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| A fish person, on strike. |
4 episodes. Approx. 97 minutes. Written by: Geoffrey Orme. Directed by: Julia Smith. Produced by: Innes Lloyd.
THE PLOT
The TARDIS lands on a deserted volcanic island. The Doctor and his companions explore, and promptly get themselves kidnapped. They are whisked down a vast elevator, blacking out from the pressure of their rapid descent. When they wake up, they find themselves in the fabled city of Atlantis!
Though they are intended for a sacrifice to the Atlantean gods, the Doctor is able to sneak a peek at the script and determines that the long-lost Professor Zaroff (Joseph Furst) is in the city. He rescues his friends and himself by arranging an audience with Zaroff, who appreciates the chance to speak with a fellow scientist. But it is soon apparent that Zaroff has gone mad. His promise to raise Atlantis from the sea has proved too much for him, and his mind has cracked into an obsessive focus on a more workable Plan B: Drill through the Earth's crust and drain the surrounding water directly into the Earth's molten core... with the minor side effect of destroying the planet in the process!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: More disguises, as the Doctor dresses up as a priest in Episode Two and hides in a crowd by dressing as a beatnik in Episode Three. Still, the wackiness is already toned down, and there are some pretty good 2nd Doctor bits in here. I liked Troughton's delivery of the Doctor's interrogation of Zaroff in Episode Two, gently asking, "Why do you want to blow up the world," in a tone that suggests a very nice teacher having a patient discussion with a recalcitrant child. His explanation to the priest Ramo (Tom Watson) of the destructiveness of Zaroff's plan is another good moment. Troughton's Doctor may still be slightly unformed, but he's getting there.
Ben/Polly/Jamie: The companions are reduced to the level of character sketches. Polly, clever and plucky in earlier stories, spends a ridiculous amount of this story blubbering and crying - the very thing in the previous story that she criticized Kirsty for! Jamie gets a few decent moments, particularly at the end when he expresses his appreciation for the TARDIS as a place of safety. Ben gets to play the primary support for the Doctor, helping him to bluff his way past Zaroff's (typically idiotic) guards.
Professor Zaroff: Joseph Furst, a highly successful television actor with a long string of credits, was an actor well capable of subtlety. Cast here as a one-dimensional lunatic, he makes the only reasonable acting choice available: He goes for it. Furst zips through The Underwater Menace in a whirlwind, chomping scenery with hungry abandon. The surviving episodes let us see him add wild eyes and facial expressions to the high-pitched ranting, all of which combine to make his work the story's one consistently fun element.
Contrary to fan myth, he actually does stay on the right side of the line from self-parody, and his delivery of the infamous, "Nothing in the world can stop me now!" is far more reasonable than its reputation. Among other things, he clearly does NOT say "Nuzzink in ze vorld can shtop me now" - His actual delivery features all the words pronounced correctly, in his normal (and far from thick) accent. Far more risible is his transparent ruse to escape from Polly and Ramo the random priest. "Help me to stand at your side, so I may feel the aura of your goodness," he gasps while feigning a heart attack. Polly, having lost all her previous intelligence, instantly falls for it. It would have been more believable if he had escaped while his two captors fell all over themselves laughing at the line.
THOUGHTS
What is there to say about a story like The Underwater Menace? Certainly, it's cheap and silly. But so what? "Cheap and silly" describes a large percentage of Doctor Who, after all, even extending into the modern series. So what if Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, and Michael Craze run about a very small soundstage doing bad silent comedy to entice Joseph Furst into fake-chasing them? So what if we see multiple scenes of the characters hiding behind a ledge from a bad recording of repetitive chanting? The villain's motivation begins and ends with "He's crazy," with no real ambition or focus beyond simple insanity. But again, so what? In Doctor Who, any of these are forgivable sins. Even, potentially, all of them.
Unfortunately, The Underwater Menace is guilty of something far worse: It's boring.
Part One would barely cut it as a 3-minute teaser to a modern episode. Part Two, the best episode (and now, thankfully, one of the two surviving ones) has good scenes with the Doctor indulging Zaroff's insanity, then proving himself to Ramo. But even this episode also features multiple scenes of Ben and Jamie wandering around generic mines with a pair of one note guest characters, padding out the running time without doing anything amusing or interesting.
Part Three, which prior to 2011 was the sole existing episode, is also the serial's worst. The entire 25 minutes sees Thous, the ruler of Atlantis, turn the Doctor and Ramo over to Zaroff. They escape, then capture Zaroff. Then Zaroff escapes, returns to Thous, and shoots him. It would be the work of about ten minutes (if that) to rewrite the serial to eliminate this episode entirely. Part Four at least has a bit of action to it and an enjoyable (if silly) Doctor/Zaroff confrontation... But it remains a bit leaden.
Thank God for Patrick Troughton, who keeps the Doctor's intelligence keen and clear, even when the script demands he behave like a fool. He often underplays his scenes, keeping the Doctor calm, quiet, and observant even in the midst of this silliness. I can't really say that he and Joseph Furst play well opposite each other; their scene together at the start of Episode Three sees both actors missing cues and leaving dead space in between lines. But he's terrific overall, and his performance goes a long way toward keeping this mess halfway watchable.
It's still bad, though. Almost certainly Troughton's worst story, and a strong contender for the worst serial of Doctor Who's entire black-and-white era.
Rating: 2/10.
The Underwater Menace Missing Episode Notes
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