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...

Day 130: The Smugglers Episode 4

Here's the thing about The Smugglers. It is very 'meh' as a story. There is honestly nothing much to remark about the story itself in this. We've had this problem before, but at least those times the story was interesting enough to keep my interest. Here, I've just watched the last episode and would be hard pressed to tell you what happened over the course of the serial. Is this a bad thing though? By having a story that is average, at least it's not bad, and so audiences won't turn off in embarrassment. But that is missing the point, because averageness does not lead to audiences keeping interested, there is nothing here that will make the viewer want to continue watching. Even with stories that I didn't entirely enjoy, such as The Web Planet, that at least had spectacle and ambition to keep interest. Here, there is absolutely nothing beyong a middling story and some pirates with the promise of an action scene later on. The series is becoming duller as it grows older, it needs some brave new idea, and quickly too.

Day 129: The Smugglers Episode 3

This story has only a handful of surviving clips, most of which are from the Australian censors, to prevent young children from being traumatised by too much violence. The clips in question consist of a man being stabbed, and a man wiping blood off of a pike. It's curious to note the changing tastes in violence over time, because these scenes aren't exactly violent. But what it does do is show us how violent the series is, or rather isn't. There haven't been any other censor clips so far, because nothing of violence has popped up in the series, instead it's all been rather tame sword fights and ray guns. But to be confronted with blood and death before your eyes shows you how much more adult the series has become. But this is adult in a different sense, before we've dealt with darker themes but we've moved into the world of the less subtle. Doctor Who has changed, and it's about to change more.

Day 128: The Smugglers Episode 2

This story features pirates, an interesting historical concept to visit in the series. This is mainly because pirates are both incredibly interesting and characters who are beloved for their swashbuckling action, but they also never quite seem to work in fiction. There's excitement, yes, but it sometimes fails to materialise. This can be said for this episode especially, which is mainly dialogue scenes with the occasional escape from prison. It doesn't help that this story is currently missing from the BBC archives, as it enhances the problem here, as we constantly fail to see any action occurring on the screen. This is mostly due to delayed gratification, where we have things being set up for a pay off at the end. This could work in some fields, such as film or literature, where it is possible to consume the media within a single sitting, however it is substantially more difficult to continually wait for a piratical action scene over the course of four weeks, the transmission length of this story. Doctor Who needs to change, because the way in which these historical stories are now being written is not all that exciting, and audiences are moving away.

Day 127: The Smugglers Episode 1

New story today, and it's Ben and Polly's first trip in the TARDIS. They react to this in the usual way, not choosing to believe that they have travelled in time, despite the large evidence to the contrary,mgiven that they have gone into a police box that is bigger on the inside and obviously travelled through space, but the time travel seems to be a little too unbelievable for them. This comes across as poor writing, given that these characters just accept these things as they happen. But this shows us one of the mahor problems with having a rotating cast as we have for the past while, it means that we have to tack on scenes to explain the concept of the show every once in a while, for new characters, but rarely new viewers, because it is by now well known enough in the public consciousness for the idea of a man who travels in time to be part of regular life. Also, it means that writers are unable to write for characters, instead writing for roles. If this story featured Steven and Dodo, then it's a fair bet that the only things that would be changed are the disbelief at time travel and the names would go from Ben and Polly to Steven and Dodo. Whilst we will get to see these characters develop (as much as we can for a 1960s adventure serial), it's still going to be a while. It's a disappointing reminder of the differing ways in which television was written in those days.