Settings: Vortis, the Web Planet

The second-season serial The Web Planet is famous – or perhaps, infamous – for featuring no humanoid characters at all beyond the regular cast. The result, especially given the budget and the special effects technology of the day is, to put it mildly, really quite strange. An overly long, slow, plot doesn’t help matters and while some fans praise it for its sheer audacity, most are negative, and it’s not unusual to see it listed as the weakest of all the Hartnell stories. Yet it is at least memorable and, if we can fix the pacing, a low special effects budget isn’t a problem in a tabletop game.

Where & When

The story is set on the planet Vortis, which is specifically stated to be in a galaxy beyond our own. In the final episode, the Animus talks about humans as if it knows what they are, and where they come from, which implies a far future setting when humanity has at least reached beyond our own galaxy. However, there is no way to be more precise than this, and it’s also possible from the context that it has only recently gained this information from its prisoners (it’s trying to read their minds at the time) so we can’t even be confident of that much. Not that it’s likely to matter in most games.

Settings: First Century Rome

We are overdue for a historical by this point, so it’s no surprise that the fourth story of the second season fits that description. Unlike the previous historicals, however, this one is a comedy and fan reactions tend to depend on whether or not they find that it works as such. In game terms, however, there is enough present that it’s possible to play it mostly straight and try to let the humour follow naturally, rather than forcing it.

Where & When

As with The Reign of Terror, the story includes a real-world historical event, making it possible to date it precisely. The bulk of the story runs from 10th to the 18th July in the year AD 64, although the characters have been in Italy for “four or five weeks” when it starts, and there is a gap of a few days at the end before they leave. Most of the action takes place in Rome, although there are some scenes set in other nearby parts of Italy.