Over the course of this blog, I've come across episodes that are pleasant surprises. They're the sorts of stories that I look forward to each night that I watch them, because I'm legitimately interested in what's happening. An example, for instance, is Doctor Who and the Sliurians, a story that was all about subterranean reptiles who previously inhabited this planet and now want to take it back from the humans. It was fantastic because it had a strong idea, excellent monsters, superb direction, and wonderful characters. Warriors of the Deep is a sequel to that story, and has virtually none of that.
The obvious way in which Warriors of the Deep fails, in my opinion, is through the characters. Doctor Who and the Silurians was filled with interesting and distinct characters. Take, for instance, the two main Silurians, a young one and an elder one. The elder was keen to make peace, and was open to discussion with the Doctor about their lives, however the younger one was more keen to attack, killing others in their wake and escalating events to an inevitable destructive conclusion. And those are just two of a fantastic cast of characters that made up the story.
Warriors of the Deep, on the other hand, is filled with cardboard cut-out characters. There's evil foreigner, evil alien, good natured human male, good natured human female, all of these characters are painfully generic. But it's not just that, it's the fact that we never really get to spend any time getting to know them, which was one of the clear benefits of Doctor Who and the Silurians. The closest we come is the Doctor and Icthar (the leader of the Silurians) having a conversation where Icthar says that he's not going to bother with peace and instead he's going to go for all out conflict. There's no sense of Icthar as a character though, we only see him as a plot device that is causing trouble for the humans on the Seabase because we never get any time to see him consider his actions.
In a way, this entire story can be summed up by the way in which the Silurian redesign is handled. They previously had a third eye, which was used as part of their technology, as well as to see and to cause pain to humans. Here, it's reduced to a light that flashes on to indicate which Silurian is talking. It's the essence of this story: something that was once weird and wonderful reduced to something entirely functional.
As the Doctor says at the end of this story, "There should have been another way".
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