The Songs of Vortis

deltaandthebannermen · 9 April 2025 13:34

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.

*delete as applicable ↩︎

deltaandthebannermen · 9 April 2025 14:06

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 · 10 April 2025 00:02

You could say that Zarbi Supremo is a giant

deltaandthebannermen · 13 April 2025 20:17

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 · 15 April 2025 15:04

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.

deltaandthebannermen · 16 April 2025 16:19

deltaandthebannermen · 16 April 2025 19:42

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 · 17 April 2025 21:18

The Naked Flame:

deltaandthebannermen · 17 April 2025 21:46

deltaandthebannermen · 17 April 2025 21:47

deltaandthebannermen · 24 April 2025 22:22

Return to the Web Planet

Return to the Web Planet is a charming tale which extrapolates various details from The Web Planet to craft a new, yet familiar story. The 5th Doctor and Nyssa arrive on Vortis when, again, the TARDIS is forced down on the planet. Now, of course, it is a jungle world (as re-established in The Naked Flame) but they are soon at the mercy of the Zarbi again when they get caught in a stampede and have to be rescued by two Menoptra.

The two Menoptra, a father and daugher called Acheron and Hedyla, are living away from the Menoptra cities partly because Hedyla is wingless and, as such, shunned by society and considered ugly. This builds nicely on the wingless Menoptra of The Web Planet who are victims of torture and the wingless Menoptra in The Naked Flame, who is also considered ‘second-class’. The Zarbi are apparently behaving strangely and Nyssa has spotted a human in the jungle.

The mystery builds nicely with Acheron and the Doctor travelling to the Zarbi hive with the Doctor riding a Zarbi called Arbara so he can keep up with the flying Acheron. The idea that Arbara’s name has entered Menoptran culture is a lovely additional detail. At the hive they discover a second human who has become absorbed into the hive mind.

There is a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and eventually the story ends in a mass Zarbi mating! The development of the Zarbi is one of this story’s strengths with mass migrations influenced by gravitational forces, hive minds and the story ending with human-zarbi hybrids. The Menoptra aren’t developed as much with Acheron and Hedyla very much fitting the mould of characters like Prapillus and Hlynia from The Web Planet but they are played very well by Sam Kelly and Julie Buckfield.

The strength of Return to the Web Planet is that it continues that story’s admirable attempt to develop an alien ecosystem and adds details which make a lot of sense - the gravitational forces are centred around a ‘lode seed’; Acheron’s tower where he and his daughter live, is made out of paper - created by the Zarbi in a way similar to how wasps make nests. There is also the inclusion of the poetry prevalent in The Web Planet’s script with talk, in this story, of the overland (space) and spacecraft being referred to as ships and their pilots as sailors. Hedyla also can’t pronounce Nyssa’s name, using a warped version like Arbara and Heron were used in The Web Planet.

And yes, the Zarbi bleeping is still present - but strangely comforting and reassuring (and evocative, helping to further connect this story to its progenitor).

The 5th Doctor and Nyssa are a perfect TARDIS pairing for this story with their close relationship, bound by science and compassion, mirrored beautifully in the similar relationship between Acheron and Hedlya. Davison and Sutton are on good form as is usual. Matthew Noble and Claire Wyatt have less to do as the two stranded humans but work well in their roles.

All in all this is a worthy sequel to the original story and proof, I feel, that there are more stories that could be told about this strange, insectoid world of Vortis.

deltaandthebannermen · 27 April 2025 21:52

A podcast about the Zarbi & The Web Planet - one long time fan, one new to the story:

deltaandthebannermen · 27 April 2025 22:49

Unnatural Selection

Forming the first part of the Prisoners in Time graphic novel, Unnatural Selection is a fun little tale of the 1st Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki visiting the Doctor’s friend, Thomas Huxley - a Victorian scientist and education reform campaigner. They join him in investigating the disappearance of two of his students in the underground tunnels and discover the Zarbi! It’s not long before they also discover the Animus.

The artwork for this part is not great and there are some decidely odd depictions of the 1st Doctor. The Zarbi though look superb and the Animus, although only briefly in the story before being rammed by a steam train driven by Ian, is authentically depicted. I checked at the artist is Simon Fraser who is also responsible for a run of 11th Doctor comics I was not a fan of artwise. It’s a shame because the Zarbi and Animus look great whilst the various human characters are borderline grotesque at times.

The explanation for how the Animus and Zarbi got to the Victorian London Underground is left hanging as it is revealed later in the graphic novel but as a ‘mini-adventure’ this is pretty good and seeing the Zarbi - and the Animus - in the London Underground is an arresting image.

deltaandthebannermen · 28 April 2025 10:59

Flying ant day has come early!

deltaandthebannermen · 28 April 2025 14:18

On the Web Planet

You have to love TV Comic Doctor Who. It’s so very close to the real thing and yet so far at the same time.

The Doctor, John and Gillian arrive on Vortis and find the Menoptra at the mercy of the Zarbi again. It turns out some other aliens want some rare mineral from Vortis and have enslaved some Menoptra, mind-controlling the Zarbi to aid them. They’ve also, for some reason, created flying Zarbi suits with laser weapons.

There are some great images in this - the Doctor being whacked by a rock and flown away by Zarbi; the alien invaders strapping him to a table with a laser heading towards him slowly like James Bond at the mercy of the villain; the alien invader crawling out of a Zarbi suit.

It’s interesting that this story also has Zarbi you can climb into and control like in Lair of the Zarbi Supremo. Weirdly, this story can’t seem to decide if the Zarbi are mindless drones or an evil force to be combatted. (Listening to the novelisation and it’s interesting to note that Strutton hints at more autonomy for the Zarbi, even with the Animus, so maybe this was something being picked up on by these writers). It smacks of the same desire that came with the Quarks extra-curricular appearances. Both they and the Zarbi get presented as evil in their own right rather than being slave to some sort of master. I guess it was all part of trying to make them the next Daleks.

The Menoptra are pretty useless in this story but at least they’re not as openly hostile as they are in the annual story The Lost Ones. They know something is wrong with a nearby mountain where Menoptra have disappeared but haven’t bothered to investigate and are surprised to find a whacking great abandoned spaceship atop it, covered in dust. They also seem never to have discovered the alien’s secret base - which is huge!

The alien invaders - the Skirrons - are typically two-dimensional baddies intent on becomng ‘masters of the universe’. We have to credit the TV show’s writers, directors and producers with striving to create a show which rose above this straightforward ‘aliens are evil’ trope and actually bothered to give us alien races who were ‘people’ like the Menoptra or the Sensorites. Even the ‘evil’ Daleks have more nuance. There’s a really obvious attitude in terms of ‘writing for children’ that has never affected the main show but really is to the detriment of these comic strips.

The violent ending is also indicative of how these writer’s didn’t seem to understand Doctor Who. The Doctor, in a flying Zarbi suit, turns around and blasts the alien base to kingdom come. It just isn’t right and, as fun as these comic strips are, they just don’t understand the show rather taking the trappings and placing them over generic sci-fi stories. This still gets a 3/5 from me though just because I find the images so entertaining and overall this is one of the strip’s stronger entries, especially in being a sequel to a TV story.