I get it now. I completely understand why this is considered one of the worst, most boring Classic serials. This is the first time in my life where I've had to look up a Wikipedia summary of a story to understand what was going on, and it's the first time I've ever actively considered dropping a Doctor Who story in the middle.

I really wanted to like this serial. The first episode is actually quite good; the atmosphere is fantastic, the alien costumes and sets are all phenomenal in my opinion, and in general it seems like a great set-up for an intriguing story. In fact, I had fully expected to finish this serial saying it's no more slow than many 60's stories.

Somewhere around the third episode it starts to fall off for me. It's probably equally due to my subtitles not working as it is for the story itself, but I found myself bored and confused. I didn't try to binge it and instead spaced out the episodes as is recommended, but honestly I feel that only made it worse for my comprehension.

It reminds me a bit of The Daleks, in that it's a new concept with interesting aliens bogged down by spending far too much time on side quests while trying to make us care about identical lookingside characters, except the Daleks went on to become reoccurring villains while The Web Planet fell into obscurity. I think the Web Planet is more enjoyable for me purely on the lack of oversaturation.

The sound design for the Zarbi was interesting but quickly became grating. The way the Menoptra spoke was annoying, even more so because I struggled to understand them without subtitles. I like their ballet-like movements and poses, though.

The concept of the low-oxygen atmosphere bothers me. It's interesting on paper but is barely explored beyond the first episode, and directly clashes with the concept of giant, intelligent insects. Insects don't have a respiratory system like we do; they don't have lungs and they breathe through their skin. The oxygen flows through their body using the movement of their muscles rather than a central heart pump. To grow that big they would require extremely high levels of oxygen in the air. Yes, it's nitpicky - they're aliens! They probably don't have the same internal systems as Earth insects! But it's still enough to stretch my suspension of disbelief and take me out of the story a little, especially seeing how much thought was put into the alien insects with the costumes, movements and even death scenes.