The Underwater Menace

Let’s get the praiseworthy aspects of the story out of the way. The sets are OK, and some of the guest performances are competent. The regulars are excellent, as usual and, indeed, the scenes which only feature them are very good. And that’s it.

The script by Geoffrey Orme is a mish-mash of sheer story-telling idiocy. Professor Zaroff’s plan is stupid (to drain the oceans into the Earth’s core). Zaroff’s motivation is stupid (he’s mad. Mad, I tell you!) This does not necessarily doom the story to failure. However, the stupidity snowballs: because of the stupidity of the villain’s plan, the supporting characters have to be stupid as well, in order to be taken in by it. The Doctor’s plans to stop Zaroff are foiled by the need to pad out the story (how could anyone fall for that ‘feigning illness’ act in episode 3?) so he has to propose two ridiculous contingency plans- make the Fish People go on strike to starve the Atlanteans and then flood half the country. This is backed by some utterly ludicrous dialogue (‘Help me stand at your side so I may feel ze aura of your goodness!’) making this not so much a script, but a lesson in how not to write one.

As said before, there are competent performances from the guest cast (Colin Jeavons and Noel Johnson) but the majority are anything but. P.G. Stephens and Paul Anil are terrible as Sean and Jacko and there is, of course, Zaroff. Joseph Furst’s performance is terrible, but the blame cannot wholly be apportioned to him. In the script, Zaroff is not so much a character as an anchor point for exclamation marks and it would have taken a director of superlative talent to make Zaroff remotely convincing. Julia Smith, however, has no concept of tone or consistency, which means that a ranting megalomaniac like Zaroff has to share a scene with a pantomime dame like Lolem. Smith is fine when a scene is more visual- the marketplace scene is very well shot. However, she seems to have little aptitude for making performances gel, which is not entirely her fault, considering the script. Dudley Simpson’s score is utterly ridiculous and frequently at odds with what appears on the screen. Then again...

This is, in short, bloody awful. It has some appeal as being ‘so bad, it’s good’, but there really are far better ways of spending your time. There are many laughable Doctor Who stories, but this is one of only a handful that are actually written and produced in a way that is indistinguishable from a spoof of the programme. There is not even a hat for the Doctor to like in it.*

_{*actually, there is, but it's a great way to end a review.}

Next: The Moonbase