purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
purplecat ([personal profile] purplecat) wrote2017-04-01 11:31 am
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The Web of Fear





This was one of the first novelisations I ever bought (though I already had The Abominable Snowman - IIRC I bought this one because I recognised the yeti on the cover) and it completely terrified me. I seem to recall setting it aside because I couldn't continue it, and eventually got through it by reading backwards from the end in chunks.

It doesn't seem that scary these days.
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sir_guinglain: (Troughton)

[personal profile] sir_guinglain 2017-04-01 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a powerful Achilleos cover, and I'm glad to see it in use again on the present edition. The book has one of Terrance Dicks's more obvious and memorable rewrites, where Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and the Doctor's meeting occurs as an incident in the book when it wasn't seen on screen. The Yeti and the Intelligence are far more crushing in this book than in Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, I found.
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)

[personal profile] purplecat 2017-04-02 11:06 am (UTC)(link)
I'm fairly sure, when I first read it, I was as unaware of Lethbridge-Stewart's significance as viewers at the time were. It was only later I got things like The Making of Doctor Who and knew about UNIT. I must have seen some UNIT stories (I recall bits of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, for instance), but I think I was too young at the time to really appreciate the details of the plot. My first properly coherent memories of Doctor Who stories start around The Invisible Enemy.
liadt: Samurai Sanjuro smiling (DW Pat)

[personal profile] liadt 2017-04-01 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I used to have this one as it was the only way of finding out what happened in the serial, courtesy of Oxfam where second hand Targets live.
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)

[personal profile] purplecat 2017-04-02 10:16 am (UTC)(link)
We had a local "Children's Bookshop" with a whole shelf devoted to targets. I used to spend a lot of time in there (though not so much money since pocket money only goes so far) pondering precisely which book to purchase next. This was definitely one of the earlier purchases.

[identity profile] daniel-saunders.livejournal.com 2017-04-02 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
How old were you when you read it? I don't think I was ever scared by a Target novel (maybe a little by Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons) but I was scared by some TV episodes.
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)

[personal profile] purplecat 2017-04-02 02:10 pm (UTC)(link)
I've been trying to recall when I got it. My copy says it is the 1978 impression, so I must have been at least 7 at the time. This was before I started buying DWM (age 11) and I'm fairly sure I had The Making of Doctor Who "some time" before I started buying DWM but after I'd bought Web of Fear - mind you "some time" in the mind of a child may not be that long.

I would guess age 8 or 9, but its only a guess.

[identity profile] daniel-saunders.livejournal.com 2017-04-02 02:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, so probably about the same age as I was when I was scared by the Terror of the Autons novel and terrified by some clips of that story and Spearhead from Space that I saw on TV.

I think I first saw a glimpse of Doctor Who when I was about two or three years old (this would be season twenty-three or twenty-four - I think possibly the first episode of The Trial of a Time Lord and was so scared that I didn't go anywhere near it again until I was eight!
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)

[personal profile] purplecat 2017-04-02 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
My family were watching Doctor Who when I was very little so I almost saw it before I remember anything - my first memory is from Invasion of the Dinosaurs and my next from Planet of Evil - but I'm told that, age 4, I had strong opinions about the unsuitability of Tom Baker to play the Doctor.

[identity profile] daniel-saunders.livejournal.com 2017-04-02 03:47 pm (UTC)(link)
My parents drifted away during the McCoy years, which explains my lack of exposure to it! My Mum and my Grandma took me to a Doctor Who exhibition when I was about seven (at the Museum of the Moving Image) which whetted my appetite and indicate that this programme was strange and wonderful as much as frightening. When there were some repeats on BBC 2 a year or so later, I was hooked.
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