Day 148: The Underwater Menace Episode 4

We've come to the end of Jamie's first adventure in the TARDIS, so let's make a brief comment on how he's fitting into the TARDIS crew. To be brutally frank though, he isn't making that much of an impression. This is mostly due to his character not orginally being in the story, so he takes the role that would have been taken by Ben in the original script, meaning that both character's roles are effectively halved from what they would originally fulfil which draws to attention the fact that Jamie is perhaps a bit of a bad idea. I'm not saying that he won't amount to much, because he certainly will, it's just that the series is now running with two young male leads, and this is causing a bit of a problem as it means that the characters just don't really work well together. What we have is a crowded TARDIS, where we have three characters that writers have to figure out roles in the plot for, and that is possibly too much for the series to handle. What this means is that the series might have to lose a companion or two, and soon, if it wants to stay alive.

Day 147: The Underwater Menace Episode 3

The video clip at the top of this entry represents so much about this story. Because it really gets a wonderful chance to showcase the villain of the piece, Professor Zaroff, who has obviously gone on diving tours of French rivers, which is to say, he is completely In-Seine. But what's interesting about his insanity is how brutally it is portrayed. We see a man who is relatively in control of his actions at the start of the adventure, but he slowly loses it until, at the end of episode 3, he comes out with "NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!". Not that this insanity comes from nowhere, given that he is a man who is aiming to destroy the world not for revenge, but for the achievement of being the guy who blew up the Earth. So, what we have here is a character who is written and portrayed as hammily as possible, but is this actually a bad thing? On the one hand, it stretches credulity for the storyline, drawing to attention the fact that it is just a cheap BBC programme, where actors don't go to to engage with dramatic material, they just do it for a bit of fun. But, on the other hand, it is remarkably fun. And it's difficult to deny whilst watching Professor Zaroff go insane that you can't help but smile at what's happening, and that means that the series has the ability to not just have actors having fun on the set, but for this to translate through the screen to the audience. And that is part of why Doctor Who is successful, in that it can be an incredible amount of fun to watch. The question that has been over our heads for the past couple of weeks remains though, of whether Doctor Who can survive without William Hartnell. The answer is obvious though, as the show will now continue and continue. You see, NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP IT NOW!!

Day 146: The Underwater Menace Episode 2

The cliffhanger to the last episode ranks as one of the darker in the series' history, which is odd considering the sheer zaniness of everything that surrounds it. The context is that Polly is thrust into a surgery, where a menacing Doctor hold a hypodermic needle and states that after this tiny little jab, as far as she will be concerned, she will be a fish person. This is a terrifying fate as can be seen in the image to the right. But the transformation itself is not as terrifying as the way in which it is directed and performed, with the cliffhanger itself being placed right near the needle in question, building on the childhood fear of needles. And this is something that we haven't come across in Doctor Who as much over the course of the series so far, but we will do quite a bit over the coming years, and that is the idea of making ordinary things terrifying. In this case, we're building on things like hospitals and needles, things that children already view with a certain amount of unease, but after this they will probably have these things inextricably linked with turning into fish people. Indeed, it was deemed far too terrifying for Australian children, who had the offending scene cut out from the programme to protect their fragile minds, but this means that one of the only surviving sections of this story is this thoroughly disturbing scene, meaning that it's free to give nightmares of fish people for a whole new generation.

Day 145: The Underwater Menace Episode 1

Seriously though, there is no way that this could have
been taken seriously with costumes like these

Doctor Who has decided to visit a B-Movie, as we arrive in the lost kingdom of Atlantis. I say B-Movie not so much as an insult as a statement of fact, as the entire episode feels gloriously awful and yet entirely watchable. Take, for instance, the fact that Ben, Polly and Jamie are, for trespassing in this lost continent, being lowered into a shark pit, or the costumes, which defy ridiculousness as that's not strong enough of an adjective to describe them. This is not, I stress to add, a bad thing, because it brings another healthy dollop of fun to the series. People may dismiss this, but it's worth noting that when Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis, the current producer and script editor, came into the series, they wanted to make it far more serious, and this showed, particularly in stories like The Savages or The Tenth Planet, both very humourless adventures. But now we've reached a point where they're willing to accept fun and ridiculousness every once in a while, because you can't remain serious all of the time, sometimes it pays to just relax and have an adventure where everyone wears silly costumes. But, then again, there are hidden dark secrets behind even the silliest of moments, and we'll have a look at some of them later on...