61. The Web Planet, Part IV: Crater of Needles

Oh, I guess the beetle thing is called a Larvae Gun, and they have their own Tardis Wiki page. But I digress.

This is another slow episode with almost no music and lots of dead air. I decided to check what other episodes Richard Martin directed and was surprised to realize after the fact that he directed The Dalek Invasion of Earth and a few episodes of The Daleks. I don’t remember any of those being this tedious. I'm not looking forward to The Chase. (It's probably better going into these stories cold, with little advance knowledge.) Also, did he use lots of Vaseline on the camera lens in this episode?

Finally, um, those underground creatures’ costumes were … something. Tardis Wiki says they’re called Optera, but I don’t think they had been identified by name by the end of Episode 4. On that note, another issue with this story is that things either get identified too early before we even know what they’re talking about (like the Carsinome) or too late (like the Larvae Gun or the Optera).

GRADE: C


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