The Web of Fear

The Web of Fear is the partly missing fifth serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast in six weekly parts from 3 February to 9 March 1968.

The serial is set on the London Underground railway over forty years after the 1967 serial The Abominable Snowmen. The plot concerns the incorporeal Great Intelligence leading the time travelling Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) into a trap where it can drain the Doctor's mind of his knowledge. The serial marks the last regular appearance of the Yeti, although they would return for cameos in "The Five Doctors" and the Reeltime Pictures spin-off Downtime. The Web of Fear marks the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney as Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and is a precursor to later serials involving the UNIT organisation.

Only five of the six episodes are held in the BBC Archives; one is missing. For decades, all but the first episode were thought to have been destroyed, but on 11 October 2013, the BBC announced episodes two and four to six had been recovered from Nigeria. The third episode was apparently stolen on its way back to the UK, so appeared as a photo-reconstruction for the first DVD release, in 2014. On 16 August 2021, a special edition Blu-ray and DVD release of the serial saw the missing episode reconstructed using 3D motion capture animation, a first for missing episodes.
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