Warriors Of The Deep: Ranking - 259

   Warriors Of The Deep

(Season 21, Dr 5 with Tegan and Turlough, 5-13/1/1984, producer: John Nathan-Turner, script editor: Eric Saward, writer: Johnny Byrne, director: Pennant Roberts)  

Rank: 259

''In which we end up 20,000 leagues under the sea and about £20,000 under the budget the show should have got

Or 'Warriors on the Cheap' as fans call it, for all sorts of reasons. I'm probably one of the last fans to experience the joys of getting to know certain DW stories from the Target novels first, before videos or repeats became more commonplace. I only ever read maybe 75 of them (50%ish) and last read one for a story I didn't know 30 years ago, but its funny how some of these stories you read in a book stay with you longer than some stories you saw on TV a month ago. This is one of those stories. On the printed page Johnny Byrne, a writer more known for comedy-dramas like 'All Creatures Great and Small', turns in a tense, claustrophobic parable about the cold war and power blocs. This must have been incredibly chilling to read at the height of the 'real' cold war, even if this one (spoiler alert) turns out to be manipulated by the Silurians and Sea Devils to kill off humanity (unless, of course, that wasn't Ronald Reagan all the time but a DW monster in a mask. Weirder things have happened in politics after all). It's gripping stuff on the page, with the Doctor the only person who can clearly see what's going on and less people willing to listen to him than normal, while the sea base setting is dark and sinister, filled with tough credible characters desperate to survive against imaginative monsters, humanity separated from destruction by its own oceans by a flimsy metal frame that can break at any time. Seeing this story on screen not long after was such a colossal disappointment however. That eerie base was heavily lit, making it look more like an artificial studio set than ever. The new monster, The Myrka, is ridiculous - a costume that's performed by the 2 guys who always did Dobbin the Horse in Rentaghost (because they had 'experience' of costumes like this one). One of the tough no-nonsense Human captains is played by Hammer Horror's Ingrid Pitt, which wasn't how I imagined the part when I read the book, let me tell you. And the tension? It evaporates in seconds when the clearly bored cast open their mouths. All those good serious heavy ideas that could have made this one of the deepest DW stories ends up looking like a pantomime on screen, proof positive that even a great script is no good when you botch a production as badly as this. Things were so rushed, in fact, that there's an infamous moment when Tegan brushes against a wall and paint comes away on her dress because it had only just been painted and they hadn't no time for another take (I'd love to explain it away, like all good DW fans often do, but repainting walls would be an odd thing to do in a base when under siege). Everything critics usually trot out about DW having sub-par budgets, wobbly sets and wobblier acting are wrong 99% of the time, but this is the one story where they might have a point. As the show's big return, following the show's 20th anniversary in 1983 accompanied by one of the biggest publicity blitzes it ever got, lots of people tuned in for ep 1 but not many stayed for ep 4. The show's ratings won't recover for the rest of the century.

Positives+ By heck that script's good though. It was a tough read in 1989/90 when it looked as if we knew how the cold war ended. Reading/watching this in 1983, when the world really was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, this must have been terrifying. Exactly what 1980s DW should have been doing in other words and a plot I'm surprised the show didn't do more often (not till 2013's 'Cold War' in fact, set a few months before this story went out).

Negatives - The Myrka is a case of multiple departments getting it wrong at the same time and multiple people dropping the ball when someone could have easily stepped in and stopped it. The writer should have known that over-sized monsters never work in DW - there are so many precedents by 1984. The costumers and special effects teams messed up royally. Instead of hiding the finished product with close-ups or shots in darkened tunnels, the way other directors have done in the past with bad effects, Pennant Roberts shows the thing off in full light and actually lingers on it. The producer JNT could have said 'no' at any stage, but didn't. The scene where Ingrid Pitt aims a kung-fu kick at the Myrka before running off while it shuffles behind her slowly (the actresses' idea not in the script) is one of the most wretched scenes in all of DW. No wonder the Doctor says 'oh dear' as he sees it (a line in both script and book meant to convey fear, but spoken by Peter Davison with pity for how bad it looks).