Like many fans who begin with the revival of Doctor Who, I begin watching Classic Doctor Who almost as an academic exercise. There is a certain cachet in watching the classic episodes, especially since some of them are frankly a bit difficult to get into. And yet, when I started watching, I found that despite the lesser production values, the episodes had the same charm and drama that made the show valuable for me.
And then I got to "The Web Planet", and I broke my stride. It took me several weeks to work through this story.
It is not a terrible story. It is the same story that has been told in Doctor Who many a time: The Doctor and companions find themselves amongst feuding aliens whose conflict is not exactly what it seems. But the slow-paced story, with Doctor and companions wandering off and being captured and recaptured felt forced and hokey and pointless. The costumes were also silly, although I am perhaps being unfair to say this almost fifty years later. The two main aliens are people wearing ant suits, and people dressed up like butterflies. The butterfly-people show their alienness by talking in a singsong voice while waving their hands.
At the end, The Doctor throws a grenade made of unobtanium at the enemy and everyone ends up happy.
It isn't a terrible story, and that this was my particular stumbling block in watching classic Doctor Who may have had more to do with a natural loss of interest after seeing similar stories, rather than anything intrinsic to it. However, things would soon pick up, in The Crusade and The Museum Planet.