Warriors of the Deep - The First Review

Starring Peter Davison, Janet Fielding & Mark Strickson, with Tom Adams, Ian McCulloch & Ingrid Pitt.

Written by Johnny Byrne.

Directed by Pennant Roberts.

Icthar (Norman Comer) orders the revival of the Sea Devils, as part of their plan to destroy the human race.

Earth, 2084. Two global superpowers hover on the brink of war. When the TARDIS is forced to make an unplanned visit to Sea Base Four, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough find themselves accused of being enemy agents. Quickly embroiled in a deadly game of paranoid intrigue, it becomes clear that others on the base have sabotage and murder in mind. However, there is a greater threat to humankind: the Silurians and Sea Devils, prehistoric reptiles seeking to reclaim the Earth. Can the Doctor prevent them from implementing their 'final solution' and triggering a war that could wipe out the entire human race?

'There should have been another way.'

Somehow, the Doctor's closing words about this story sum everything up. "Warriors of the Deep" has to be, as far as this reviewer is concerned, one of the most tragic cases of 'missed potential' in the whole 57 year history of the show. There is so much potential in the initial story ideas, and where they could be taken, that the fact this story doesn't reach any of that ambition is, ultimately, a tragedy. A lot of people will lay the blame squarely on the misjudged production, and, while it is true that this story's production is practically verging on the shambolic, to me this story's problems lie a lot deeper than that. They lie in the fundamental ethos of the show at this point in its history. They lie in the choices that the top level management of the show were taking at the time, and what they believed Doctor Who was and could be. And everything else, every other problem with "Warriors of the Deep" stems back to those choices made at the highest level. I honestly believe "Warriors of the Deep" could have been a great story, perhaps even one of Doctor Who's best, and I certainly don't believe that it is the worst ever Doctor Who story, as some like to say it is. However, there is no escaping the fact that this story absolutely failed to deliver what should have been an exciting, dramatic story, and instead turned it into an absolute farce that blighted the show for years afterwards.

"And you want us to record this how quickly,
John?"

The story is set in the year 2084, and sees Earth divided into two power blocs, each with their fingers poised on buttons that will release nuclear missiles that will destroy the other. The TARDIS arrives on an underwater base, Sea Base 4, that is experiencing a multitude of problems, ranging from mysterious deaths to double agents and vital personnel on the verge of a mental breakdown. However, the Silurians and the Sea Devils have their eyes on the base and its weapons, and they intend to wipe out mankind with those very weapons... On paper, this should make a brilliant story, and writer Johnny Byrne has said that, in writing this story, he was inspired by Eric Saward's "Earthshock". However, while Byrne may have been inspired by "Earthshock", that doesn't come across in the story, which is as static as anything for three episodes, before finally some stuff starts happening in episode 4. The middle two episodes are practically glacial in pacing terms, with the Silurians taking practically the same length as their hibernation to get to the bridge. In "Earthshock", Saward keeps the action moving, keeps stuff happening, but "Warriors" just stutters and stumbles around until it can be bothered to do something. It takes the Silurians the whole of the third episode to just make it from the airlock to the bridge. And there are some great ideas nestled in the heart of this story: things like the political situation on Earth, the Silurians wanting to wage a defensive war etc., but these are just not utilised to their full potential. Byrne wanted to write a by-the-books action story, not realising that that approach doesn't work with the Silurians. They are far more complicated than monsters like the Cybermen or the Sontarans or even the Daleks: there's a moral core to them that means they aren't really monsters as such, so you can't just treat them as such. Yes, there are some attempts to paint them as something more complicated in episode 4, but, by then, the damage has been done. The Sea Devils, particularly, are just painted as mindless grunts, when, in "The Sea Devils", they had much more nobility and honour to them, despite their more militaristic overtones. Malcolm Hulke's approach to the species was much more thoughtful than this, and this was something even Chris Chibnall got when the Silurians were brought back in 2010's "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood". Here, however, the Silurians are as disposable as the huge cast of characters: they don't feel like Silurians, and, as such, it feels like Byrne simply didn't understand them. There's something that's not quite gelling between the two approaches: something I'm sure that could have been rectified with a tighter hand, and someone realising the gold mine opportunity they had with this story. Because "Warriors of the Deep" could honestly have been amazing, had someone realised that this story could have been a massive turning point for Doctor Who. This story is where Doctor Who's whole axis starts to shift: up till this point, Doctor Who adventures were, for the most part, the Doctor turning up at a place, saving the day, and leaving again. Essentially, The Lone Ranger format. However, as the 1980's went on, this was replaced more and more by a gnarly cynicism, where the Doctor was often pushed to his limit, and not everyone made it out alive. It's a format that's still with the show today, and, while a couple of Fifth Doctor stories like "Earthshock" and "Terminus" had ended on a slightly lower than average note, "Warriors" was probably the first Doctor Who story to end on a note where abject defeat would have been better than what we ended up with. And yet, the production team do nothing with this - for years! It isn't until Andrew Cartmel comes along that this is even picked up upon, and it isn't until the show was revived in 2005 that it was properly explored. The final scene, where the Doctor surveys the bodies of humans, Silurians and Sea Devils alike, is incredibly powerful (in fact, probably the only episode of the story that isn't fundamentally flawed in some way), but the fact that this isn't followed upon on properly for years to come is actually criminal. And it all comes down to what the production team thought the show could be - which, at this point, appears to be little more than standard pulp sci-fi run-around, without the ambition to go to some really daring places. 

Two Silurians stand ready to welcome their Sea
Devils brethren back to life. Once they've stopped
staggering around, that is.

This issue also extends to the characters, who, again, have the potential to be well developed, interesting and add to this complex story, but simply don't. Each one ends up falling into a set of stock tropes that we've all seen before in Doctor Who stories, and that we've all seen done better in them, if we're being honest. From the stoic and solid commander, to the duplicitous second-in-command, to the underling heading for a mental breakdown, we've seen all these before in base-under-siege stories like this. And Byrne does nothing to make them any more two-dimensional than cardboard. Each one goes on the exact journey you'd expect of their characters, and a vast number of them don't really seem to go on any sort of journey at all. Instead, they just end up getting killed off as and when they are no longer needed, which seems to be the only development these characters get. No one really does anything memorable, and, as a result, it seems utterly pointless to have these characters actually present in the story, if all they're going to do is die. The only character with any interesting personality is Icthar, and that's purely because of his motivations, and how fundamentally opposed to the Doctor's they are. Both Icthar and the Doctor's moralities are actually quite warped and twisted, the more you think about it, and the collision of these two viewpoints should be the highlight of the story. Both sides are completely untenable: Icthar just desires pure revenge, while the Doctor falsely believes that both sides can talk and everyone can get out alive. This dichotomy would prove fantastic, were it not for the fact that it is so under-developed and ill-explored. All of this material is just crammed into the last episode, so there's no real chance to explore it, beyond the same kind of surface level attention that the rest of the story 'enjoys'. What doesn't help is that some of the performances are incredibly wooden as well, not helped by the rushed nature of the production. Certainly the regulars do the best they can, and Peter Davison particularly is enjoying the chance to indulge in a little more humour than his Doctor is used to. Ingrid Pitt gives a... well, a memorable performance as Solow, a character who would be utterly unmemorable otherwise, so I suppose that's something, although its more like Joseph Furst in "The Underwater Menace" than Christopher Gable in "The Caves of Androzani" or Philip Madoc in "The Brain of Morbius". Performance wise, there's not a lot of standouts here, although the actors mostly have nothing of substance to work with, so they can hardly be blamed for poor performances.

The Doctor (Peter Davison) wonders why the
monsters this week look a bit rubbish.

And then we come to the production. Infamously rushed when the production schedule lost two weeks due to the 1983 general election, director Pennant Roberts was forced to rush this story in order to get it all in the can.  And, let me just say, it does show, with scenes that have clearly have no rehearsal, camera work that looks more rushed and static than the early William Hartnell stories and, of course, the Mykra, which was apparently not actually finished when it ended up being filmed. This story has to be the single most slap dashed story in the show's history, and I don't think anyone would argue with that. From the terribly over lit sets, the stilted action, the laughably over-the-top costumes, even things like all the Sea Devil helmets being askew, you can tell there was no time in the studio to do all the work this story needed. Despite the seemingly enclosed setting, this was an ambitious story (not where it really mattered, of course), and so it needed way more time than it actually got. There's a scene where two Sea Devils actually bump into each other, and it was left in! Everything has an incredibly rough and ready feel to it, it's amazing that this was broadcast. And all those problems, and indeed every problem with the story, is personified in the form of the Mykra. It's an absolutely shambolic creation, and it doesn't look at all sinister or scary on screen. Instead, it just looks pathetic - no wonder Michael Grade decided to use a clip of it on Room 101 to prove why Doctor Who was rubbish. It wasn't properly finished before it was due on set, so consequently the two actors who were to operate the mechanism didn't have time to rehearse in it. In fact, it was so bad that the actors could clearly smell the solvent paint that the visual effects team had used to paint the creature, and it made them feel like they were getting high! The Mykra is absolutely awful, and quite clearly should have been cut when it was clear that it couldn't be realised effectively. But, of course, the production team didn't even have the time to cut it, and re-work the story to eliminate it. And that's why, more than anything else, I wish they'd cut "The Twin Dilemma", and channelled all their resources into this story. Unfortunately, and I know that Colin Baker won't be happy (sorry Colin, we love you!), but there's very little redeemable in "The Twin Dilemma", whereas "Warriors of the Deep" has loads of potential. I mean, as I mentioned at the top of this review, the production isn't the be-all-and-end-all of the problems with this story, but it would have have helped this a lot more if the season could have been re-jigged (like when strikes forced the Season 20 production schedule to be changed around in order to get "Enlightenment" in the can), so that the production team could have had a better chance of making something that didn't look like it was put together in five minutes. I can tell that all the production team are all trying their best (bar Pennant Roberts' direction, which, I'm afraid to say, is very ploddy and doesn't imbue the story with the energy of directors like Peter Grimwade or Graeme Harper), but all that effort cannot save a story that was doomed to failure due to the time constraints placed upon it. Although nothing could save some of the pretty pathetic cliffhangers, to be honest.

It was at this moment that, between the pool of freezing cold water, the tight production schedule and the general 'not-giving-of-any-s***'s' by BBC management, that Peter Davison decided to quit Doctor Who. You can see it in the eyes.

"Warriors of the Deep" is, ultimately, indicative of all the problems Doctor Who faced in the 1980's. A script that plays firmly by the rules, rather than fast and loose with them, combined with some terrible production squanders the potential of an idea that had so much to begin with. "Warriors" is a story that fundamentally fails on every level, I can't deny it, but I don't think that it's one of the worst Who stories there is, if I'm being honest. Because there is so much potential in the initial concept, and where it could have taken Doctor Who, that it is tragic that it wasn't acted upon. This story could have honestly been one of the finest in the show's history, and I will stand by that assessment until the day I die. But "Warriors of the Deep" does nothing to realise that potential, and, as such, it must be counted as one of, if not the greatest, mis-step in Doctor Who history.

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