Day 75 — March 16th 2021
The Underwater Menace Episodes Three and Four
The Underwater Menace — Episode Three
At my wedding last year, my best man concluded his speech by wishing me and my bride well and adding ‘nothing in the world can stop you now’. And I totally missed it! An hour later another friend said they couldn’t believe that he’d paraphrased The Underwater Menace in the speech, and the best man confirmed that yes, that’s exactly what he’d done. It makes me proper laugh even now to think that this episode — of them all! — was the one that came up on my wedding day, and in a speech which opened with a message from Peter Purves!
(They weren’t the only Doctor Who link on my big day, as the best man and I stayed the night before in a hotel just up the road from the wedding venue, and over breakfast on the wedding day we realised we were in the room where Nigel Havers had proposed to Sarah Jane Smith. That’s the beauty of living in South Wales these days; there’s a Doctor Who — or at least a Sarah Jane Adventures — location round every corner…)
This is the episode of The Underwater Menace that we’ve always had, and it’s on this episode that much of the story’s bad reputation seems to hang. And, yes, okay, it’s not as good as the first two. But largely, for me, that’s because it’s a fairly typical ‘Episode Three’. There’s lots of running around, capture and escape, and that’s always my least favourite part of any story.
There are other things in this episode which don’t quite work, though. For starters, this is the episode which makes the most of the Fish People and while points have to be given for trying, you’d be hard pushed to say that they’re the most successful ‘monster’ to ever appear in Doctor Who. It doesn’t help that so much of the episode — almost two full minutes of it — is given over to a sequence of them ‘swimming’ around on wires, accompanied by a soundtrack which isn’t entirely flattering to the ears. I always try to bear in mind that I’m watching these episodes restored and on a large flat-screen TV, which isn’t the format they were intended to be seen in at all, but still I’m not convinced this would have been that much more effective on broadcast.
And then there’s the costumes for the other characters. Oh lord, the costumes. There’s a particular one, the costume worn by the executioner, which is especially bad. It seems almost designed to look ridiculous and show the story up.
And that’s the other thing which bothers me about this episode; the costumes are supposed to look ridiculous. These aren’t supposed to be realistic things which we imagine people wearing in their day-to-day lives, but rather ceremonial robes worn during sacrifices to an ancient fish deity.
The recovered episode two makes that more clear, with a shot of the Doctor pulling on the robes of ‘The Brothers of the Temple’, and delighting at the sheer scale of the hat. In this episode, though, which we’ve had around for an awful lot longer, we’ve no real context for the outfits. We’re just dropped into this world, and they make it incredibly difficult to take seriously.
And it’s a shame, because the script itself is actually rather good, and there’s a lot to enjoy in the story of a battle between science and religion. It’s clearest — and possibly at its best — when the Atlanteans are overjoyed to have witnessed a miracle, while the scientific Zaroff sees through the ruse immediately;
Lolem: ‘A miracle before our very eyes!’
Professor Zaroff: ‘Tell us.’
Lolem: ‘Mighty Amdo, goddess of land and sea, has accepted the sacrifice of the priest, and the little Doctor.’
Professor Zaroff: ‘Indeed. What a miracle.’
Lolem: ‘They vanished into air before they could be beheaded.’
Professor Zaroff: ‘No! Disappeared, you say? How?’
Lolem: ‘They were in our midst and we bowed our heads in prayer. When we looked again they’d gone.’
Professor Zaroff: ‘You lie, Priest. You allowed them to escape!’
The Atlanteans believe the ‘Mighty Amdo’ to have ‘eaten’ Doctor Who and his friends, and it’s brilliant in the cliffhanger when Zaroff mocks this belief further;
Professor Zaroff: ‘Since your beloved goddess has developed such an enchanting appetite for people, it is only fitting that the great Thous should offer himself!’
I think so much attention is paid to the moment immediately after this, when Zaroff shouts his most famous line, that the fun subtlety of this line gets missed. If you’d asked me yesterday morning to tell you what The Underwater Menace was about I could have told you several things; about the mad scientist, the slaves, blowing up the world… but I’d have completely missed the argument of Science vs Religion which runs throughout.
I’m not arguing that it’s always written as well as it could be, and I’m sure there’s a reason that this strand of the story gets overlooked, but it’s certainly something I’m enjoying the discovery of on this viewing.
And oh, okay, I’ll talk about the cliffhanger. NUFFINK IN ZE VURLD CAN SCHTOP ME NAO! We all, as Doctor Who fans, quote this line in a particular way don’t we? With a hammy accent and an over the top pronunciation on certain words.
But, actually, Furst doesn’t deliver the line quite how we all like to think, does he? Oh, sure, he goes more over the top than he’s been so far — in an already heightened performance — but it’s not really anything like the way I always picture this moment.
And reading the camera script for this scene, you get the sense that almost all the life in it comes directly from the performance Furst gives. On the page it reads as a bit flat, a cooly delivered ‘Nothing on Earth can stop me now…’. I wonder if it’s the lack of an exclamation mark that lessens the impact? Or maybe we just need a mad scientist?
Certainly a significant step down from the previous two episodes, but nowhere near as bad as some would have you believe. If nothing else, it’s got several really enjoyable moments, and that’s about all I can really ask of a Doctor Who episode… 5/10.
The Underwater Menace — Episode Four
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m watching most of the surviving episodes via Britbox. Despite them all sitting on a shelf in my office it’s just easier to load up an app, select an episode, and press play. It’s ridiculous that the other night the wife and I were going to watch a movie, spent ages searching for it across Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Virgin Media and when it turned out it wasn’t on any of them we decided to watch something else… even though we have the Blu-ray of said film in the cupboard!
Anyway, when I went to watch Episode Two yesterday it took me ages to find it on Britbox, as it wasn’t with the other orphan episodes in the ‘Extras’ tab, but rather in the right place within Season Four, presented as a full story including reconstructions for the missing first and last episodes. I’ve been back on there today to watch Episode Three, so I thought I’d shake things up a bit by watching this episode as a recon, rather than bunging on the Narrated Soundtrack and following along with the DWM tele-snap magazine.
Reader, I didn’t make it through the first two minutes. I’m amazed that they’re okay with sticking this recon up on there for people to watch, because it’s not exactly the best advert for the format! I’d totally forgotten all the controversy this awoke when released on DVD in 2015, but it all came flooding back the second the theme music began to play out over a static image of the Doctor Who logo.
‘The brief that I was given by BBC Worldwide,’ explained producer John Kelly to Doctor Who Magazine in 2015, ‘was simply to use the tele-snaps only — and that included not putting on the opening title sequence or scrolling captions at the end. It is literally just tele-snaps. I don’t know why that is…’
It does seem to be a baffling choice, and I’d forgotten that this story was the last damp squib release in the regular DVD range after 16 years. I’ve said before that I’m not a huge fan of reconstructions simply because they don’t usually click with me the way the Narrated Soundtracks do, but I know they can be — and have been — made so much more dynamic than was allowed here. It’s a bizarre choice. So back to the soundtrack I went!
I think like with Episode Two, the story’s reputation might improve if this episode were to be rediscovered. There’s some pretty spectacular shots of Atlantis being flooded (we can even see a bit of it very briefly in another Australian censor clip) and I’d love to see how it actually looked, as the tele-snaps don’t always make it clear. It sounds pretty impressive, and Anneke Wills does her best in the narration to really sell the scenes, but I want to know if they looked as good as they sound.
Something that I know will have been as good on screen as it still is here is the comedy in this episode, and it’s no great surprise to find that it largely comes from Troughton himself. I particularly enjoy his reaction to being asked if he knows what he’s doing (‘ Oh what a question! Of course I don’t!’) and Ben trying to convince a guard to let them pass is great;
Guard: ‘How do I know he’s a wanted man?’
Ben: ‘Well, blimey, look at him! He ain’t normal, is he?’
Guard: ‘Yes, I see what you mean. All right.’
On the whole I’ve enjoyed this one well enough, and I’m giving it a 6/10 — it’s just slightly above average. The recovery of the episode would either bump it up (if it looks as good as it sounds) or make it sink like Atlantis.
I don’t think you could ever call The Underwater Menace a really classic adventure, but it’s certainly not as bad as reputation might suggest. I think it’s been hampered by having the weakest episode be the one available for so long — it’s almost like people resent that one surviving instead of something from The Power of the Daleks, for example. But it’s never dull, and I think I’d quite happily stick this one on to pass the time on a lazy Sunday afternoon!
