The Underwater Menace

It's 1970 and the TARDIS lands on an island in the Mediterranean Sea. The Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie head out to explore and are all captured and taken far underground to the lost world of Atlantis. The people here are an ancient culture who worship the fish goddess Amdo, and resident scientist from the world above, Zaroff, has added to their standard of living by genetically altering some Atlantians into hybrid Fish People to harvest underwater bounty to feed the kingdom.  But Zaroff's ambition does not end there; he has promised to raise Atlantis above the waves once more, but his plans may have dire consequences for the rest of the world...

Oh dear, as the Doctor would say. This one isn't very good. Plot wise it runs out of gas by the middle of episode two when Zaroff reveals his grand plans for Atlantis, leaving the rest of the screen time to a lot of running away and being captured and running away again. And if the lack of plot isn't enough to make this a less than thrilling episode, the fact that the script had to be reworked by splitting the lines of the companions up to accommodate Jamie's presence might do it as well. The Doctor goes in disguise again and doesn't seem to have a full handle on his character until he's face to face with Zaroff and his insanity, and then the second Doctor finally comes into his own and squares off against the evil.

Um. Yeah.

Notable notes though have to go to the design team for coming up with the Fish People costumes. I woul
dn't go so far as to call them... good. No. I wouldn't. But to their credit the actual underwater sequences were shot well, in slow motion with no strings visible on the actors as they "swim". Other scenes were shot in a tank at Ealing studios in water which by all accounts was nothing you would actually want to swim in, but they did it anyway.

And in other costume mentions, Polly's temple girl disguise was a heap of old clamshell ashtrays sewn into a vague dress form; it looks uncomfortable and in interviews later Anneke Wills confirms that it was murder wearing it. But hey, all is not lost: check out the black wetsuits on Ben and Jamie. Fraser Hines says he's been told it looked sexy but he doesn't see it. He's not seen Madonna's Human Nature music video I reckon.

I remember when I first read the novelization of the story (and I remember
buying it at the long gone Dragon Lady comic shop on Queen West in Toronto) I thought it all felt a little simple and vague, but when I got hold of the audio versions from BBC Radio Collection and saw the (at the time) only existing episode I was pretty much convinced. Recently though episode 2 was discovered and released on DVD with episode 3 and telesnap versions of the other two episodes for a rather lacklustre experience. I found the novelty of having never seen episode 2 before not really enough to make me all enthusiastic, although there was always the climax of episode 3 with Zaroff screaming "Nothing in the world can stop me now!" as a redeeming moment of sorts.

Honestly, though, if Mystery Science Theatre 3000 ever riffed on a Doctor Who episode, this would be the one.

NEXT EPISODE: THE MOONBASE