Doctor Who A-Z #32: The Underwater Menace (1967)

The Underwater Menace is, by most estimations, rubbish. Patrick Troughton knew it when they were filming, and nobody has contradicted him since. In most of Doctor Who Magazine‘s occasional polls it ranks in the bottom ten stories of all time, which is almost impressive. The script, credited to Geoffrey Orme, is so ropey that my friend Tim wondered if it was one of those Alan Smithee-style pseudonyms people use when a writer wants to distance themselves from an unsatisfactory finished product – “Geoffrey or me?”. But Orme was real, and he had a prolific career, so this is one of those unfortunate Twin Dilemma instances where a respectable writer has the misfortune to come a cropper on one of the few 1960s television shows which is still pored over and debated over half a century after it aired. The six episodes of Ivanhoe Orme wrote in 1958 might be brilliant, I don’t know. I don’t even know if they still exist. 

This is another one where we have to consider the effects of the BBC’s disastrous 1970s archive policies on what we’re actually watching, because as of 2021 half of The Underwater Menace does not exist. And even that’s an upgrade; until episode two was rediscovered ten years ago, the only surviving part of this serial was the third episode. Perhaps no Doctor Who serial would be considered a masterpiece if we only had episode three to go on, but this episode three is a special case. Beginning with a PA audibly yelling an actor’s cue at them, it notoriously concludes with Joseph Furst as the serial’s villain Professor Zaroff yelling “Nuzzing in ze vurld can stop me now!” In between, there’s a bizarre, over-reaching and frankly space-filling sequence where the Fish People, this story’s thinly-conceived weird creatures, do a kind of underwater ballet, supported by extremely visible wires. 

The Fish People are commonly cited as one of the serial’s most embarrassing failures, which kind of makes sense and kind of doesn’t. They look – even by the standards of 1960s Doctor Who – terrible, completely unconvincing and unscary. Except they’re not really meant to be scary; the plot pivots on the Doctor’s allies, including an inexplicable comedy Irishman who’s in Atlantis for some reason, successfully convincing them that Zaroff has enslaved them and they should band together and rebel. (Whatever other flaws it has, The Underwater Menace is at least staunchly pro-union) This effort to create monsters who aren’t really monstrous is, arguably, more mature than much of the later Troughton era, which usually runs by the ethos that anything that looks ugly is bad. So why doesn’t it feel more mature?

One of the dirty secrets of Doctor Who fandom is that we can tolerate anything unless it makes us look childish. Most fans – particularly those who, like me, found the show during its 1990s wilderness period – will have been mocked for their love of a “children’s show”, usually by fans of some trendier pop-cultural franchise which eschewed Doctor Who‘s humour and whimsy. The irony is that it’s this exact sense of humour that’s kept Doctor Who alive; a lot of the science fiction and fantasy that was considered adult and mature in the 1990s now looks infantile and kitsch. (Exhibit A: pretty much any superhero comic published that decade) But we insist, wounded, that it is not, cannot be, a children’s show, and then something like The Underwater Menace shows up and leaves us with egg on our faces.

The attitude that Doctor Who is not a children’s show is almost right; it’s a show that can be watched by children, a lack of prescriptiveness that means it can also be watched by anyone else. The Underwater Menace, by contrast, is the work of a writer deliberately, consciously dumbing his work down to a child’s level. The stories produced by Graham Williams skew young in many ways, yet they’re also clever, literate, witty and well-acted. The Underwater Menace, by contrast, is a story where the Doctor and his friends discover the lost city of Atlantis by finding a door in a cave, then going down the lift to Atlantis. Asked why he wants to blow up the world, Professor Zaroff says all scientists dream of doing this, which they don’t. (OK, maybe Lawrence Krauss) This approach to characterisation extends through the whole cast. There are three companions here, which often proves a challenge for writers, and sure enough the only thing we learn about Ben in this story is that he isn’t keen on Daleks. At least we can carry through some knowledge of what he, Polly and Jamie are like from their previous stories; the guest cast don’t even get that to work with. Only two performances cut through the blandness.

One is Joseph Furst as Professor Zaroff, which makes sense: nuzzing in ze vurld, not even this script, can stop him now. Furst’s performance is actually pretty egotistical; hired to play this silly part in a series he wasn’t a regular of, he essentially spends the whole time signalling that he realises the script is bad. The other stand-out performance is Patrick Troughton, who obviously doesn’t have the option of puncturing the show’s reality: he has to come back next week. In a strange way, then, The Underwater Menace is more of a proving ground for his Doctor than The Power of the Daleks. Anyone can be good when they have a superb David Whitaker script behind them, but it takes real talent to be good in this.

Troughton’s Doctor is obviously having fun, right from the opening scene where he eagerly hopes he’s going to see some dinosaurs. That in itself is not a radical take on the part – despite his reputation as the series’ Mr. Grumpychops, William Hartnell’s Doctor was perfectly capable of enjoying himself in stories like The Gunfighters. But Troughton’s version of fun is more adaptable. It emphasises the Doctor’s optimism and innocence in all situations, rather than just the ones which start off as a holiday. In a darker story, it brings hope, reminds you that one person, at least, seems to think this will all work out fine. In a story like The Underwater Menace, it finds the story’s level without stooping to it. Orme’s script is childish, but Troughton’s performance is childlike. Similar words, yes, but one is vastly more rewarding to watch than the other.

Next: The Moonbase (1967)

Graham’s Archive – The Underwater Menace

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