The Underwater Menace

"Doctor Who and the Fish Men", "Doctor W and the Fish Men", "The Underwater Menace Behaving Badly"

“The One with the Eastern European-American” (USA), “Oh Cod! We've Haddock Now!” (Crap Puns Monthly)

Doctor W goes to Atlantis but doesn't find a hugely breasted woman this time.

*** - It appears that this will be the last Doctor W story to be released by the BBC which obviously means it must be the best as it is perfectly natural to save the best for last.

Zaroff: "I can think of only a handful of things in ze world that could stop me now!"

Doctor: "You disappoint me, Professor. I didn't think that a man of science needed the backing of thongs!"

Anneke Wills was a committed vegetarian and insisted on written proof that any "fish people" harmed during production were in fact only people and that no fish were in danger.

It is a myth that the myth that Joseph Furst adopted a ridiculous accent was only a myth.

This was one of seven explanations offered during the twenty six years that Doctor W ran for the destruction of Atlantis. An eighth is that Colin Baker ate it.

In episode one you can clearly hear John Noakes recording a Blue Peter feature on the making of Doctor W. Mark Ayres has assured his fans that he won't be removing it during the restoration of the episode but will be taking out the director telling him to "shut the f*** up - we're birthing television over here" at the insistence of the BBC's anti-swearing unit.

Actually, all four episodes of this story exist in the BBC's video archive as they can't find a single church, former employee or British colony willing to "discover" them in their basement due to the shame it would involve.

Si Hunt

"I was in the midst of a fascinating project - 'The History of Eastern European Accents in British Telefantasy 1965-1968' - and decided to pay a visit to the then Communist east to do a little research. I was stopped at the border and asked the purpose of my visit. I pushed a book across the desk (one of mine, not some miscellaneous tome, I wouldn't want you to think my plan was beneath contempt) and indicated my purpose via the universal language of hand signals. Perchance be became a little confused by photograph of "Alpha Centauri" on the cover and thought I was visiting for unsavoury purposes. He called across to one of his colleagues who, brandishing a pistol, began shouting at me. I had had more than enough of this nonsense.  "Не будьте плох тупоумно" I said with a mixture of school boy Russian and an expressive face. "Я должны здесь изучить родной язык. Я намереваюсь вы никакой вред, камрады." I think that I managed to smooth things over as they took me into a back room and, isntead of beating me to a bloody pulp they merely gave me a full and detailed c-a-v-i-t-y search which was filmed for training purposes. Sadly I was bundled out of the country before I could learn the Russian for a-n-u-s. That would've impressed Doctor Flapjack no end."

Oddly, Geoffrey Orme didn't work much after this

But the director, Julia Smith, did ok for herself