The Underwater Menace

"Blimey! Look at him! He ain't normal!"

Animated recon courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

I read the novelization of this when I was nine or ten years old. It was the hardback edition from WH Allen. The local library had a whole collection of these hardback Doctor Who novels with beautiful covers. It made a huge impression on me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Many years later I was to discover that The Underwater Menace is considered one of the worst Doctor Who serials ever, a reputation which I think is entirely undeserved.

Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out in About Time that this is the Doctor Who story that comes closest to what was going on in the 60s TV Comic strip, with lots of insane plots, a cranky Second Doctor and mad scientists. The resemblance is even stronger when we notice that the Doctor signs his name as Dr. W, providing yet more confirmation that he really is called Dr. Who. Perhaps my affection for the TV Comic helps to make me sympathetic to this story or just my fond memories of the Target novel.

In many ways The Underwater Menace is cartoonish and silly. It's plot is utterly ludicrous, it has many derivative elements and the most outrageous mad scientist ever. Yet so much science fiction really is like this. You can find elements of this story in Jules Vernes and H. Rider Haggard. There are plenty of B-Movies that are pretty similar to this serial, the sort they always show at 2:00 PM. I really do not see how The Underwater Menace is really all that sillier than Invasion of the Dinosaurs (possibly the most bonkers Doctor Who plot ever) or even The Green Death (toxic sludge that makes maggots become bullet proof).

The plot is full of holes and is a bit of a runaround, with lots of getting captured and escaping again (hardly unique in Doctor Who). It is full of action, however. It is not a story that will send one to sleep. It's difficult to judge the quality of the final scenes of Atlantis being flooded, but you can't fault the ambition displayed. The surviving episode reveals some really horrible direction and some appallingly sloppy fight scenes. On the other hand, the scene at the end of episode one, with Polly menaced by surgeons about to turn her into a Fish Person is quite chilling and effective.

It might be supposed that the Fish People have been thrown in just because somebody thought the story needed a monster. They are, however, quite interesting visually, especially with their balletic swimming. The concept behind them is very reminiscent of the Cybermen, as is their appearance. The notion of being surgically altered is quite a frightening one and is captured quite well here.

It is not just the Fish People that look good; most of the sets are very well designed, despite being pathetically small. There is a real sense of a distinct and alien world, a bit like what we got in Gerry Anderson's Stingray show. The costumes are also very creative and make a strong visual impact. Polly looks glorious after replacing her hospital gown with an Atlantean seashell dress! The musical score is also very atmospheric, with the spooky organ music giving it a really dark mood.

Professor Zaroff is certainly the most bonkers of bonkers Teutonic scientists. Can anyone believe that somebody would attempt to destroy the world just for the sake of doing it? You might have thought that turning people into fish was a big enough achievement in itself. It is as though a character from a children's' cartoon had suddenly been given an extra dimension. That said, he is awfully entertaining. You can't watch it without all joining in with the immortal line "Nothink in ze vurld can stop me now!" It's not like we haven't recently seen any motiveless camp villains on Doctor Who recently. Anybody who dismisses The Underwater Menace while praising episodes featuring the eyepatch-wearing Kovarian is an hypocrite. The servant girl Ara, played by Catherine Howe, was a pretty good non-regular character. She had the potential to become a companion (probably a better one than Victoria), though with three companions on the TARDIS at this point that was not going to happen.

Troughton is great as Dr. Who in this story. He is so wild and eccentric and he looks hilarious in his gypsy outfit. I really wish writers had continued to have Dr. Who dressing up in disguises as the Second Doctor was prone to do at this stage. There is something delightfully anarchic about the Second Doctor in Season 4 that was lost in the next two seasons.

Ben is fantastic in this story, along with The Macra Terror (where he becomes a Daily Mail reading fascist) he is at his best. Polly does not fare so well and does an awful lot of whimpering. It's remarkable how Polly alternates so frequently between being plucky and resourceful to being completely pathetic. Still, being threatened with monstrous surgery must be pretty traumatic. Jamie fails to make much impact in his first story as companion proper, but it's always tricky for writers to manage three companions.

Anybody who likes Indiana Jones or James Bond films ought to be able to recognise the entertainment value of The Underwater Menace. To my mind this is much more fun than The Moonbase or The Ice Warriors. Season 4 is definitely the most interesting phase of the Troughton era. It is such a shame that fun stuff like this was replaced by routine stories about returning monsters and bases under siege.

The Smugglers

The Doctor : "You are now travelling through time and space."

Ben : "Yes, well, make sure I get back by tea-time!"

Animated reconstruction courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

Perhaps a good deal of charm in watching this story today is that they don't make anything resembling this these days. Historical adventures are pretty much a dead genre. There are historical dramas with lots of emotion and serious themes, but historical adventures with lots of swashbuckling, black-hearted villains and hidden treasure are a thing of the past. I have never actually seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but the impression I get is that they are more in the realm of fantasy than historical action adventure. Perhaps it is a little surprising that this jolly pirate story was followed in the same season by The Highlanders, which is essentially another pirate story. While this story is on the surface a more light-hearted story than The Highlanders, it is apparent that the Troughton story is treated as more of a comedy, particularly in the lead actor's performance. While The Highlanders is enjoyable, the comedy feels out of place in such a dark story, while in The Smugglers, is able to tell an exciting adventure, not quite a comedy, but with a keen sense of fun.

The most obvious difference between The Smugglers and The Highlanders is that the latter provides a swashbuckling pirate adventure that arises from its historical setting, while the former makes no real use of it's historical location (other than the frequency of smuggling in that era). The Smugglers would not have looked out of place in the Colin Baker, with a change of setting to a far future space colony and the pirates as thuggish Sawardian types. It has to be said that the 17th century offers an awful lot of missed potential for historical stories, with events like the Civil War, the Monmouth Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution. One of the really sad things today is the lack of awareness of this period. Our schools teach kids about the Nazis and Henry VIII, but seem to miss out on this much more fascinating period of English history. Likewise film and television producers are fixated with the Tudors and seem to forget about the far more interesting Stuarts.

Obviously we don't know quite what this looked like, as no episodes survive. Nevertheless, given the BBC's talent for producing great historical drama, we can imagine that this looked quite fantastic. Judging from the audio recordings, most of the performances are pretty impressive.

This is the first story with Ben and Polly as companions proper. I love the way that the Doctor explodes with rage when he finds them aboard; there is something adorable about the way the Furst Doctor lost his temper. After they have left the TARDIS it becomes clear that he is coming to accept the arrival of young strays as routine.

Ben and Polly are a glorious companion team. It's tragic that they have only one completed story in the archives. Ben is tough and heroic, but not in the rather stiff Dan Dare mode of Ian Chesterton. As much as I love the original TARDIS team of Season 1, the cockney sailor is a good deal more fun than Ian. Polly is simply delightful. Her Received Pronunciation makes her seem as though she is from another world. Oh for the days when middle class girls spoke properly! Regrettably, the writers were never very consistent in their portrayal of Polly, even within the same story. One moment she is bold, confident and resourceful; another moment she is whimpering at the sight of a rat, as she does here.

One difficulty of this story is how little Ben and Polly seem to take it seriously. They adjust remarkably easily to the realisation that they have been transported to the 17th century. Then when locked in a dungeon, having been accused of murder, Polly talks about how much fun she is having! We could look to the philosopher Baudrillard and say something very postmodern about this. We might suppose that if a person from the Sixties who was used to watching swashbuckling ITC historical adventures were to be transported to the 17th century and placed in the midst of vicious pirates, she might indeed treat this as only a virtual reality equivalent of what she was used to seeing on the television or in the cinema.

There is no complex characterisation here, but we do get a wonderful cast of characters, the vicious Cherub, Longbottom, the creepy church warden, the corrupt squire and the remarkably heroic taxman, Blake. These people are so colourful!

This is not deep and educational like The Massacre or full of emotional drama like The Aztecs, but it is a wonderfully fun escapist adventure story. I doubt that any future Doctor Who producer will ever make anything like this.

The Highlanders

I watched this animated recon of The Highlanders on YouTube. It's pretty poor animation, but it's better than staring at still photographs. The similarity to the Captain Pugwash cartoons is rather appropriate given that this is a pirate story.

I fondly remember reading the novelisation of The Highlanders when I was nine years old. Unlike Jamie, I liked Redcoats a lot, so it had natural appeal. A year later, I persuaded my parents to take me on holiday to Inverness, so I could see Culloden and Loch Ness (for Terror of the Zygons). I had a copy of Travel Without the TARDIS at the time (remember that book?).

It is unfortunate that so much Season 4 was lost because it is a much more interesting season than Seasons 5 and 6. At this point, the Troughton era had not yet turned into a routine of monsters and bases under siege. There is a diversity to this season that was entirely missing from the next, made up for only partially by the James Bond experiment of Enemy of the World. Making some more historicals in Seasons 5 and 6 would have injected some much needed variety into the Troughton era.

Rather than giving us a story about the battle of Culloden itself (which would have looked pretty awful with four Redcoats and four Highland rebels), The Highlanders serves up a good old-fashioned pirate story with swashbuckling and keelhauling. Everybody loves a jolly pirate story; it's perfect for light entertainment. The Highlanders delivers exactly the right mix of historical adventure and comedy. It is also a perfect story to showcase Troughton's broad range of acting ability by having him put on various disguises. It is rather a shame that the Doctor so rarely gets to operate like this, because it is quite hilarious. Of course, this is early Troughton, with him not quite settling on the persona that would see him through the next seasons, but he is a wild and anarchic figure who never fails to bewilder his opponents and entertain the viewer.

Both Ben and Polly are served well by this story. Ben is highly entertaining doing his cockney sailor routine amongst a bunch of Scots. This is perhaps Polly's strongest story, with her showing initiative and daring in capturing and blackmailing Ffinch. It is unfortunate that in other stories she is left to whimper at monsters or serve coffee. She has a great rapport with Kirsty. Kirsty is hilariously dumb and one actually sympathizes with Polly when she calls the girl a 'stupid peasant.' Polly's received pronunciation is quite delightful to listen to. Wouldn't it be nice if middle class girls spoke properly like her these days? According to a transcript, Polly has trouble running in her heeled shoes and kicks them off to go barefoot, like Romana 1 in Stones of Blood. You can't tell this from the audio or the photographs, so it might not be correct, though she did the same thing in the novel The Murder Game. Polly and Romana 1 are unusual companions in having footwear trouble. Tegan, Peri and Jo never had any trouble running or climbing in heels. The BBC Wales costume designers seem to be sensitive to this and always put female companions in sensible footwear (as well as some of the most boring and unimaginative costumes ever).

A lot of the guest cast slip into standard historical tropes and stereotypes, but that is what you expect in a light-hearted historical drama. With a pirate story, you need a wretched scurvy seadog captain like Trask and a gentlemanly officer figure like Ffinch. The production values for this story on the whole appear pretty high, with some enchanting location filming and studio sets that look pretty decent. It is tragic that this was the last proper historical, as it is a great example of the strengths of the genre.

The Moonbase (BBC audio)

I was completely bored out of my skull listening to this audio. This story was the second novelisation I read (after Revenge of the Cybermen) when I first took an interest in Doctor Who, so I knew the story pretty well. I did not get anything out of listening to this audio recon. I really don't know why I keep buying these CDs, it just seems utterly pointless.

The Moonbase is similar in plot to The Tenth Planet, but it adds a new dimension in giving the Cybermen stealth infiltration tactics. Thus, it became the standard template for the classic base-under siege story. I imagine it was probably quite exciting the first time round, but after watching so many other variations on this story, it really is quite uninteresting.

I love Troughton and I appreciate that his era is much celebrated by fans, but for me this is the period when Doctor Who went wrong. After the wild diversity of the Hartnell era, we ended up with Doctor Who becoming a show about monsters and Body-snatcher style alien infiltration. It's only when we get into the Graham Williams years (a period with its own faults, I know) that there was a real attempt to move away from monster themes.

The Second Doctor writers gave the Doctor a new sense of direction and purpose, but it is not a particularly interesting one. Troughton's Doctor basically summed it up in this story:

There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.

This Doctor is all about fighting monsters. The word 'bred' suggests things that by their very nature are evil. The Doctor does not explain what the things are that we are supposed to believe in, he just assumes we are all in agreement. I don't mind the Doctor using lethal force to deal with threats and danger; I don't see him as a pacifist, I just don't care for the Troughton idea of the Doctor as a wandering monster-hunter.

The Two Doctors and Warriors of the Deep can be seen in different ways as satires of the whole Moonbase approach to Doctor Who. The Two Doctors subverts and deconstructs the values of the Second Doctor. The unreflective viewer is shocked to see the Second Doctor applying his 'terrible things' logic to the humanoid and rather amusing Androgums while forgetting that we don't mind him being beastly to the alien Sontarans. Warriors of the Deep, on the other hand, subverts the structure of the base-under-siege genre. In place of the needlessly complex and padded plots that we typically get, we have an extremely linear plot. The solution to the alien menace is revealed right at the beginning making the ending obvious. Instead of focusing on how the Doctor will save the day, the emphasis is placed on the pointless and terrible carnage involved. Both stories have been savaged by traditionally minded fans.

The Cyberman voices are cool in this story, though I prefer the more human sounding Cybermen in The Tenth Planet, where interestingly, Ben feels remorse about killing one.

The Evil of the Daleks

Daleks terrorize a bunch of Victorians.

The Evil of the Daleks has a reputation amongst some fans for being one of the greatest Doctor Who stories ever. As it has mostly been lost, one ought to suspend judgment on the matter. It is simply impossible to tell the original quality of this serial. One thing that annoys me is when people draw up lists of Top Ten Doctor Who Stories and then include incomplete stories like Evil of the Daleks. It is simply unfair to compare complete with incomplete stories.

The Evil of the Daleks is a massive sprawling story. I am tempted to suggest that it could have been a bit shorter. It is one of those epic stories like The Daleks' Masterplan (though it does have a much stronger plot than that story). Perhaps because of the length of the story, there are quite a few plot elements that do not make a huge amount of sense.

There is something of a tendency to rely on stock characters in this story. Kemal, the silent, strong Turk is a dreadfully cliched ethnic stereotype. New companion Victoria is also pretty awful in this story, though thankfully she does improve in Tomb of the Cyerbermen. I think the popularity of Victoria is mostly due to the awe in which Season 5 is held by fans. The Doctor, on the other hand, is wonderfully portrayed, coming across as dark and manipulative. The character of Jamie is also used well here.

There is something of a mystical tendency to this story. The idea of the 'Human Factor' and the 'Dalek Factor' is hardly a scientific notion and comes across as a little bonkers (largely because it is treated as something scientific, rather than something spiritual). The experiments with time travel seem to have more to do with the Occult than with science. The Daleks seem to be almost a demonic force in the way they are summoned up by Waterfield's experiments. This idea is rather ruined by the cute, comic Daleks that have been influenced by the 'Human Factor.'


The Emperor Dalek is a fantastic creation and its voice is quite menacing. Naturally, because it is incomplete, it is hard to evaluate the overall look of the production. The use of the Dalek toys that differ significantly from the t.v. props does not stand in the serial's favour.


The classical music score gives this serial a quite different flavour. This is a production that was clearly meant to make an impact and it does some interesting things. I have some doubts that it is really the classic that fans imagine it to be, however.

The Macra Terror

"It's just possible that you've been given a series of orders while you've been asleep. You know, "Do this", "Do that", "Do the other thing". My advice to you is: don't do anything of the sort. Don't just be obedient. Always make up your own mind."

This story shows Doctor Who at it's most liberal; challenging authority and encouraging questions about how society works. It is a quite thoughtful story. Being quite a conservative person, I struggle a little with the notion of "Don't just be obedient." As a Christian, I believe that it is in obedience to the Bible that human beings find their identity and purpose. If one rejects the authority of God's Word, one must follow some other authority, even if it is one's self and that authority will always be fallible.

I have watched this story with the telesnaps and also listened to it without. As the telesnaps are very poor quality, I think one is better off just listening to the audio. I think I very much prefer listening to Colin Baker's narration instead of Frazer Hines. Hines never quite sounded like he was taking it very seriously. One advantage of seeing the telesnaps, however is being able to see the rather surreal opening scene with the majorettes and the even more surreal music. It's nice that a similar scene with the majorettes and the same music concludes the serial. The idea of making a space colony look like an holiday camp is rather inspired. The show would again bring up these very British institutions in Leisure Hive and Delta and the Bannermen.

The Macra Terror has been criticised for attempting to do an intelligent, thoughtful story and then sticking in a bunch of giant crabs. Personally, I quite like the idea of doing a clever surrealistic story with a fun B-Movie monster thrown in for good measure. Doctor Who has always been good at working on different levels and pleasing different demographics within the audience. True to this, the script also has some nice humour, with the Doctor's jumping in the 'rough and tumble' machine in order to deliberately mess up his clothes, as well as Jamie's demonstration of the 'Highland Fling.' Patrick Troughton is delightfully manic in this story, yet shows a deep and wild cunning throughout.

The minor characters in The Macra Terror are as developed as they need to be for the story to work. The regulars stand out far more, however, with Jamie developing an ever stronger bond with the Doctor. Ben always had a tendency to get very worked up about things. Here it works quite well because of the mind control influence. I just love the moment where he turns into a Daily Mail reader and demands that the Doctor be placed in the mental hospital. Polly does a lot of whimpering in this story, but she also manages some subtle sarcasm. She tells Ola that his job title of Chief of Police 'sounds very important' and she reminds Ben that 'the voices are our friends!'

The Macra are very much a Quatermass alien. They are a force of nature that remains unknown to the end. Unlike other alien races, they do not boast about their plans of galactic conquest or their superiority and in fact do not communicate at all. We cannot be sure if they are sentient or just a form of advanced bateria, as the Doctor suggests. Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood raise the question, in About Time, of the morality of the Doctor's actions in wiping out the Macra. Of course, we have all seen Gridlock and know that the Macra were a race of conquerors, but this retcon ignores the fact that the Doctor knows nothing of them. There was no reason not to think that they were the native inhabitants of this planet. Whiling they are exploiting the humans, there is no indication that they have any plans to kill the colonists. It seems that the Doctor simply sides with the colonists just because they are less alien.

The Macra Terror is usually dated in the early phase of human colonisation. It is interesting to see the range of dysfunctional societies that are found amongst the early colonies. The colony in Power of the Daleks is full of scheming little Napoleons, the colony in The Happiness Patrol is a ruthless totalitarian state where even emotions are subject to state control, on Androzani Major, ruthless capitalism rules the day, Nightmare of Eden indicates that many early colonies were ravaged by drug addiction and in the society of this story, people are obsessed with pleasure. It seems that in the Doctor Who version of the future, mankind will take some time to adjust to living on other worlds.

The Tenth Planet

"Have you no emotions, sir?"

We can be very thankful that only one episode of this is lost from the archives, particularly given the wholesale decimation of the rest of this season and the next.

The Tenth Planet is a real turning point in the history of the show. Not only does it feature the first regeneration of the Doctor and the first appearance of the Cybermen, but it is also the first in a long series of 'base under siege' stories. Unless we count The Sensorites, it is in fact the first 'base under siege' story. Having seen so many of such stories, the fan watching this for the first time might well feel a sense of deja vu that would be quite different from the experience of the original viewers.

We can well imagine that the original audience would be baffled by the transformation of the Doctor in the final episode. The departure of Hartnell was inevitable given his ill health. In this final story he remains inactive for nearly the whole story. It is therefore left to Ben to take on the proactive role in this story (while Polly is shockingly left to make coffee). Yet despite Ben's activity, the TARDIS crew play little role in directing the course of events. As with an historical, they are left as bystanders and witnesses to inevitable events. This makes for a rather odd narrative, but not an uninteresting one.

Michael gives a pretty decent performance as Ben. The character he plays is a bit of a cliche, but in this he carries it off well. Anneke Wills is also great as Polly, defying the Cybermen. The guest cast are all very cliched and not very noteworthy. We get to hear some typically unimpressive American accents.

Few will deny that the strongest part of The Tenth Planet is the Cybermen. Their first design is remarkably different to later appearances, with the cloth face mask and the distinctive voices. While I like the later designs, I love the fact that these early Cybermen seem so human. They are not at all robot-like. Ben even feels remorse when he is forced to kill one of them. They seem rather more individual than the Troughton-era Cybermen, who often came across as mindless zombies.

The whole business with a moving planet is rather bizarre and just a little unbelievable, but never mind. Finally, I think it's so charming that the First Doctor addresses a Cyberman as 'sir.'

The Faceless Ones

The Second Doctor and TARDIS crew meet a group of shape-stealing aliens at Gatwick airport.

We should be very grateful that episodes 1 and 3 of this story survive intact. It is always delightful to see Patrick Troughton moving onscreen.

The Faceless Ones is heavily influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers and captures a good deal of the creepiness of its inspiration. The idea of stealing an whole identity is rather disturbing.

The airport setting is interesting and creates a sense of claustrophobia, as well as inevitable tension between the Doctor and the authorities. Unfortunately, however, the real atmosphere of a busy airport is missing.

The use of a contemporary earth setting marks out one of the changes that had begun at the end of the Hartnell era and the Troughton. The Doctor was increasingly interacting with the commonplace modern world, a development that would culminate in the earthbound Petwee years. The realism of season 7 has its roots here, with the lack of alien visual elements for much of the story.

We see the unfortunate habit of the black and white period of getting rid of companions for whole episodes. Ben and Polly play little part in their own swansong and their departure is remarkably unmemorable.

The alien race is not well characterised as a whole, though unusualy they all have different personalities (which makes a change in Doctor Who), and come across as a little cowardly. The divisions amongst them are harnessed by the manipulative Doctor.

Patrick Troughton puts in a magnificent performance. He gets so flustered by the red tape of the airport. I love the fact that he is almost as much in the dark as Jamie is as to what a passport is ("It must be some official mumbo jumbo"). Jamie is also used highly effectively.

Jamie is given a love interest in Liverpudlian pseudo-companion Samantha Briggs (Pauline Collins). It is perhaps a little disappointing she was not selected as a companion, as she would have been a stronger figure than Victoria Wakefield. We also see some strong guest cast action in Colin Gordon, who plays the Commandent and Bernard Kay, who plays Inspector Crossland from Scotland Yard.

The Faceless Ones is undeniably heavily padded and slow, but it is a delight from a much unseen period of Doctor Who.

Power Of The Daleks

The newly regenerated Second Doctor smells a rat when he meets friendly Daleks on a space colony.

Its hard to review a story that has so little of the original footage. At least we have the Telesnaps reconstruction and plenty of photographs. It is a great injustice that so little of this story survives, because it is a really good one.

It must have been a bizarre experience for viewers seeing the Doctor regenerate for the first time. A lot of them found it just too much too handle. The story rather reflects this with the companions, Ben and Polly treating the Second Doctor with suspicion. Perhaps the more recent fan who is familiar with Patrick Troughton might be a little troubled by Ben's hostility and aggression towards the Doctor.

It is probably the Doctor's recognition of the Dalek's and his determined confrontation of them that reassure the viewer that this really is their Doctor.

The great thing about the Daleks in this story is their cunning. They pretend to be faithful servants of the human colonists but are plotting to exterminate them all. In later stories, the Daleks lacked this cunning and needed Davros to do their thinking for them. The Daleks ruthlessly exploit the divisions in the human colony.

Patrick Troughton gives a great perforance as the new Doctor. He has not quite made the role his own yet, but he introduces the new clown-like persona. I particularly like the moment where he avoids his companions' questions by playing his recorder. We also see something of his manic frustration as he fails to persuade the colonists of the dangers of the Daleks.

The story takes a cue from Gogol's The Government Inspector, with the Doctor impersonating the murdered Earth Examiner. David Whitaker's writing is a good deal cleverer than any of the Dalek stories of Terry Nation, who had a tendency to resort to stock plots.

Power of the Daleks has some great, well-drawn characters. The power-hungry woman, Janly is particularly well portrayed, but full marks also go to the misguided scientist, Lesterton. The evil cunning of the Daleks is matched by the ambition, arrogance and ruthlessness of the colonists. The Dalek's question "Why do human beings kill human beings?" is poignant.

The high body count in this story is surprising, one almost feels like the Saward era is here already. I am not a big fan of massacres in Doctor Who. Still, many of the colonists, like Janly, deserve their fate.

One thing I paricularly love; Polly is given a futuristic colony outfit that includes a pair of flip flops. I am glad to see that flip flops will still be in style in the days of space exploration!