Big Finish Special Release
The acting is good, the music nicely dovetails into the story without distracting, and the sound effects are outstanding, as usual. However, it’s more of a light tale with some danger involved but not a lot of trauma and not the usual amount of running for Nyssa and the Doctor.
The TARDIS is drawn to Vortis by what turns out to be the lode seed, which sends ships crashing into the planet, drawn by the gravity of the seed. But of course that gets all sorted out by the team, sort of. Nyssa and the Doctor almost get trampled by the Zarbi, a large ant-like species on the planet. Acheron rescues the Doctor while Hedyla, his now wingless daughter, rescues Nyssa. They provide answers to questions but the real answer lies in the jungle area, where Yanesh and the now Speaker of the Hive are synthetically created humans whose purpose it is to populate lifeless planets. So now things are a bit tricky as Yanesh has the lode seed embedded in him and things get a bit tricky with the Zarbi for a bit. But the Doctor figures it all out, naturally.
Menoptra are the flying people and Zarbi the ant-like creatures. But for this story we only see two Menoptra and lots of Zarbi of two different hives. In the original Web Planet story, the 2nd Doctor, Vicki, Ian, and Barbara have a much more perilous time of it fighting the Animus. This story isn’t all that tense and somehow loses a lot of its luster because of that. But it’s still a very good story!
Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton
Writer: Daniel O’Mahoney
Director: Barnaby Edwards
Release: December 2008