Day 308 — November 4th 2021
Warriors of the Deep Parts One and Two
Warriors of the Deep — Part One
The usual thing to say about Warriors of the Deep is that the sets aren’t very good and the whole thing is lit far too brightly, destroying any attempt to make the sets work. I’m going to start off by being totally contrary to all that, though, because actually I think the sets in this one are brilliant. Okay, so there’s times where they are lit quite brightly, but I’m not sure that’s a problem at all. This is a functional Sea Base, it’s going to be lit like this. And actually, it’s only in a few select scenes — in lots of instances throughout this episode the lighting is really nicely done.
I’m thinking specifically of the scenes in which the TARDIS crew explore the base. The corridors they wander around look properly functional, they’re probably the best ‘sci-fi’ corridors we’ve had in this era so far. They feel like they’re part of a futuristic base without having the kind of ‘plastic’ edge you often end up with in this type of story. There’s plenty of little details which help to make them stand out, and it feels like they’re genuinely wandering around different corridors, rather than the same bits of set repositioned.
Elsewhere I’m properly impressed by the scale of the sets. Regular readers know that I love a bit of height to a set, and we’ve got plenty of that on display here. The main control room is especially well done in this regard and the first shot we get, with the camera panning across the room and showing off loads of extras at work, stands out. This looks to me like the start of a new season, and an attempt to show off the money on screen. The same can be said for the big room the cliffhanger takes place in — when Doctor Who falls over the railings it’s a decent drop into the pool below. Maybe I’ll feel less charitable as the story goes on, but for now I can’t complain about either sets or lighting.
Something I can complain about is the script, but only in the sense that I think it’s harder to follow than it means to be. We cut between the crew of the base investigating a strange probe underwater and the crew of the TARDIS encountering a similar object in orbit — Sentinel Six. There’s one particularly jarring moment when Doctor Who does something clever to avoid the weapons of the Sentinel and we cut to the Sea Base where they’re surprised to have lost sight of the probe. I spent longer than I’d like trying to work out what Doctor Who had done to it before realising that they were different devices. This feels like the kind of thing which needs another pass by the script editor just to clear things up.
7/10
Warriors of the Deep — Part Two
Any discussion of this episode is naturally going to be bogged down by the elephant in the room that is the Myrka. I’d love to sit here and defend it, trotting out the usual lines about the story being brought forward in production, leaving them less room to plan than they’d have liked, but I think we have to accept that it’s something which should never have made it into the finished script. They must have known they’d never be able to pull it off? I also don’t think you need the Myrka in here. We’ve already got the Silurians and the Sea Devils, do we need another thing thrown into the mix? I wonder if it would have been better to simply have our regular lizards the other side of the door, burning their way into the base.
As badly as the Myrka is realised in this episode, I think the biggest issue is the direction. There’s absolutely zero tension or threat in any of the scenes. Everyone just stands around waiting for the creature to break through the door. There’s no panic or worry — they’re all just standing around waiting. Everything is so flat and boring, where I think a few more close ups would go a long way to making this work better. Heck, even adding an alarm underneath the dialogue as the airlock is breached… just something!
Of course, we need to mention the lighting, too. I went to great lengths in Part One to point out that the lighting isn’t an issue but in this scene it certainly doesn’t help. It’s not shot with any of the shadows which define the corridor scenes, and I can’t help thinking that any director worth their salt should have looked at the Myrka costume and decided to hide it in the shadows as much as possible…!
I didn’t mention the Silurians or the Sea Devils in Part One, but they take on a pretty prominent role in this episode. It has to be said that I don’t think the design work on them does any favours. On the plus side the new chest pieces on the Silurians fixes the loose rubbery neck which I so despised on the original 1970 versions, but the faces here are lacking the character they had in their debut. The same is true of the Sea Devils — there’s something a bit too hard about these masks which doesn’t do a lot for me.
The script continues to leave me cold, too. There’s a point in here where you can tell they haven’t made their mind up. Doctor Who tries to have the humans on the base come round to the Silurians’ way of thinking, drumming on about their kindly intentions;
Tegan: ‘Are they hostile?’
Doctor Who: ‘They’re honourable. All they ever wanted to do was live
in peace.’
But before the scene is out he seems to be giving them reasons to try and wipe the reptiles out, suggesting their intentions might not be as peaceful;
Doctor Who: ‘Friend or enemy, it’s a distinction that’s lost on the Silurians, I assure you. To them you’re all the same. Ape-descended primitives. An evolutionary error they obviously mean to correct.’
It feels a bit like the story is striving for the same kind of moral grey area which was present in the original — that it’s rogue elements causing trouble while there could be a peaceful solution to be had — but it’s just not got the same level of depth. This isn’t something I thought I’d ever day about the stories in this era, which have been largely monster-free affairs, but I think I’d have done away with the lizards all together, and instead made a claustrophobic tale about the two enemy agents operating in the base.
That’s another area where I feel the story story is falling a bit flat for me; we know pretty much from the off that Solow and Nilson aren’t team players, and if there was any doubt about their motives in Part One then it’s completely gone by the end of this instalment. The same was true of the presence of the Silurians in Part One; there’s no attempt to hold them back for a reveal of any kind. They’re simply there, presented as fact.
I was hoping to be championing this story as far better than reputation suggests, but it’s just not doing it for me. 3/10.
On the plus side, we can add Preston and a pair of guards to my list of guest characters who get to enter the TARDIS. I was worried that this would become a less prominent feature as Davison moves into his third year, so it’s good to see it’s a tradition kept alive and kicking!
