ian and the Doctor in Doctor Who looks less like a deliberate choice and more like what all the writers were serving up in their scripts, with only the actors being responsible for rescuing the characters.

It’s also the template for the Target range to come, understanding that the ‘purpose of the book was to spur memories of the popular serial The Web Planet’, ‘resembling home video’ in an era before home video even down to ‘its six chapters corresponding to the six televised episodes’. As such, it introduces the Jackanory narrative style that will persist through many future books. For example, when the hypnotised Barbara walks blindly across the surface of Vortis, we are told ‘Barbara was now at the brink of the pool. It seemed certain that her next pace or so would carry her into its unseen depths’. Whilst clearly not from any specific point of view, the use of ‘now’ and ‘it seemed certain’ make the effect too immediate to suggest an omniscient third-person narrator. This is writing to be read out loud like a bedtime story and occurs strategically throughout, as in the climax: ‘Clearly the Intelligence which controlled them had triumphed […] Now it was acting, and issuing its battle orders’.

This is quite a come-down after Doctor Who, so uninspired that it’s the second consecutive book (in a book series so far of two) to use static electricity and the chapter title ‘Escape to Danger’. Strutton’s approach to exciting prose is sentences like ‘He whipped the treated gold circle from his own throat and thrust it at the Zarbi’s thin neck, between the evil head and the sleek body’ where bland adjectives are simply inserted before each noun as a matter of course. It could almost be The Da Vinci Code.

Of the web: ‘Mm... no wonder it stung. Look – statically charged!’

 

‘Escape to Danger’ is the title for Chapter Three – it’s Chapter Five in Doctor Who

 

‘Doctor Who moved swiftly. He whipped the treated gold circle from his own throat and thrust it at the Zarbi’s thin neck, between the evil head and the sleek body’

 

‘The thing that you have to realize is that in 1965, there was nothing resembling home video. When Doctor Who and the Zarbi came out, six months after airing, it was the closest thing to a personal copy of The Web Planet as could exist. The purpose of the book was to spur memories of the popular serial The Web Planet. Notably, the book was illustrated. The illustrations are nothing special, but they are telling in that they emphasize the points of visual spectacle. So, for instance, the special effects shot of Ian and the Doctor staring up at an impossibly large stone edifice is recreated in the book. Suggesting strongly that this, more than anything, is the point of the exercise’

http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/a-place-where-nothing-is-impossible-the-web-planet/

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‘its six chapters corresponding to the six televised episodes’

David J Howe: The Target Book

 

‘Barbara was now at the brink of the pool. It seemed certain that her next pace or so would carry her into its unseen depths’ - it can’t be both a pool of acid that will dissolve her to nothing and a pool in which she can sink to unseen depths

 

‘Clearly the Intelligence which controlled them had triumphed. It had secured all the information it needed. Now it was acting, and issuing its battle orders’

 

‘“Fascinates you?” Ian snorted. “It just gives me the creeps!”’

 

Ian’s considered view on the Zarbi: ‘With those weirdies?’

 

‘Ian kicked out and his shoe stubbed hard against its metallic body’

 

‘Ian struggled and fought, raving’

 

‘Ian remained free, kicking like a madman’ - It's the 'raving' and the 'madman' that make me think Strutton doesn't necessarily see this as a natural reaction to the Zarbi, more a manic and instinctive aggressive unease that's a trait of Ian's character

 

The Doctor’s opinion on a Zarbi – his tamed Zarbi – is a shock: ‘I find them revolting!’

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‘Whatever it is, I’m, er, sure I can find an answer to it. Chesterton, we’ll try maximum power. Switch on boosters. Let’s see if they’ll lift us clear of... this place’

 

 

 

 

 

‘“It’s a kind... of spider, Vicki — a cosmic spider!” His face was puckered against the glare. “It draws its victims in, and when it feasts, it acquires their knowledge... their skills...”’

 

‘It was an enormous oval bladder which seemed composed entirely of light. It stood vertical and revolved on its own axis. As it did so the great light pulsed and throbbed with it. Its blazing elongated shape swelled and shrank in rhythm with the pulses, breathing, like a living lung’

 

‘You’re a parasite!’

 

‘A super-parasite’

 

‘A super power!’

 

‘That web and the living thing behind it is an organic matter that grows — and spreads its evil around Vortis. This destructor will reverse the process... the cells will mutate, grow inwards — and the being will be destroyed...’

 

‘this must be aimed towards its darker side, where it will be more vulnerable’

 

‘There is.... no dark side...!’

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‘the Tardis is an opposing force to the power in this Headquarters’

 

‘The centre of the web rests on the magnetic pole of this planet’

 

‘It is drawing on — using — the actual power of the Planet Vortis!’

 

‘It would explain, would it not, these new satellites that have appeared on the sky, Doctor? They too could have been pulled here by this... power...!’ Doctor Who was wagging his head. ‘Tch-tch — I should have realized that! Yes — the same force drew and held Tardis here! Well, well...!’

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‘the default assumption on this story - and apparently why Spooner accepted the script - is that it's a parable about communism, with the Zarbi being the deluded working class. Miles and Wood suggest that the story is about the working class, making much of the fact that the Zarbi are portrayed as cattle. The only problem is that, by all appearances, that's exactly what they are. At no point is there any serious suggestion that the Zarbi are anything other than animals who are being controlled by the malevolent Animus. There's no politics to be had with the Zarbi for the simple reason that they have nothing resembling autonomy or will. If they were portrayed as having any will apart from what the Animus forces them to do, that would be one thing, and possibly a parable about communism. As it stands, the story is not some expressly political parable. It's a creepy-ass story about the weirdness of its own special effects’

http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/a-place-where-nothing-is-impossible-the-web-planet/

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Of the Crater of Needles: ‘Hrostar squared his shoulders, showing a glimpse of his beautiful wings. “Work,” he said shortly… “Once there... you may well wish... they had not spared you...”’

 

Hetra, Nemini, etc  are variously referred to as ‘dwarf Menoptera’ and ‘pigmy Menoptera’

 

‘Prapillus held up his hand. “Hilio – surely this disaster has taught you something good.” “Good?” Hilio exploded. Prapillus nodded. “We Menoptera are blessed with the power of flight. It has made us god-like in our confidence – that we can rise above any difficulty, instead of solving it. It has made you blind! But we slaves are not blind. When we had our wings clipped or taken from us, we were forced to use our brains, to think! For that lesson we must thank the Zarbi!”’

 

‘You are more than a man of science, Prapillus. Yours is the wisdom of a ruler’