March 16: The Underwater Menace Episodes 3 & 4

So episode 3 of The Underwater Menace is one of those episodes that the BBC always retained, which means that for the longest time this was the main impression people had of this story.  Out of the context of the rest of the serial, episode 3 is a weird affair, with bizarre moments interspersed with the children's television version of melodrama.  In context it's still a strange episode, but at least it makes a little more sense following on from episode 2.

The Fish People listen to Sean and Jacko's exhortation to go on
strike. (The Underwater Menace Episode 3) ©BBC

Actually, for the first few minutes this is still quite good, as Zaroff enters and orders that the Doctor and Ramo be killed.  There's a sense of real tension, and a lovely moment as Thous, having been told by the Doctor that Zaroff's eyes have an insane light when he talks about raising Atlantis, looks intently into Zaroff's eyes: "What are you staring at?" Zaroff demands.  "Nothing at all," Thous replies, but you can tell he's worried.

But once the Doctor announces his intention to kidnap Professor Zaroff, the episode goes to pot.  There's a ludicrous chase through an Atlantean bazaar as the Doctor runs around half-disguised to try and lure Zaroff away so they can kidnap him, which ends in the Doctor blowing some sort of powder through his recorder into Zaroff's face.  Meanwhile Sean and Jacko, two of the miners that Ben and Jamie befriended, convince the Fish People to go on strike, thus providing more chaos in Atlantis as the food supplies run out.  The Fish People are actually a rather good design (although the different "stages" of Fish People are a little odd, as some appear to be wearing diving masks rather than having fish eyes), but then we're treated to a long sequence of Fish People floating through the water, accompanied by a soundtrack that seems to presage the more experimental scores of the early '70s.  Again, it's actually quite an impressive-looking sequence (and allegedly was so expensive to film that it's the reason why episode 3 was never junked) -- it just has nothing to do with the ongoing storyline.

"NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!" (The
Underwater Menace Episode 3) ©BBC

But then Zaroff escapes by faking a heart attack and decides to take over Atlantis completely, shooting down Thous in his throne room.  This then leads to one of the most famous lines in Doctor Who fandom, as an exultant Zaroff shouts, "Nothing in the world can stop me now!!!"³²  (The reprise of this line in episode 4 is a little less over-the-top.)  One does wonder if Zaroff is feeling all right, given that all he's done is escape from the Doctor's friends and shot Atlantis's beloved leader, but I guess the rush of adrenaline from his fight with Jamie has gone to his head.

Episode 4 is back to the soundtrack and telesnaps, which is a shame since it seems like, after episode 3's efforts to mark time in as outrageous a way as possible, this is concerned with actually wrapping up the storyline.  One does wonder about the Doctor's plan to destroy Atlantis by letting the sea in as a means of stopping Zaroff, which seems a bit like overkill, but desperate times and all that, I suppose.   Even this doesn't seem to slow down Zaroff though, and it's only a bit of trickery from the Doctor and Ben that prevents him from getting to the controls to detonate the explosion that will end the world.  He's still trying until the very end, when he drowns from all the water rushing into Atlantis.  The Doctor, to his credit, does actually try to go back and save Zaroff, but Ben won't let him on account of the rapidly-rising sea.  And thus the world is saved.

Make no mistake: The Underwater Menace is frequently silly and has little in the way of nuance or subtlety.  But because it made it clear from the onset that it was going to be a cheesy old-style film serial, I find that I don't mind it as much as The Highlanders.  That too ended up being a silly and unthreatening romp, but it looked like it might become something more serious; there are no such illusions about The Underwater Menace.  It's set in a stagey-looking Atlantis because that's how these things go, and Zaroff wants to destroy the world simply because he's a mad scientist, with no further explanations necessary.  But crucially, it manages to be entertaining throughout; Jamie is settling in naturally, Ben and Polly are giving fun performances, and the Doctor is becoming the figure we're familiar with from later stories -- and even his awful disguise in episode 3 feels more "right" than the disguises he wore in The Highlanders.  It shouldn't be taken too seriously, and I'm not sure you'd ever want another story like this again, but in its own decidedly B-movie way The Underwater Menace succeeds.







³² Personal anecdote time: when I first started dating my now-wife, I changed the start-up sound on her computer to this line, so every time she turned on her computer Joseph Furst yelled triumphantly at her.

March 15: The Underwater Menace Episodes 1 & 2

There's a scene early in the first episode of The Underwater Menace where, after the Doctor announces that the TARDIS is landing, we get a peek into each of the four main characters' thoughts via voiceover: Jamie doesn't know what he's gotten himself into, Polly wants it to be Chelsea 1966, Ben hopes it isn't the Daleks, while the Doctor, with childlike glee, is looking forward to prehistoric monsters.  It's very different from the style of the show so far, and then you realize: this is a comic strip adventure that they actually filmed.

It's not just comics influencing this story though; as the story progresses it becomes clear that, as guides like The Discontinuity Guide and About Time 2 have pointed out, this is the Doctor Who equivalent of a '30s adventure serial like Flash Gordon or (more pertinently, given that it, like The Underwater Menace, takes place in the sunken ruins of Atlantis) Undersea Kingdom.  The dangers the TARDIS crew encounters in episode 1 (such as passing out from the increased pressure -- the Doctor calls it "caisson disease", but that's actually decompression sickness, the opposite effect) feel like the cliffhangers of an old-style serial.  It's particularly hard not to make the comparison when our heroes are being slowly tilted into a well as a sacrifice to the fish goddess Amdo, and only the Doctor's note to a mad scientist (which he signs "Dr W" -- fortunately this is the last time this occurs) saves them from sacrificial death by shark.  And then we see the Fish People, and...well, we'll talk more about them tomorrow, when episode 3 comes around.  This episode ends with Polly being prepped to be turned into one of these Fish People, which is actually quite horrific in general but particularly so given the style this story has adopted (and we know this because it survives as a censor clip) -- watching Polly cry out and struggle in desperation while two white-coated assistants hold her down is quite disturbing.

Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace was, until October 2013, one of the most recent recoveries, having been returned in 2011.³¹  This means that The Underwater Menace is now 50% complete, and thus a ripe candidate for animating the missing two episodes.  The downside is that there have been delays with the animation (and the current word is that it won't be completed at all), which means that episode 2 still isn't available commercially.  However, an unrestored copy (with the censor clips inserted back in) is available online, so that's what I've ended up watching -- the first time I've ever seen this episode.

The Doctor demonstrates to Ramo how Zaroff intends to
destroy the world. (The Underwater Menace Episode 2) ©BBC

I have to admit, it certainly makes a difference being able to actually see what's going on.  Episode 1 seemed like an old school film serial, but this is a more sedate affair.  Once Polly escapes from the operating theatre (thanks to a power cut orchestrated by the Doctor), the focus is less on jeopardy here and more on exploration, both of the plot and Atlantis itself.  But being able to see the mad gleam in Professor Zaroff's eyes as he cheerfully admits to the Doctor that he fully intends to destroy the world ("Why?  You, a scientist, ask me why?  The achievement, my dear Doctor!  The destruction of the world.  The scientist's dream of supreme power!") is wonderful, as is the chance to finally see Troughton in action (this is, after all, his earliest surviving episode).  Troughton (or the script) has reined in some of the worst excesses, with this version of the Doctor somewhat less interested in trouble for trouble's sake, as he was in The Highlanders -- and the ability to see his mind working through the implications of events is also a previously unknown delight.  And it's Jamie's first story as a companion, but this episode gives him some fine material, as he works with Ben to escape from the mines they've been sent to work in.  As I said before, it's a fairly workman-like episode, as it's more concerned with setting up the plot and subplots than anything else, but fortunately it does so in an entertaining way.







³¹ Along with "Air Lock" (Galaxy 4 episode 3).  Honestly, pay attention.

March 14: The Highlanders Episodes 3 & 4

These two episodes are better than the last two.  Polly's less horrible to Kirsty and the Doctor seems more interested in helping out the Highlanders than last time.  And the Highlanders themselves get the chance to be more than just cyphers.  Ben also has more to do, with his tearing up of the indentured servitude contracts being a highlight.

The Doctor and Ben encourage Lieutenant Ffinch to help them.
(The Highlanders Episode 4 - from Doctor Who Photonovels:
The Highlanders - Episode Four) ©BBC

But the thing is, it's hard to get a grip on The Highlanders, because as innocuous as it may be (and let's be clear: I may criticize the Doctor and Polly's characterizations, but there's not actually anything fundamentally wrong or offensive about them -- it's more a curious emphasis on the wrong aspects), as entertaining it may be while it's running, it's hard to work up any enthusiasm about the project.  The character interplay is there (the stuff with Lieutenant Ffinch, Polly, and Kirsty is quite charming), and there're even a couple villains to hate: a leering pirate-y captain and a slippery crooked lawyer.

Actually, that may get at the heart of the problem with The Highlanders.  The fact is, there actually was an issue of Highlanders being sold into slavery in the Americas, just like Solicitor Grey's plan here, but this serial barely touches upon the problem, other than as a reason for events to happen.  This is more a pantomime than anything else, and most of the characters are simply two-dimensional, with nothing for the viewer (well, listener now) to really get to grips with.  At least The Smugglers (an oddly similar story to this in some ways) had William Hartnell to concentrate on; Patrick Troughton is being a deliberate antihero here, to create a contrast with his predecessor, but it just means that it's difficult to let him be the focus of the story. 

The Highlanders would end up being the last "pure" (i.e., no aliens) historical story for fifteen years, and Innes Lloyd suggested it was because the audience wasn't as interested in those stories, and ratings would suffer.  An examination of the facts reveals this wasn't actually the case, but the fact is that Lloyd was justifying a decision after the fact to eliminate a type of story he didn't believe in, convinced that there was nothing worthwhile about journeying back into recorded history.  The Highlanders is a better example of the contemporary production team's attitude than any number of interviews.  It does its job (and even introduces new companion Jamie!³⁰), but there's no ambition here beyond that.







³⁰ A last minute decision of Innes Lloyd's, apparently, based on Frazer Hines' rapport with the cast and crew.  According to Hines, they'd already recorded the scene on location where Jamie waves goodbye to the departing TARDIS and had to remount it to have him join up instead.

March 13: The Highlanders Episodes 1 & 2

Er.  Well, Patrick Troughton was the Doctor...

It's a bit odd; The Power of the Daleks did its best to establish that this strange man was in fact still the Doctor, but now The Highlanders seems to delight in taking the character and pushing it as far as they can.  So Troughton here portrays a character who seems to be interested in causing trouble just for the hell of it.  He tries to get the Highlanders on his side before denouncing them loudly (yes, it's a ruse to get out of the prison, but still), he goes around slamming clerks' heads on the desk under the pretense of medicine, and he dresses up as a woman to move about unnoticed.  That's after he pretends to be a German doctor named "von Wer" (and anyone who knows German will see that Gerry Davis has struck again) but with only a passing attempt at any sort of Teutonic accent.  It's a wonder Ben still has any faith in him.

Meanwhile, Polly becomes decidedly mean-spirited, repeatedly berating the girl Kirsty for crying and calling her a "stupid peasant" after she refuses to go along with Polly's half-cooked scheme about getting money to bribe guards.  It's not very pleasant.  And yes, maybe Kirsty is a bit weepy, but given that this story takes place during the immediate aftermath of Culloden, I think it's safe to say she's had a harder day than Polly has.

And I should probably mention Jamie McCrimmon, seeing how important he'll become to Doctor Who, but to be honest here he's just one of a cast of guest characters designed to take up (story) space while the Doctor and Polly get on with the real story -- Ben's stuck with them, but he's mainly an eyewitness rather than a proactive player in these first two episodes.

But it's not just odd characterization; you get the sense that the production team don't actually believe in the idea of an historical story.  Traveling back in time isn't about learning things any more; it's about a place where you can have an adventure romp, because watching Troughton clown around for a while is apparently intrinsically more entertaining than actually exploring history.  The days of The Massacre are long gone.

You can sum up this attitude with the fact that it's not The Smugglers, a story about 17th-century pirates, that has a pirate captain walking around actually saying "Arrrrrrr": it's The Highlanders.

March 12: The Power of the Daleks Episodes Five & Six

The Daleks are reproducing, making new Daleks from the materials the colonists have provided them.  Witnessing this process sends Lesterson over the edge, and he spends episode five in hysterics, desperately trying to cut the power to the Daleks and to have them destroyed; but no one will listen to him, and the Doctor is currently in prison, put there by Bragen to stop him exposing Bragen as the true leader of the rebels.  And in fact Janley is against the idea of destroying the Daleks, as she thinks the Daleks will aid the rebels in their revolution and is ruthless in her commitment to that goal.

Governor Hensell is exterminated on Bragen's orders. (The
Power of the Daleks Episode Five - from Doctor Who
Photonovels: The Power of the Daleks - Episode Five) ©BBC

So although the Daleks have been making new Daleks, as one of them says, they "are not yet ready to teach these human beings the law of the Daleks!"  So they continue to bide their time, letting the humans continue their power struggles. And things are changing: having gotten Quinn out of the way, Bragen proceeds to usurp Governor Hensell's position, which he then consolidates by having a Dalek kill Hensell.  "Why do human beings kill human beings?" the Dalek asks Bragen, and Bragen doesn't answer it.  As About Time 2 points out, this is an important moment for the story: the humans are engaged in petty power struggles with each other, unable to provide a unified front; the Daleks, on the other hand, work together as a unit and are only concerned with exterminating all lesser creatures, rather than fellow Daleks.  And that's what makes the Daleks so dangerous; they won't turn on each other, and they're all dedicated to the cause of Dalek supremacy.  Combine that with the deviousness of the Daleks on display here -- they've even got people helping them set up a new source of power, under the pretense that with their own power the Daleks "will be twice as...useful."  Although you get the impression that the Daleks aren't actually that great at being this cunning, but the humans are so thick that they never notice anything amiss.

"Daleks conquer and destroy!" (The Power of the Daleks
Episode Five) ©BBC

It's episode six that sees Whitaker finally unleash the Daleks upon the colony.  There seems to have been a successful revolution while the Daleks are chanting at each other, oddly; Janley runs into Bragen's office to tell him that "We've won!  The revolution's over!" despite the fact that there was no evidence that the revolution had even begun.  (Apparently the revolution wasn't televised.) But Bragen's not done; he orders Janley to wipe out the rebels as well.  It's into this scene that the Daleks finally show their true colors, exterminating the populace of the colony indiscriminately.  It's a brutal affair; from the telesnaps alone you can see at least a dozen bodies lying in the corridors.  The Power of the Daleks sees the Daleks not only at their most devious, but also at their most deadly; although we've been told before how ruthless the Daleks are, we've never actually seen them quite this lethal, as seemingly almost the whole colony is wiped out by their guns.  It's only a plan by the Doctor which defeats them -- a plan which not only involves sending Bragen's guards to be killed as a delaying action, but also seems to involve destroying the colony's main power supply in the process.  Yes, the colony is safe from the Daleks (albeit with only two of the guest cast surviving to the end), but they don't seem happy about it.  "It'll be months before we can get things back to normal," Valmar complains.  The Doctor takes this as his cue to leave, and the TARDIS dematerializes next to a melted Dalek -- whose eyestalk twitches upward as the TARDIS departs...²⁹

The Power of the Daleks is an exercise in mood.  It sets up the Daleks in the first episode, but it waits until the last to finally set them upon the unsuspecting colonists.  This means that their presence dominates the intervening episodes, even though they're doing little more than insinuating themselves into the colony's workings and routines.  It's therefore the human drama that drives this story forward, and fortunately this is one of David Whitaker's strengths.  He makes the conflicts interesting, so that you can't help but be drawn in, even while you know that the Daleks are dangerous and can't they see that?  Whitaker sets up the contrast between the Daleks and the colonists in such a way that the pointlessness of the politicking is made eminently clear.

And it's into this environment that the new Doctor Who is dropped.  I've mentioned a couple of differences between Troughton's Doctor and Hartnell's earlier (such as Troughton's decision to get on with destroying the Daleks without convincing the authorities he's right), but what's most striking is how quickly we come to accept this new man as the same as the old.  By putting the new Doctor up against the Daleks, we're shown how, even though he may look different and act different, at heart he's the same man, dedicated to fighting injustice and stopping an evil force like the Daleks.  (Although stop and ponder for a moment how the show's focus has changed since its beginning; there's nothing to suggest in An Unearthly Child that the Doctor wants to stop evil, but by this point it's a natural aspect of the Doctor's character -- and it'll be overtly stated as such in just a few episodes' time, in The Moonbase.)  Like Polly and then Ben, we come to accept that this new man is the same Doctor as before, so that by the end of the story, Patrick Troughton is the Doctor.

So The Power of the Daleks is a wonderful story, full of strong characterization and a sense of impending doom.  This story remains high on my wish list of "stories I'd like to see returned to the archive" (even if it's very low on the list of "stories likely to be returned to the archive", with only two copies of the prints known to have been sold overseas, one of which was returned to London and (presumably) destroyed).  A fabulous story to introduce the new Doctor with. 







²⁹ Or so we're told.  There's no evidence of this in the telesnaps, but presumably it's mentioned in the scripts.

March 11: The Power of the Daleks Episodes Three & Four

It's interesting; we've seen Daleks be deadly, and we've seen them be heartless, conquering dictators, but we've never seen them behave this deviously before.  These two episodes show us the Daleks acting with great cunning, seemingly helping the human colonists, but really just trying to get them to give the Daleks power and materials to use for their own ends.

But what's perhaps more fascinating is how David Whitaker manages to keep the Daleks in the front of the audience's mind while focusing on the human interactions and the power struggles going on in the colony.  The rebels, being led ostensibly by Lesterson's assistant Janley (who makes herself thoroughly unlikeable by the end of episode four), are much more concerned with seizing control of the colony (for reasons never made explicit beyond power for power's sake), while Lesterson wants to be left out of the politics.  Bragen, the colony's security chief, has his own agenda.  And meanwhile the Daleks are gathering strength...

Another interesting thing to note comes in episode three.  Once the Doctor realizes that no one is going to listen to his order to destroy the Daleks, he decides to take matters into his own hands and creates a device to kill them off.  He's unsuccessful, of course (or else this story would be over), but it shows how this new Doctor is more concerned with doing what he thinks is best without trying to convince others of his position, as one might imagine William Hartnell's Doctor doing.  And the end of that scene, where the Dalek futilely clicks the spot where its gun was, is quite powerful.

The Doctor realizes the Daleks must be reproducing. (The
Power of the Daleks Episode Four - from Doctor Who Photonovels:
The Power of the Daleks - Episode Four) ©BBC

Really though, it's to Whitaker's credit that he manages to keep the Daleks as a ticking bomb in the background of this story while making the human characters' interactions sufficiently compelling to sustain interest. Lesterson undergoes the best development, as he begins to get nervous about what he's done at the end of episode three, only to descend into a full-blown panic by the end of episode four.  He does consider destroying the Daleks sooner, but Janley blackmails him, telling him that Resno was killed by the Daleks and that she'll say Lesterson murdered him.  She wants the Dalek project to continue, so that the rebels can take over the colony.  It's a petty, human reason, but it ends up being a driving force behind the subsequent events.  But it's what Lesterson witnesses at the end of episode four that ends up being the most important factor, as he sees the Daleks' production line, creating more and more fully operational Daleks.  Their chant of "We are the new race of Daleks!" ends up being a chilling one, and one can only imagine how Lesterson must feel, as his world crumbles around him and he knows it's his fault.

March 10: The Power of the Daleks Episodes One & Two

So we've just witnessed an impossible event, as the Doctor we knew and loved appeared to change in front of our eyes.  The Power of the Daleks picks up right where we left off, and even though we know that William Hartnell isn't coming back, we're still uncertain just as to who this strange new man is.  And the story, rather than trying to reassure us that no, this is the same man, seems to gleefully make us doubt even more.  Other than a moment with a mirror, where Patrick Troughton momentarily sees his previous version, and a bit of dialogue here and there, there's a concerted effort to wrongfoot the audience, as well as the Doctor's companions.  They make it a point to show that the Doctor's old things don't fit the new Doctor anymore: his cloak threatens to strangle the new man, and the Doctor's ring is much too big.  And this new version keeps referring to the Doctor in the third person, with lines like, "The Doctor was a great collector, wasn't he?" and "The Doctor kept a diary, didn't he?"  It's a bold move, making the audience as uncertain of what's going on as the characters in the story, and even the provided explanation isn't as much help as it seems: "I've been renewed.  It's part of the TARDIS; without it I couldn't survive."

And then they take this strange new character and insert him into a story about an isolated Earth colony.  But unlike the previous story, this isn't a base under siege from outside forces; this is a colony with its own internal struggles (there are mentions of rebels and political factions), and one into which a dangerous element has been introduced: the colony's scientist, Lesterson, has discovered a space capsule in the mercury swamps.  The Doctor gets mistaken for an official from Earth called the Examiner, and so he discovers what Lesterson has found: a capsule containing Daleks -- Daleks which might not be as dead as initially thought...

Episode two finds us moving a little further along.  The presence of the Daleks throws things into sharp relief: we may not know for sure if this is still the Doctor, but he stands opposed to the Daleks just like the old Doctor would, so we can't help but trust in him.  But what's fascinating about writer David Whitaker's approach here is that, unlike in previous stories where the Daleks are introduced at the end of the first episode and then fully unleashed, here the Daleks remain both in the background and the focal point of the episode.  The Daleks seen here don't have any power, so we see instead Lesterson's efforts to bring them back to life.  The Doctor, in his assumed role as the Examiner, demands that the Daleks be destroyed, but no one is willing to listen to him: "You're exceeding your authority," Lesterson says.  And so while the Doctor is trying to get someone to order the destruction of the Daleks, Lesterson manages to bring one back to life.

This leads to the climax of the episode, when a Dalek glides into the meeting room where the Doctor is talking to Governor Hensell.  The Dalek seems to recognize the Doctor, focusing in on him, and we finally believe that yes, this is in fact the Doctor, the same basic man as William Hartnell.  But then, as the Doctor tries to convince the colonists of the Daleks' nature ("The thing it does most efficiently is exterminate human beings.  It destroys them, without mercy, without conscience"), the Dalek begins chanting, "I am your servant" over and over, drowning the Doctor's warnings out, and you realize how devious these Daleks are...