A Bluffer’s Guide to Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace
Patrick Troughton establishes himself in an otherwise fishy tale.
Previously…
With historical tales out, it’s time for the series to kick high concept adventuring into top gear. Except, the poor script editor has no good stories to put in front of the cameras…
Describe The Underwater Menace in six words:
Atlantis’ dreams and food gets sunk.
This is… the one with Atlantis.
Episodes: Episodes 145–148 out of 870
First broadcast: 14th January — 4th February, 1967
First overseas broadcast: September, 1967 (ABC in Australia).
Last broadcast before prints were considered missing was on ZBS in Zambia, April 1970. The surviving Episode 2 is definitely an ABC print.
Key Characters
Doctor: Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)
Companions: Ben Jackson (Michael Craze), Polly (Anneke Wills), Jamie (Frazer Hines)
Villains: Professor Zaroff (Joseph Furst)
Other Key Parts: Ramo (Tom Watson), Ara (Catherine Howe), Lolem (Peter Stephens), Thous (Noel Johnson)
I’m New To This. What Should I Know?
- The first Second Doctor serial to have complete episodes (two!) allowing us to see Patrick Troughton’s Doctor in action and not just relying on the audio and telesnaps. It is partially missing.
- It has a poor reputation. However, the recently discovered Episode 2 altered the perception somewhat: Now it still has a poor reception but our admiration for Troughton has increased and this has become the story where the Second Doctor we know is clearly present.
- The DVD doesn’t help you to understand the story at all.
The Narrative
Location: Atlantis
Time: c.1969 (Polly finds a bracelet from the Mexico 1968 Olympics but the hostages wear 1960s clothing)
What Happens?
God knows.
The TARDIS lands on a volcanic outcrop. The time-travellers are soon abducted and taken to Atlantis. They are to be executed by the very superstitious culture who plan to sacrifice them to the goddess Amdo but the Doctor recognises the work of Professor Zaroff and manipulates the situation to get Zaroff to stop the sacrifice.
Zaroff has told King Thous that he will raise Atlantis from beneath the sea but Zaroff’s real intention is to destroy the world.
The time-travellers attempt to expose Zaroff with mixed results: Zaroff begins his plan but the Doctor arranges Atlantis to be flooded further, drowning Zaroff while the Atlanteans flee to the higher land. The time-travellers escape leaving the survivors to believe that they died in the flood.
The Production
Recording
Location filming: December 1966 at Winspit quarry, Worth Matravers, Dorset
Filming: December 1966 at Ealing Studios
Studio recording: January 1967 in Riverside 1
Key Production Crew
Writer — Geoffrey Orme
Incidental music — Dudley Simpson
Designer — Jack Robinson
Story editor — Gerry Davis
Producer — Innes Lloyd
Director — Julia Smith
Any Behind-the-Scenes Gossip?
We slightly touched on this already when covering The Highlanders but it’s essential to understanding any behind-the-scenes gossip: This story was a last ditch attempt to put something on screen.
Gerry Davis was struggling getting workable scripts. He had previously rejected Geoffrey Orme’s Atlantis story after not getting it to work or be budgetable. But as other scripts faltered, he had no choice.
Hugh David was given The Highlanders after initially being given The Underwater Menace to direct. However, after getting a friend working for James Bond to look at how much money would be needed to shoot it as written — and being told it was widely expensive — David wanted out. So, he was given The Highlanders.
Julia Smith, who had previously directed pirates in Cornish history with The Smugglers, was originally assigned to direct pirates in Scottish history. However, with Innes Lloyd changing the stories for Davis’s benefit, Smith inherited The Underwater Menace.
The Underwater Menace also inherited Jamie, as played by Frazer Hines. The script had been brought forth so quickly that there was not time to re-structure it to include three companions, so Jamie took some of Ben’s and Polly’s lines (which was what Michael Craze and Anneke Wills had feared). Lloyd and Davis seem to be quite taken with the character of Jamie, and Frazer, in a way they weren’t with Polly and Ben. It was decided not to renew Craze’s or Wills’ contracts again.
The cast hated the script, and Wills reports that Patrick Troughton took it out on the director. This was a tense time for recording Doctor Who: with the delay for The Power of the Daleks, and the Christmas break following The Highlanders, Doctor Who was now being recorded a week before broadcast!
And just for that extra bit of gossip: Frazer Hines and Catherine Howe (Ara) dated before this.
The Analysis
Stray Observations
· The Doctor’s capture is a good comedic moment.
· The Doctor consults his diary. Nice how the show allows Polly to find the Mexico Olympiad souvenir
· Jamie’s anxiety about the TARDIS is nicely played — and swift (stops the audience from being frustrated at him being slow).
· No aliens: A trend in the near contemporary, sci-fi serials (Planet of Giants, The War Machines)
· Loose Cannon reconstruction better than the BBC DVD version. However, Loose Cannon don’t recreate Ep 1 cliffhanger faithfully: there’s something about chilling about having the Fish Person watching Polly’s operation. (Which means that if this story is animated, then I will be that sucker that will buy Episode 3 for the third time).
· Polly frightened of the dark at the start of Ep 2: Disappointing after The Highlanders
· Ramo on Zaroff: “He appeals to all that is base in our people.”
· We see the miners, Sean and Jacko, accept their situation. CUT TO: Doctor and Damon and hear about collecting people off shipwrecks
· Ben, Jamie, Sean and Jacko encounter Polly and ask the whereabouts of the Doctor. Polly, who’s been hiding out in the temple, who hasn’t “seen him since he went off with Professor Zaroff.” BUT she was in the temple when Ramo and the Doctor were talking: indeed, when the Doctor BLEW UP the jar.
· Zaroff pushing Lolem in Ep 3 is badly choreographed.
· Ep 3 is the worst for the sharing of dialogue between Ben and Jamie (clear in the moment discussing encouraging the Fish People to strike, Ben has the line and the subtitles credit it to Jamie)
· The Doctor in disguise: So much understated than his Highlanders characters.
· The leftist in me loving that an Irishman and a black man encourage the Fish People to go on strike. See, there’s something good about every story (Why don’t Sean and Jacko have their own Big Finish box set)
· Doctor wants to go back (“I can’t leave Zaroff down there to drown”) But why?! Zaroff tried to kill you 2–3 times!
Going a Bit Deeper
Why does no-one like The Underwater Menace?
It gets called out for the Fish People costumes, the outrageous acting of some of its guest stars, and it’s cheap, B-movie nature.
Frankly though, these criticisms are overtly harsh. It’s not as if next story doesn’t have its problems with a Moonbase that changes shape depending on whether we’re seeing the set or the model. It’s not as if the Cybermen had a hot mess of a costume of their first appearance.
It could be that this is the first experience of lots of things going wrong: Doctor Who had unbelievable monster costumes before but everyone took it seriously. Actors have hammed it up before but the set designers took it seriously. It’s every thing going wrong, all at once for the first time.
But let’s not forget that Davis and Lloyd put The Underwater Menace up in front of the cameras are dismissing The Imps by William Emms and The Nazis by Brian Hayles. So, it could have been worse.
Most of all, none of the ideas are inherently bad: Atlantis, people being genetically turned into fish, a mad scientist. Indeed, after doing a pure historical, this story does something revolutionary by doing a story set in the very-near future with no aliens: Zaroff, Atlantis, and the Fish-People are all from Earth.
It’s not all redeemable: Polly’s characterisation is not even a throwback. No companion has been this wet and useless since Susan in The Reign of Terror. And while Joseph Furst is engaging to watch, none of the other citizens of Atlantis — beisdes Catherine Howe’s Ara — are as interesting. Quite frankly, Ara can become a new companion and everyone else can drown with Zaroff.
But really, I can’t help but feeling that the worst thing about The Underwater Menace is that 50% of it still exists in the archives, and it follows several serials that we’d desperately want to see more off. And that’s why no-one likes it. Because it survives and the regeneration doesn’t.
Recommended / Further Reading: