Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Authors
Also in the Series
Title Page
The Changing Face of Doctor Who
1. Return of Evil
2. The Web in Space
3. The Monster in the Tunnels
4. Danger for the Doctor
5. Battle with the Yeti
6. The Terror of the Web
7. Escape from the Web
8. Return of the Yeti
9. Kidnapped!
10. Danger Above Ground
11. ‘I want your mind’
12. The Fall of the Fortress
13. Captives of the Intelligence
14. The Final Duel
Copyright
DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS
David Whitaker
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CRUSADERS
David Whitaker
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CYBERMEN
Gerry Davis
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE AUTON INVASION
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE MONSTERS
Malcolm Hulke
DOCTOR WHO AND THE TENTH PLANET
Gerry Davis
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ICE WARRIORS
Brian Hayles
DOCTOR WHO – THE THREE DOCTORS
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ARK IN SPACE
Ian Marter
DOCTOR WHO AND THE LOCH NESS MONSTER
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ZARBI
Bill Strutton
DOCTOR WHO AND THE WEB OF FEAR
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE DINOSAUR INVASION
Malcolm Hulke
DOCTOR WHO AND THE GENESIS OF THE DALEKS
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO – THE VISITATION
Eric Saward
DOCTOR WHO – VENGEANCE ON VAROS
Philip Martin
DOCTOR WHO – BATTLEFIELD
Marc Platt
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473530324
Version 1.0
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BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Novelisation copyright © Terrance Dicks 1976
Original script © Meryvn Hasiman and Henry Lincoln 1968
The Changing Face of Doctor Who and About the Authors © Justin Richards 2015
Terrance Dicks has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
BBC, DOCTOR WHO and TARDIS (word marks, logos and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
First published by BBC Books in 2016
First published in 1976 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co. Ltd.
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785940361
Editorial Director: Albert DePetrillo
Editorial Manager: Grace Paul
Series Consultant: Justin Richards
Cover design: Lee Binding © Woodlands Books Ltd, 2016
Cover illustration: Chris Achilleos
Production: Alex Goddard
The Second Doctor
This Doctor Who novel features the second incarnation of the Doctor. After his first encounter with the Cybermen, the Doctor changed form. His old body was apparently worn out, and so he replaced it with a new, younger one. The scratchy, arrogant old man that had been the First Doctor was replaced with a younger and apparently far softer character. The First Doctor’s cold, analytical abilities give way to apparent bluster and a tendency to panic under pressure.
But with the Second Doctor more than any other, first impressions are misleading. The Doctor’s apparent bluster and ineptitude masks a deeper, darker nature. But there are moments too when the Second Doctor’s humanity also shines through. There is ultimately no doubt that his raison d’etre is to fight the evil in the universe.
Jamie
James Robert Macrimmon is the son of Donald Macrimmon, and a piper like his father and his father’s father. Coming from 1746, Jamie is simple and straightforward, but he is also intelligent and blessed with a good deal of common sense. Almost everything is new to him, and while he struggles to understand he also enjoys the experience. Jamie is also extremely brave, never one to shirk a fight or run away.
Ultimately, Jamie sees the Doctor as a friend as well as a mentor. While he relishes the chance to travel and learn and have adventures, he also believes that the Doctor really does need his help.
Victoria
Victoria is a reluctant adventurer. She travels with the Doctor through necessity rather than choice after her father was exterminated by the Daleks, leaving her stranded on Skaro. Until she was kidnapped by the Daleks, Victoria led a sheltered and unsophisticated life. But she is clever and intelligent.
Despite the fact that both tease her at every opportunity, Victoria cares deeply for the Doctor and Jamie. But while she enjoys her time in their company, she still misses her father. She remains forever an unwilling adventurer.
The huge, furry monster reared up, as if to strike. Well over seven feet tall, its immensely broad body made it seem squat and lumpy. It had the huge hands of a gorilla, the savage yellow fangs and fierce red eyes of a grizzly bear.
There was no fear in the face of the white-bearded old man who stood looking up at it, just a yearning curiosity. He knew the monster wouldn’t move. It had stood like this, in the private museum, for over forty years, ever since he had brought it back from Tibet. He reached up and opened a flap in the monster’s chest. Beneath was an empty space, just large enough to hold a small sphere.
The door opened and two people walked in. One was a tall, elegant white-haired old man, the other an attractive young girl. The man pointed to the brooding figure at the end of the hall. ‘There he is, Miss Travers. Now, please, you take him away!’ Although his voice was cultured, it held traces of a middle-European accent.
Anne Travers was used to apologising for the eccentricities of her father. ‘I’ll do my best, Mr Julius.’ She smiled and crossed over to her father. ‘Hello, Father.’
Professor Travers looked round in mild surprise. ‘Hello, Anne. Thought you were in America.’
Anne Travers sighed. ‘I was in America—until you cabled saying you were in trouble. You were supposed to meet me at the airport.’
‘I was? Thought I’d better come here and have another go at Julius—the silly old fool won’t listen to me.’
The museum owner marched angrily over to them. ‘Me, a fool? You would like me to be a fool, Professor Travers—fool enough to give you back my Yeti!’
‘You must give it back, at least for a time. Don’t you understand, the thing is dangerous.’
Julius flung out one hand in a dramatic gesture. ‘Forty years it stands in my museum! Now he tells me it is dangerous, but Julius is not so easily tricked.’
The two old men glared angrily at each other. Travers shabby and unkempt with tangled hair and bushy beard, Julius tall and elegant in his beautifully cut suit. Anne sighed again. She glanced at the placard at the feet of the rearing monster. It read, ‘Life-size model of the Yeti, commonly known as the Abominable Snowman. Brought back from Tibet by Mr Edward Travers after his expedition of 1935.’
It had all happened long before Anne Travers was born. Edward Travers, with his friend and colleague Angus Mackay, had gone in search of the Abominable Snowman, the legendary man—beast rumoured to haunt the snowy passes of Tibet. Months later Travers had returned, alone. Mackay had been killed on the expedition. Travers had told a wild story of faked Abominable Snowmen, robot servants of some alien Intelligence that planned to take over the world. The plot had been foiled by a mysterious being known only as ‘the Doctor’. Travers had brought back a strange collection of objects in support of his story. They included the massive creature that now stood in the museum, and a small silver sphere that, he claimed, had once controlled the creature and given it life.
Travers had been unable to prove his claims. The sphere remained silent, the Yeti refused to stir, and everyone assumed Travers, unbalanced by his sufferings in Tibet, was attempting an elaborate fraud.
Although no one believed the story, it had created a considerable stir. As a result, Emil Julius, a wealthy and eccentric collector with his own private museum, had offered to buy the Yeti for a handsome sum. Dejected, discredited, almost penniless, Travers accepted the offer—an action he was to regret for the rest of his life.
Although he sold the Yeti itself, Travers kept the silver sphere which controlled it, together with a number of other Yeti relics. Determined to justify himself to the world, he had begun to examine the sphere with the aim of discovering its secrets. With incredible determination he had embarked upon the study of the still-new science of electronics. In forty years Travers had turned himself from a discredited anthropologist into a world-famous scientist. His discoveries and inventions had made him rich and respected. But all this time he never lost sight of his one central aim, to reanimate the control sphere and bring the Yeti back to life. Anne, now a scientist herself, had grown up with stories of her father’s adventures in Tibet. The strange Doctor and his two companions were like figures in a fairy-tale to her. She knew Travers had made repeated attempts to buy back the Yeti, but Emil Julius was as obstinate as Travers himself. The more determined Travers became to get the Yeti back, the more determined was Julius to keep it, convinced he was the owner of something valuable and unique. Looking at the two angry old men, Anne saw their quarrel had lost none of its bitterness, though both were now into their seventies.
Taking her father to one side she said quietly, ‘You know Mr Julius won’t sell the Yeti back. Why all this urgency?’
Travers lowered his voice. ‘I’ve done it, Anne. At last I’ve reactivated the control sphere. It began signalling again!’
‘That’s wonderful news, Father,’ said Anne soothingly.
‘It would be—except for one thing. The control sphere’s disappeared.’ He turned angrily back towards Julius. ‘Don’t you see, it will try to return to the Yeti—and if I’m not there when it does… Oh, make him understand, Anne.’
Julius interrupted, ‘I understand well enough. You try to scare me, to get your Yeti back. Well, it is priceless, the only one in the world, and it is mine!’
Anne took her father’s arm. ‘We’d better go. Maybe you put the sphere away somewhere and forgot where—it’s happened before.’
‘I tell you I’ve looked…’
‘Then we’ll go back and look again. You know I can always find things for you.’ Gently she led him away.
Julius escorted them to the front door, closed it behind them. He stood for a moment, shaking with rage. ‘No one destroys Emil Julius’s collection—no one.’ Still grumbling childishly to himself he began to lock and bar the door.
In the empty hall, the Yeti stood motionless, surrounded by devil-masks, mummies, dinosaur bones and all the other oddities of Julius’s collection. Then a faint signal, a kind of electronic bleeping, disturbed the silence. It seemed to come from outside the window. Suddenly the glass shattered, broken by the impact of a silver sphere. It was as if the sphere had been hurled through the window from the street outside. But the silver missile did not drop to the ground. It hovered in mid-air. Then it floated slowly towards the Yeti and disappeared into the still open hollow in the creature’s chest. Immediately the flap closed over it.
Alarmed by the noise of smashing glass, Julius ran into the room. He stopped, seeing the shattered window, the glass on the floor. Was the old fool Travers so insane he was now throwing bricks through the window? Julius looked out. The street below was silent and deserted.
Julius decided to telephone the police. On his way out of the hall, he stopped for another look at his beloved Yeti. He gazed proudly up at it. The Yeti’s eyes opened and glared redly into his own.
Appalled Julius took a pace back. The Yeti stepped off its stand, following him. Its features blurred and shimmered before his horrified eyes, becoming even more fierce and wild than before. With a sudden, shattering roar the Yeti smashed down its arm in a savage blow…
The mysterious and brutal murder of Emil Julius, together with the disappearance of the pride of his collection, caused a tremendous sensation. Because of their past association, Professor Travers came briefly under suspicion but the alibi provided by his daughter, plus Travers’s horrified insistance that the Yeti must be found, convinced the Police of his innocence. The murder was never solved, the Yeti never found.
In the weeks that followed, the story was driven from the headlines by an even stranger mystery. Patches of mist began to appear in Central London. Unlike any natural mist, they refused to disperse. More and more patches appeared, linking up one with another. Most terrifying of all, people who spent any time in the mist patches were found dead, their faces covered with cobwebs. Central London was cordoned off. It was still possible to travel by Underground Railway—until a strange cobweb-like substance started to spread below ground, completely blocking the tunnels. It was like a glowing mist made solid, and anyone who entered it was never seen again. The combination of mist above and cobweb below became known as the Web. Slowly it spread.
Then the Yeti reappeared, not just one but hordes of them, roaming through the misty streets and the cobwebbed tunnels, mercilessly killing anyone in their path. Central London was gripped tight in a Web of Fear…
Inside the control room of that mysterious Space/Time craft known as the TARDIS, a furious argument was raging between two very different figures. One was a small man with untidy black hair and a gentle, humorous face. He wore baggy check trousers and a disreputable old frock-coat. Towering over him was a brawny youth in Highland dress, complete with kilt. The smaller man was that well-known traveller in Space and Time called the Doctor. The other, whose name was Jamie, had been the Doctor’s travelling companion since the Doctor’s visit to Earth at the time of the Jacobite rebellion.
Usually the two were the best of friends. However, occasional disputes were inevitable, and this one concerned Jamie’s duties as the Doctor’s assistant. Largely to keep him occupied, the Doctor had given Jamie one or two simple tasks concerned with the running of the TARDIS. The fact that Jamie was completely lacking in technological knowledge made him all the more determined to carry them out correctly.
‘Now see here, Doctor,’ he said stubbornly. ‘You told me to watch that control panel and warn you if yon light flashed. Well, it flashed!’ Jamie folded his arms defiantly.
The Doctor tried to be patient. ‘If that light had flashed it would mean we’ve landed. And we’re still travelling.’
‘Aye, well that’s as mebbe. But I know what I saw—and yon light flashed!’
‘Oh really, Jamie…’
They were interrupted by the opening of the door from the TARDIS’s living quarters. A small, dark girl entered the control room. Her name was Victoria, and she was the Doctor’s other travelling companion. Rescued from nineteenth-century London during a terrifying adventure with the Daleks, Victoria had joined the Doctor and Jamie in their travels. Usually she wore the long, flowing dresses of her own age, but they were cumbersome and impractical during the strenuously active adventures in which the Doctor tended to involve her. Rummaging through the TARDIS clothing lockers, Victoria had found a jacket and slacks small enough to fit her. Now, greatly daring, she was wearing the outfit for the first time. Hopefully she looked at Jamie. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Like what?’
‘I found these clothes in the locker. I think they suit me, don’t you?’
The Doctor smiled. ‘Very much. Don’t you agree, Jamie?’
Jamie glanced briefly at Victoria and said, ‘Aye, verra nice. Now then, Doctor, I’m no daft—I saw what I saw.’
Victoria was staring over their shoulder, ‘Why’s that light flashing?’ she asked innocently.
The Doctor spun round, but the flashing had stopped. ‘Are you two having a game with me?’
Jamie grinned at Victoria. ‘You see? He willna’ listen!’
The Doctor was peering at the control console. The movement of the central column was slowing down. ‘Well, bless my soul,’ he said. ‘We appear to be landing!’ His hands flickered over the switches as he checked the automatic landing procedure. ‘All seems to be going smoothly. Let’s find out where we are.’
The Doctor switched on the scanner. He saw only the blackness of space, broken by a scattering of stars.
Victoria could tell he was worried. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Something very strange. We’re out of the Space/Time Vortex—but we’re suspended in Space!’ The Doctor began running a series of rapid checks muttering to himself, ‘Gravity off, power on, control on, flight on…’
Jamie watched him gloomily. ‘Ye dinna make sense. We’ve landed, and yet we havna’ landed?’
Victoria peered at the scanner. A curious, cobwebby growth was creeping over the screen, a kind of solid mist. ‘Look, Doctor. It’s like a spider’s web.’
The Doctor looked. ‘Fascinating. That’s what’s holding us here—but why?’ He gazed at the scanner, lost in thought.
Angrily Jamie burst out, ‘Well, dinna’ just stand there, Doctor. Do something!’
The Doctor seemed to come to. He beamed at Jamie. ‘Practical as ever, my boy. And quite right too.’ The Doctor opened a locker and began rummaging inside. He produced a small red box, blew a layer of dust off it, then fished out an electronic tool kit. Fingers working rapidly, the Doctor began wiring the box into the console, while Victoria and Jamie looked on.
‘What’s the box for, Doctor?’ asked Victoria.
The Doctor went on working. ‘It’s a power-booster.’ He pointed to a button in the lid. ‘When I press this, the total power of the TARDIS will be channelled into one massive surge. It should be enough to wrench us free from whatever’s holding us, and set us down somewhere else. That is if everything goes to plan.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’