The Underwater Menace - The First Review

The Fish People... Yeh...

Starring Patrick Troughton, Michael Craze, Anneke Wills & Frazer Hines, with Joseph Furst, Colin Jeavons & Noel Johnson.

Written by Geoffrey Orme.

Directed by Julia Smith.

The TARDIS lands in the lost city of Atlantis, where the crazed Professor Zaroff has convinced the Atlanteans that he can raise their city from beneath the sea. But the Doctor discovers the terrible truth behind Zaroff's plan - he intends to destroy the entire planet. With the doomsday clock ticking, the Doctor and his companions must battle to prevent the apocalypse...

Doctor Who was in a precarious position in early 1967. With the replacement of William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, and the gradual de-emphasis of the Daleks as the show's main villains, the show was facing what could be described as a huge sea-change, brought about by relatively new producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davies' new approach to the show. A new companion, in the form of Jamie McCrimmon, was hurriedly being introduced, while plans were already afoot to write out current companions Ben Jackson and Polly Wright, who were now seen as not working. And then, in the middle of this delicate situation, a full-blown script crisis emerged when this story was first pushed back, then dropped on the grounds of cost, then reinstated when its replacement fell through. This pushed back production on this story, leading to only a week between an episode's recording and transmission. Doctor Who was on the brink, fighting for its survival, and nowhere is the show more clearly in crisis on screen than with "The Underwater Menace". This is a script that clearly needed a lot more work than it received, with a baffling plot, B-movie level villains, a complete dearth of character development, and an incredibly poor pace. And that's before we even get the rushed production and cardboard acting. "The Underwater Menace" is, quite frankly, a complete joke, only one its hard to laugh at.

*Record scratch*
*Freeze frame*
Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I
ended up in this situation.

It's impossible to actually talk about the plot without laughing, because it is simply laughable. There's very little thought that's been put into this story, and it shows, because it moves from ridiculous set piece to ridiculous set piece with no connection between them at all. The four episodes feel like they could belong to different stories, quite frankly, as there is no consistency between them at all. It feels like the script is being made up as writer Geoffrey Orme goes along, as there's no clear structure to it. Character motivations chop and change as quickly as the script needs them to, and the whole thing is totally devoid of any kind of logic or flow. And that's before we even get to the meat of the story, which, despite its outlandish premise, takes itself so blisteringly seriously, to the point where the viewer ends up thinking they must have cracked their head open and slipped into a world where the silly is serious. Honestly, this story is a broad farce, but the script (and the production) treat it like this is high drama. What this story needs is self-awareness of its ludicrous nature, but since its being seen as really dramatic, that self-awareness is completely absent. Therefore, it feel it's fair to say that this story makes absolutely no sense and the plot feels ill-thought out. Why would Zaroff want to destroy the world? Because he's mad, apparently. This is somehow seen as justification for Zaroff's actions, and, since the story is playing it straight, this just means that this is lazy storytelling. Pure and simple. Nothing happens unless Orme just randomly decides he wants to do it. The Doctor and companions are to be sacrificed, until Orme gets bored with that, and decides to do something else. Polly is destined to be turned into a Fish Person, until she isn't. The High Priest is dead, until the story needs him alive to avoid a massive genocide. It's clear that this story really hasn't been edited at all, probably due to the rush to get it into production. It feels unedited: first draft dialogue sits along clunky action and poor structure. I get that things were bad, but surely someone could see that this was a train wreck of a story heading down the tracks? I just find the fact that this was made amazing, as I can't imagine any world where this would been cheap to do (the set pieces are pretty huge for a Classic Series Who story), or even a world where it would have been worthwhile.

The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) explains to his
companions (Polly: Anneke Wills, Ben: Michael
Craze and Jamie: Frazer Hines) that they can't just
go and find a better story.

If you hadn't gathered from the above paragraph, there is a complete absence of anything even approaching meaningful character development or even a meaningful character in "The Underwater Menace". The characters are so utterly unmemorable or interesting that you are unable to remember anything about them when the story is over, save for Zaroff (and even that isn't for the right reasons). I don't remember any of them for any attributes they have beyond the plot, so as characters, they utterly fail to engage. I barely remember any of the performances either: none of them are particularly bad, per say, but they simply don't stand out as notable, maybe expect the really camp priest. Of course, the exception to all this is Zaroff, who is just the most laughably over-the-top character in all of Doctor Who history. Originally, Zaroff was meant to be suffering from a kind of almost mental breakdown over the death of his wife and children, which would have maybe been a worthwhile justification for his actions. However, this was cut, and, as such, he just ends up acting like a raving lunatic. What also doesn't help is Joseph Furst's completely camp and outrageous performance, which just rams home the point about this being too over-the-top to be taken seriously. At least you can say that he is entertaining to watch, but its not because he's making the material entertaining, its because you can't wait to see how he manages to ham this scene up. Sure, I love Doctor Who to have camp and over-the-top tendencies, but this is just ridiculous. It feeds back into the issues with tone I talked about earlier: sure, Furst's performance would be great, if the material was being taken with the same levity as the performance. However, it isn't, so it ends up jarring completely with the tone the production, and even the rest of the actors are going for. At least the regulars give pretty good performances, even if three of them have nothing to do. It's clear that Orme had no idea how to write for the companions, as they're pretty much shuffled out of the way for most of the runtime, especially Polly and Jamie. Of course, Jamie was only added in at last minute, so its hard to really blame Orme for that. But even Ben doesn't really have a lot to do, other than follow the Doctor around for most of the final episode, and, while all three actors (Craze, Wills and Hines) are great, they're all given next to nothing to do. At least Pat Troughton is able to give a spirited performance, as his Doctor starts to settle down into the character we all know and love. He gets to be quirky, face-off against Zaroff, and show genuine excitement and wonder at Atlantis and its people. It's everything you'd expect from the Second Doctor, and the surviving episodes are a real demonstration of his joy in playing the role.

Yes, another picture of the Fish People. It seems
that's all the photographer wanted to capture.

To talk about the production seems fruitless at this point, but I'm going to try to anyway. It's clear that the team behind this story were pressed for time, as sets and costumes look half finished, and a lot of the design work looks like it needed a major rethink. The look of the Fish People is a point of particular contention, as they just look absolutely bloody stupid. I'm amazed that these were actually allowed to be made and put in front of the cameras without someone going 'these are absolutely ridiculous, we can't do that'. What doesn't help that is there's no consistency to the design of the creatures: some of them look incredibly 'mutated' (like the two in the picture to the left), while some just look like ordinary people, with diving equipment. The sequences involving lots of them swimming about look laughably bad as a result, not helped of course by a terrible attempt to realise underwater sequences in the studio, rather than at Ealing. If Gerry Anderson had been doing it for a number of years with puppet shows like Stingray and Thunderbirds with great success, then surely Doctor Who could have recreated some of that magic, even on the programme's meager budget? Director Julia Smith is doing the best she can, but it's clear that the ambition of the script far outstrips what can be achieved. There isn't really much ambition on her end, however, and the end result looks and feels static, with the camera pretty much only covering one angle for the vast majority of the scenes. It's clear to me that the production team were probably more interested in saving money for upcoming stories like "The Moonbase" and "The Macra Terror", instead of channeling the budget into this one, and I can hardly blame them, considering how dire the script is. But the fact the production is as lackluster as it is means that we shouldn't care about what's going on either, which is doubly frustrating.

The gorgeous cover artwork for the vinyl cover for "The Underwater Menace" soundtrack.

"The Underwater Menace" is one of the least enjoyable Classic Doctor Who stories for a number of reasons. But I think one of the major reasons has to be simply that it takes itself far too seriously for a story with such subject matter. This should be an outrageous pantomime of a story, but the fact that "The Underwater Menace" acts like one of Shakespeare's great tragedies is almost criminal. The rest of the story simply can't recover from that. Easily the weakest Second Doctor story, this is simply a poor example of Doctor Who being daft, something that it turns out is possible, but should never exist. Yes, "The Underwater Menace" is disappointing. That's the long and the short of it.

All pictures copyright to the BBC, while the last picture is also copyright to Demon Music Group. Thank you very much for reading. If you wish to keep up to date with the blog, you can subscribe by clicking the link at the top of the page. Keep an eye out for special social medias for Who Time (& Space) coming very soon!