By Geoffrey Orme
“Nothing in the world
can stop me now!”
The Doctor,
Polly, Ben and new companion Jamie McCrimmon find themselves on a beach near a
cave that looks somewhat mysterious and begs to be explored. Upon investigation they group ends up getting
captured and finds themselves far underground in what is the missing city of Atlantis
Finally the
fans get to see The Underwater Menace episode two which was found in December
of 2011 legally. There is a leaked rough
copy on Dailymotion that came out years ago that wasn’t remastered and is
pretty hard to watch but was adequate enough.
Now we have the two remaining episodes together on the same DVD, Episode
3 was released on Lost in Time Box set, and now we can watch the full
story. Well there will be more on that
later on in the review.
First off
the story isn’t all that bad and it is not all that good either. It is
somewhere in the middle and for the most part I enjoyed it as I have always
enjoyed the Troughton era and the 2nd Doctor and if the 5th Doctor wasn’t my
favorite he would be. The story is a
simple mad scientist story with lots of escape gets captured scenarios thrown
in. The premise isn’t a bad one as lots
of science fiction stories deal with the destruction of earth but this one just
seemed too simple and the conclusion was a letdown as The Doctor just threw a
couple of switches to save the day.
Zaroff is one of the maddest villains The Doctor has ever encountered
and also one of the most of the top. Not
sure if Joseph Furst intended that way or that was the direction given to him
but his performance is pretty entertaining and his confrontations with The
Doctor are really well done and worth watching this story for.
The
Underwater Menace is the first story to feature Frazer Hines as a
companion. This follows The Highlanders
and you can tell that there wasn’t anything written for him as he and Michael
Craze were sharing lines and for most of the story seemed to be joined at the
hip as every scene in the story they were together. Unlike in The Moonbase
where Jamie was ill for ¾ of the story there wasn’t much they could do but to
let him share lines. This story was
written before they made the last minute decision to cast Frazer Hines as a
companion after The Highlanders and it wasn’t until The Faceless Ones where he
really comes into his own. The
Underwater Menace part two is the earliest surviving Patrick Troughton
story. With most of his stories missing
there isn’t much for the fans to see.
But fortunately with The Underwater Menace we get to see him develop the
Second Doctor that we all know and love.
By part three we see his Doctor emerge and it is quite interesting to
see how he just changes direction mid story.
Now for the
disappointment of this DVD and it’s not the overall story but the recons or
telesnaps that they used. As you know
episodes one and four are missing so instead of using animation like they did
with The Moonbase and The Ice Warriors they choose to go the route of using
recons or telesnaps with the existing audio like they did with The Web of Fear
episode three. Now The Web of Fear
episode three was done well and helped with the narration of the story you
could not say the same for what they did with the missing episodes of The
Underwater Menace. The recons that they
used for episodes one and four are just horrible. This was an embarrassment to watch. I was pretty shocked at what I saw and for
someone paying around 20 to 25 pounds or dollars this is a disgrace. BBC Worldwide went so cheap that they did not
even give us full opening credits. It was just a picture of the title Doctor
Who with the theme music playing. The
recons looked like they were slapped on as an afterthought. It was so frustrating watching episode one
and four as it was hard to follow what was going on. At times you had the same picture for at
least 5 minutes when other things were happening. How can the viewer possibly follow the
story? My favorite was seeing the
drowning Zaroff for what seemed like forever when you knew other stuff was
happening. There are tons of photos they
could have used to help the story along with the recons but this was just utter
crap. For shame BBC Worldwide and thanks
for treating the fans like crap again.
Do yourself a favor and watch the Loose Canon recons for episode one and
four of The Underwater Menace instead as the fan made ones are far superior.
One of the
other highlights is the two documentaries The Television Centre of the Universe
and A Fishy Tale. I really enjoyed A
Fishy Tale as Frazer Hines and Anneke Wills among others talked about the
making of The Underwater Menace and what they liked and disliked about it. I found it really interesting to listening to
them talking about what they remembered about this story and what Patrick
Troughton thought of the script. It was
fun to watch them praise and rip into the story as they were all under
agreement that it wasn’t the greatest story but after watching it again they
agree it wasn’t the worst and they really liked the underwater filming scenes.
The
Television Centre of the Universe is the second part of the Doctor Who farewell
to the now closed Television Centre.
Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson come together and share
their memories of recording Doctor Who and working at Television Centre. It had lots of funny stories of things that
did not go right and mishaps which makes this documentary a really enjoyable
watch and worth getting this DVD for.
I’m glad these two documentaries final got released as they were really
well done and the fans shouldn’t have had to wait so long to see them. Watching these was a good reminder of the
good that BBC Worldwide can do when they put their mind to it and a good legacy
for the added value material that we have known for the Classic Doctor Who DVD
range.
So if
you’re a fan of Doctor Who this DVD is indeed worth getting despite the shoddy
job on the recons as there is enough good stuff to watch and you get a good
glimpse of the early days of the Troughton Era.
DVD Grade B
+
Recons Grade F
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