The Songs of Vortis

[deltaandthebannermen]

Bet you all thought (hoped/prayed^[1]) that I had forgotten all about this thread.

Here are some more images from the novelisation.

Listening to the audiobook read by William Russell is proving to be an interesting and pleasant experience. A lot more is made by Strutton of the Zarbi and they are written as more autonomous than on screen. Various scenes are expanded on such as the TARDIS first arriving on Vortis, Ian and the Doctor being captured by the Zarbi and Barbara first encountering the Menoptera.

It’s also interesting that Strutton makes all of the Menoptera male, most strikingly being Vrestin. I think that’s a shame because one of the strengths of the TV story is the female presence in Vrestin and later the voice of the Animus (which is also resolutely male in this - not just because Russell is narrating but the choice he makes in terms of it’s tone and timbre is most definitely male).

A lot more is also made in the first two parts of the Doctor working out that they are on the planet Vortis and putting together all the clues. There is also more explanation as to what the Venom Grubs are. They feed on venom and used to be pests to the Zarbi.

---

1. *delete as applicable ↩︎

[deltaandthebannermen]

The Lair of the Zarbi Supremo

The very first Dr Who Annual story is evidence of how the Zarbi were being pushed as the ‘next big thing’ in Doctor Who. Not only do they feature in the first story, but they also adorn the cover (along with their Web Planet bedfellows, the Menoptera) and feature in the board game later in the Annual. They also appeared in the Chad Valley Give-a-Show Projector toy and in the pages of TV Comic.

The Lair of the Zarbi Supremo finds the Doctor travelling alone and arriving on Vortis after the events of The Web Planet. He immediately recognises the planet and sets about exploring to track down the source of an emergency mayday signal he has received. He soon discovers a crashed Earth spaceship which contains an unconscious spaceman and his son, Gordon. Gordon teams up with the Doctor to track down the rest of the crew who have gone missing. The Doctor and Gordon then discover robotic Zarbi suits inside which are dead Menoptera! Using these they infiltrate one of the gigantic termite mounds and discover they are in the Lair of the Zarbi Supremo where both the Earth crew and other Menoptera are being held captive!

It’s quite the rollercoaster ride and both manages to feel in keeping with the TV story but also not. There is a real attempt to develop the Zarbi, particularly when the Doctor enters their base, with descriptions of their society’s castes such as soldiers and workers and, bizarrely, a gigantic Zarbi Queen.

At the centre of the lair is the Zarbi Supremo - a 20 foot high Zarbi who it seems can communicate telepathically. It plans apparently to invade planet Earth. Contrary to the Doctor’s protestations that it is nonsense, it seems Vortis has been piloted somehow, to the orbit of Jupiter.

The robotic Zarbi, big enough for the Doctor and Gordon (and Menoptera) to get inside are a weird idea - but also something which appears in the TV Comic story set on Vortis. It’s obviously something which was a popular idea.

The Menoptera aren’t very developed beyond their TV appearance although there is the suggestion that the elders of their race are wingless (which is a bit odd as in the TV story, losing their wings was a sign of slavery and torture).

The end of the story is really odd. The rescued Earth men want to take the Zarbi’s technological advancements for Earth’s benefit and try to shoot the Doctor and the Menoptera. The Menoptera fly the Doctor to safety and promise they’ll be flying Vortis away from Earth. Poor old Gordon is more or less forgotten about (although he as been reunited with the crew even if they have turned out to be a bunch of ungrateful arseholes).

There is a reading of this by William Russel on both the DVD and Bluray and I may well give it a listen at some point. Overall, though, it’s not a bad story and I gave it 3/5.

[NyssaTheNerd]

You could say that Zarbi Supremo is a giant

[deltaandthebannermen]

On the Planet Vortis & The Zarbi are Destroyed

These slide shows from the Give-A-Show Projector toy form the last two stories from the collection and are a re-telling of The Web Planet. The first part, On the Planet Vortis actually differs from the TV story the most with the TARDIS materialising in the middle of a Zarbi vs Menoptera battle and saving the Menoptera. The second part follows the final part of the story a little more closely with Barbara using a isoptope to destroy the Animus.

One major difference is that Vicki is completely erased from the story (all of these stories feature only the Doctor, Ian and Barbara). The various aliens are actually depicted quite accurately but, due to the nature of the toy’s slideshow mechanism, there are a lot of yellows and reds and other bright colours. In fact, this could almost be considered to be the first example of an ‘in colour’ story. The Web Planet in Colour!

[deltaandthebannermen]

The Lost Ones

After The Lair of Zarbi Supremo and The Sons of the Crab, I didn’t think the annual stories could get any odder. But along comes The Lost Ones.

The Doctor arrives on Vortis and it is made evident he has never been here before. This is his first visit (in The Lair of Zarbi Supremo he is heading for Vortis and knows the planet by name even if he is unfamiliar with the inhabitants). The Doctor of the previous Vortis-set story steers closer to the TV characterisation of curiosity and an openness to alien species. The Doctor of this story is a xenophobic, insect-hating bigot! In Lair, he reacts with calmness and curiosity when encountering Zarbi and Menoptera. Here he only meets the Menoptera and they literally make his skin crawl. A huge amount of the word count is given over to describing their insect-related appearance and how horrid the Doctor considers this. The Menoptera are also written as cold, unwelcoming aliens intent on dissecting the Doctor to find out why he is different to them. This isn’t how aliens were ever presented in Doctor Who, let alone the Menoptera. When stories in those first two seasons went out of there way to depict alien races as people whether the Sensorites, the Menoptera or the Aridians. These are not the Menoptera of the The Web Planet and one wonders if the writer had even seen the story before writing this. It feels as if these characters could be any random alien race especially as the story then takes a massive left turn when the Doctor is rescued from the Menoptera by an 8 foot tall white-faced, red-haired giant and taken back to a gleaming spaceship buried under the planet.

And this is when it gets really weird.

The giant is a member of a crew from a spaceship which set off from Atlantis. Yes, this giants are Atlanteans on a mission to colonise the galaxy. They have already left colonists on various planets but crash-landed on Vortis and having lost their Master Scientist to illness are in desperate need of the Doctor’s help.

In trying to determine whether he is human or a weird insect mutation, they do something which I’m not sure is a visual image of the 1st Doctor I ever needed - they strip him naked.

After spending six days trying to help them repair their ship, the Doctor then changes his mind and makes a bolt for it, finding himself in the middle of a pitched battle between Menoptera and Zarbi! The pursuing Atlanteans are killed by the Zarbi and the Doctor escapes.

The entire Atlantean element seems like an entirely separate story squeezed into a Web Planet prequel and the two parts just don’t gel. It’s not helped by the bizarre characterisation of the Doctor. In a way it follows on from the version of the Doctor from The Sons of the Crab - where he is also treated like a laboratory specimen to be poked, prodded and experimented upon - but here he is written even more extremely than in the previous story.

Oddly, beyond the off-kilter characterisation of the Menoptera, the aspects of Menoptera/Zarbi relations actually tie in pretty well with the TV story. The Zarbi are/were the Menoptera’s ‘cattle’ but fell under the control of a malign influence (here it is Zarbi queens rather than the Animus). The battle scene at the end is reminiscent of the battle scenes in The Web Planet.

Sadly, this isn’t a very enjoyable story, mainly because the Doctor is so horrid throughout the entire thing. It’s as if the writer saw one scene of the Doctor being an irritable jerk in An Unearthly Child and nothing beyond it.

Hard to recommend.

Review of The Lost Ones by deltaandthebannermen

[deltaandthebannermen]

scifitoys.co.uk (@scifitoys.co.uk)

[deltaandthebannermen]

The Monsters

The Zarbi and the Menoptra chapter of this book purports to tell the history of Vortis. The most interesting part is the bit which explores Menoptran biology and their four life cycle stages. The part which attempt to retell The Web Planet as if it has been derived by a space professor from inscriptions is a little less engaging. I do like how the writer, Adrian Riglesford, extrapolates Barbara and Ian being mispronounces as Arbara and Heron by the Menoptra into also slightly garbling the other two travellers as Dokotor and Ivicki. Atrids also gets a mention.

There are some lovely illustrations accompanying this chapter (as there are throughout the book) although the one of the monument to the TARDIS travellers weirdly obcures the face of Vicki making it seem incomplete.

[deltaandthebannermen]

The Naked Flame:

Review of The Naked Flame by deltaandthebannermen

[deltaandthebannermen]

Classic Doctor Who Music - The Web Planet (Suite)

[deltaandthebannermen]

Doctor Who: 'The Web Planet' - Teaser Trailer