The Underwater Menace: Ranking - 238

    The Underwater Menace

(Season 4, Dr 2 with Ben, Polly and Jamie,14/1/1967-4/2/1967, producer: Innes Lloyd, script editor: Gerry Davis, writer: Geoffrey Orme,  director: Julia Smith) 

Rank: 238

'So where do you see yourself in five years, Professor Zaroff?'

'I shall be living in Atlantis with a bunch of fish people vorking as my slaves and zen I shall drain ze waters of ze Earth oceans and become controller of the entire world, ahahahahahaha! I mean, I zee myself as a team player working for the company and working my way up the corporate ladder. the ladder of...power wahahahahaha! wait, forget I just zed that.'

By the great God Amdo this is a weird story. A fun story mind you, but a weird story all the same. This is the DW story that, more than any other, resembles a cartoon strip with colourful exaggerated characters, nonsensical plots and bonkers logic, made at a time when, more than any other, DW resembled 'serious' semi-realistic drama. It seems wrong to say that a story set in Atlantis and populated by a mad professor and a set of fish people is even weirder than it sounds, but it is. After all, this isn't just just any mad professor but Professor Zaroff, the maddest of all mad professors, the sort of man who can't walk into a room without making a song and dance about it, never mind make speeches about destroying the Earth. He's the sort of man who rolls his 'r's while rolling his eyes even when he's reading out his grocery list. His plan is mad even for a mad professor, with a machine that will drain the Earth's oceans and, um, presumably Atlantis' fish diet entirely too though he doesn't seem to have thought of that. As for the fish people, well, they're the only species in Doctor Who to get their own underwater ballet sequence. It says something about the story though when these fish people, complete with gills and mute like Marina from Stingray, are about the least daft thing in it. Usually when DW goes wild and wacky the Tardis regulars are our root to sanity but this story is pretty much unique in making them seem just as wild and strange - particularly the 2nd Doctor whose best described as 'manic'. Nobody in the production team seemed to know quite what to do with his Doctor in the early days except to make him different to the 1st, which means airy and mercurial to his stable earth and fire. In 1st story 'Power Of The Daleks' this unpredictable Doctor works because the Dalek threat was so serious and well drawn. It kind of worked in 2nd story 'Highlanders' because the tale of the Jacobites is so dark and grim (even if that's not always shown on screen). Here, though, The Underwater Menace's biggest problem is that there's no root to reality and when nobody is taking the threat seriously it all rather falls apart. This story is of huge important for the future though. partrick Troughton is smart enough to know he's never going to match Joseph Furst's Zaroff for instability so by the end he goes the other way and starts making his Doctor quieter and more dangerous and suddenly it works. That's all a bit late, though, for a story that seems to have modelled itself on 'Batman'. It is, if you're in the right mood, a whole lot of fun. It's also, if you're in the wrong mood, a bit fishy with no plot or characters to get your teeth into. It's definitely, given that we never have a story even close to this again, something of a red herring.

Positives + While some of the budget has been questionably spent, particularly the fish people's stick-on gills and Joseph Furst's dialect coach, the sets this week are amazing considering the budget in 1967. Rather than have lots of little rooms and corridors as normal to run around in most of this story takes place on three giant sets, a market square, a temple and a base that really does fill with water. All are fabulous. While I suspect this story isn't high on anyone's dream returned missing episodes list it's a particular shame that only half this story exists as its one you really need to see, not just hear. The brief 'censor' clip from episode 4 where Zaroff 'drowns' is a real production tour de force, far more so than the episode 3 ballet that exists in its entirety (for a while this was the only episode from Troughton's first season kept in the archives because this sequence was considered so 'special'. Which is certainly one word for it). The 2nd Dr, Ben, Polly and Jamie family unit are also one of the best in Who and I could gladly watch them all day. Even when surrounded by ballet dancing fish people.

Negatives - We don't get a lot of back story for where Professor Zaroff came from before ending up in Atlantis. Somewhere on the Germany-Austria borders perhaps judging by the accent, possibly via Skaro. Wherever it is, its the sort of place you need subtitled for even if you're a local. Even if you come to this story last (and it is the last DVD of the 20th century episodes released to date, courtesy of the recovered episode 2 in 2015) nothing prepares you for how unhinged and OTT Joseph Furst's performance is compared to anything else anyone in the series ever did. Up to and including Brian Blessed. Altogether now: 'Nozink in ze world can shtop me now!' Weirdly his acting is almost subtle in everything else he did, from 'Doomwatch' through to 'Diamonds Are Forever'.