The Underwater Menace

It's a cold day in winter and I'm here alone. I can't think of what I'm going to write about "The Underwater Menace", so I fear I might actually have to watch it to gain some inspiration. I draw the curtains, fix myself some lunch, and pull out the "Missing Years" tape which rests, as it always does, at the start of the episode. Well, how often do you watch the whole of the tape, including Part 3 of "The Underwater Menace"?

As it starts it becomes apparent why I could think of nothing to say about this silly, wretched old episode. The Doctor seems to be about to be sacrificed at the alter of a temple, where lots of fat camp people in silly hats are worshipping a God called Amdo. They all close their eyes, the Doctor escapes and so they think it's a miracle. They must have been pretty stupid in Atlantis. Next, we meet two people called Sean and Jacko, names more suited to members of Busted than an Atlantean Tribe. Sean is a comedy Irishman who calls people "laughing boy".

We're in a marketplace now, where lots of people are wearing shells on their heads (you see what they did there?). It's becoming apparent that this is one of those scripts that everybody disowned soon after it started being made. There's a reckless, unfamiliar and slightly smug touch of amateurism about it, which leads to lines such as "Saltwater? Well what do you expect, this is Atlantis!". Or perhaps it was Joseph Furst, giving a performance which, like the later "work" of Graham Crowden and Alexei Sayle, the production team must just have realised they were stuck with. When actors clearly aren't bothered about trying, like Martin Clunes in "Snakedance" or Richard Briers in "Paradise Towers", you can easily feel justified in hating them and at least be consoled that you understand Doctor Who more than they did. But Furst is worryingly giving it his all, and probably believing he's good. He's not.

Troughton's Doctor is still the clown here, although Dame Edna is a more convincing female than his famous washerwoman disguise, in which he looks more like Rolling Thunder era Bob Dylan. It was natural for the first newly regenerated Doctor to be played as a younger man in line with his more youthful appearance, but isn't it interesting how this approach always leads to a darker, more manipulative side eventually coming to the surface? Think also what Sylvester McCoy's similar buffoonish portrayal produced beyond Season 24. There's actually one really gruesome dramatic moment here, where Zaroff stabs someone (can't remember who, sorry) right through the heart with a spear. Unfortunately his big fluffy comedy hair bobbles up at the exact moment of impact so all dramatic tension is lost.

Doctor Who was always at its most silly when it tried to portray religion, especially involving worship by people with stupid hair. Here we have some of the most formidable eyebrows in Who, a race of people who live off seafood and the most rubbish gunshots in history at the end, Margaret Hayhoe stamping on a paper bag just off set we imagine. It's an appallingly directed sequence whose fade into the end credit occurs about six seconds too late, giving Joseph Furst the chance to look around in the absence of doing anything worthwhile once the script had finished. This was obviously the production that depressed Julia Smith enough for her to invent Eastenders years later.

"The Underwater Menace" was a silly, silly story. I think I'll brave the cold now and walk down to the shops. I can't see my thoughts lingering for too long on Amdo, Zaroff and the Fish People though. What a load of rubbish.