By Jessica Holmes

Geoffrey Orme’s ‘The Underwater Menace’ is technically not very good. The plot is very silly, the costumes are sillier, and the acting has to be seen to be believed.

And yet, I was grinning all the way through.

EPISODE ONE

With new companion Jamie, the TARDIS arrives on an island south of the Azores, and the crew soon run into trouble. Captured and whisked underground by a load of weirdos with conch shells on their heads, they soon find themselves about to be offered up to the sea goddess Amdo. Things are going about as well as they usually do, in short.

It turns out that they’ve stumbled upon the long-lost city of Atlantis. Yes, really.

Oh, and there’s a Russian scientist living down beneath the waves. Not sure how he got down there, but he’s been feeding the Atlanteans with…plankton. Tasty, tasty plankton. Mmm.

I’m not sure how they were eating before he arrived. They’ve supposedly been down there for thousands of years but are relying on plankton farmed by fish-people with surgically implanted plastic gills, all thanks to Professor Zaroff (Joseph Furst).

This serial is a lot more fun if you don’t mind the inconsistencies.

Luckily for the Doctor and his chums, Zaroff arrives in time to save them from becoming shark food. Zaroff and the Doctor hit it off, and the younger folks go off to make themselves useful (not that they get a choice in the matter). Ben and Jamie are off to the mines, and Polly soon ends up being prepared for surgery–They’re going to turn her into a fish!

“Polly, you speak foreign, go talk to him and ask him where we are.” Ah yes, the two languages: English and Foreign.

EPISODE TWO

Fortunately for Polly, a servant girl called Ara (Catherine Howe) comes along just as all the lights go off (thanks to the Doctor’s inability to leave electrical equipment alone) and whisks her to safety.

The Doctor flatters Zaroff as the scientist of dubious mental stability explains just what he’s doing here in Atlantis. The priesthood has come to think of him as some sort of messiah, since Zaroff has promised to raise the city from beneath the waves. Tiny little problem: he can’t actually do that. What he can do, however, is dig through the Earth’s crust and drain the Atlantic ocean until the sea level is lower than the city.

This triggers a fear in the Doctor that by digging a hundred miles down to the Earth’s core, he’ll flash-boil the ocean to steam and crack the crust of the Earth, blowing the planet apart.

“Just one small question. Why do you want to blow up the world?”

There is so much wrong here I’m not sure it's worth debunking it point by point.

Let’s just say: The crust is thinner than that, but even so you still can’t dig through it, and you’d still be nowhere near the inner core of the Earth even if you did. As to Earth blowing up? No. Just…no.

But let’s pretend that this is how the Earth works, because a mad scientist hell-bent on blowing up the world just because he can is a lot of fun. I guess he got tired of waiting for certain nations to stop playing nuclear chicken.

Down in the mines, the boys make the acquaintance of sailors-turned-miners Sean (P.G. Stephens) and Jacko (Paul Anil), who have a compass and a plan to escape.

Meanwhile, Polly hides in the temple, and the Doctor slips away from the lab by doing what he does best: messing around with stuff until he causes enough chaos that nobody notices him leave.

While snooping around the place, the Doctor learns that the priest who almost threw him to the sharks earlier, Ramo (Tom Watson), has no great fondness for Zaroff. He steals a moment to talk to him in the temple, and tells him about the coming destruction of Atlantis. Naturally horrified, Ramo asks the Doctor if there’s anything that can be done to stop Zaroff.

Perhaps there is, but they’ll need the help of the ruler of Atlantis, Thous (Noel Johnson). The priest agrees to help the Doctor, lending him a disguise so they can sneak through the city.

Jamie, Sean and Jacko escape the mines through the tunnel network, emerging in the temple, where they reunite with Polly.

The Doctor and Ramo bring their case before King Thous, but don’t get to explain much before he makes his decision:

Zaroff can do with them as he will.

EPISODE THREE

Zaroff gets a solid eight out of ten on the dramatic entrance as he waltzes into the episode, and he’s not best pleased with the Doctor. The pair are sent to the temple for sacrifice, and instead of the shark tank, they’re to be beheaded. Perhaps the sharks had already eaten.

However, before they get the chop, the voice of Amdo rings throughout the temple, commanding her followers to avert their eyes. I think you can see where this is going.

The Doctor and the priest slip out of the temple and into the tunnel behind the statue of the goddess, where Ben is hiding.

The other priests delightedly tell Zaroff and Thous of the miraculous disapparition, but Zaroff is no fool. He knows there was nothing miraculous about it. Thous, on the other hand…

Meanwhile, the Doctor fills the others in on what’s been going on, and comes up with a plan: starting a union. No, really. He sends Sean and Jacko to go and encourage the fish people to go on strike. The Atlanteans have no food stores, given how quickly their seafood spoils, so it won’t take long at all for them to cave into whatever demands the fish people make of them.

As for him and his companions, they’re going to kidnap Zaroff.

In disguise, the Doctor and his pals attract Zaroff’s attention at the market, leading him on a merry chase to the temple, where the gang corner and subdue him.

While they’re doing that, Sean and Jacko rile up the fish people, and there’s a long, long, LONG sequence of them slowly ‘swimming’ about (you can see the wires) and spreading the word about the strike. I think perhaps the script came up a little too short, and boy does it drag.

There’s also something deeply creepy about the fish people. I think it’s the way their mouths gape underwater. They look like they’re screaming all the time!

Zaroff claims that the Doctor is too late to stop his plans, but of course the Doctor won’t take his word for it. Things take a turn when Zaroff suddenly collapses. The Doctor can’t risk Zaroff’s plan coming to fruition, so he takes off with Ben and Jamie, leaving Polly and Ramo to watch over Zaroff–a fatal mistake.

No sooner has the Doctor left than does Zaroff stab the poor priest and abduct Polly. He can’t get far however, as the Doctor realises he needs the priest to help him navigate the city, and doubles back–just in time for Ramo to shuffle off this mortal coil. The lads are quick to act, catching up to Zaroff and forcing him to flee without Polly. She doesn’t have much to do in this serial, so being briefly kidnapped will have to do.

With the fish people now in revolt and the ruler willing to listen to their demands, it looks like it’s all coming undone for Zaroff–or is it?

When Thous finally sees Zaroff for the madman he really is and tries to arrest him, Zaroff whips out a pistol and guns him down, with his minions dispatching the royal guards.

And then this serial truly embraces its B-movie sensibilities with a line so hammy, so cheesy, that it would make a delicious toastie.

“NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!!!”

EPISODE FOUR

The Doctor and Ben find Thous moments after Zaroff leaves, hurt but still alive. They bring him to the rest of the group, and the Doctor decides on a last-ditch plan of action: destroy the sea wall, flood the lower levels of Atlantis, and destroy the lab.

He sneaks down to the lab with Ben, and with no real idea what they’re doing they get to work on sabotaging the reactor.

Meanwhile, Polly and Jamie, separated from the rest of the group, soon find themselves hopelessly lost–and the walls are starting to glow.

Drowning or radiation sickness, which will get them first, do you reckon?

The sea wall crumbles (because… oh, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure nobody in the story does either. Magic radiation?) and everyone starts heading for higher ground, with Jamie and Polly beginning to doubt they’ll ever find a way out. Fortunately, Polly is a champion for women everywhere–by which I mean she pouts and whines and needs Jamie to help her walk along a corridor.

I can excuse all the B-Movie shoddiness in the world as long as it’s fun, but the sidelining of Polly does actually irk me.

I can’t help but think that this plan has an awful lot of collateral damage given that all they really needed to do was keep Zaroff away from the great big plunger that blows the Earth’s crust open. How many people were down there, and how many made it out? Nobody thinks twice about anyone outside the little group, but I have to wonder.

The Doctor and Ben manage to trick Zaroff into leaving the lab, and then lock him out and flee from the rising water. Zaroff is not wise enough to follow them, and the water overwhelms him, still reaching for the plunger.

Everyone makes it to the surface, but not all together. Thinking that the Doctor has perished, the Atlanteans swear to build a new temple and raise a stone in his honour–prompting an odd rant from a minor character about religion being the source of all their problems in the first place. Well sure, but their society was extremely reliant on Zaroff in other ways too. He’d have had enormous influence with or without the support of the temple.

Then again they were feeding people to sharks with regularity, so maybe the new Atlantis would be better off without them.

And without the fish people, too. It’s not clear what happened to them. Presumably they’re fine, given they breathe underwater.

The Doctor and his companions reunite, with Jamie having settled into the gang quite nicely. He needs a bit more time to shine on his own, but I like him so far. Once back inside the TARDIS, the kids tease the Doctor that he can’t actually steer the ship–to which the Doctor strongly protests. Of course he CAN steer the ship, it’s just a lot less fun that way.

Nobody let the Doctor get behind the wheel of a car. He’d drive blindfolded the wrong way down the M6 just to have a laugh.

To prove his point, the Doctor decides to take everyone to Mars.

And to prove him wrong, the TARDIS veers wildly out of control.

I wonder where they’ll end up next?

Final Thoughts

So, this serial is stupid, and bonkers, and absolutely has the soul of a B-Movie…and it’s great!

There have been plenty of higher-quality serials that I haven’t enjoyed half as much as this one, because the greatest sin Doctor Who can commit isn’t badness; it’s dullness. Bad can be good. Bad can be bizarre, fun, entertaining to poke fun at and talk about. The costumes may be shoddy, acting hammy and the script an outright disaster, but it succeeds in the way that matters most. It entertains. Boring is just boring. Trying to wring entertainment out of a dull serial is like drawing blood from a stone.

This is technically bad…but that’s why it’s good.

I am a simple woman; I enjoy a mad scientist and a silly end-the-world plot. Did the plot entirely make sense? Well, no. Look at any one element too hard and the whole thing dissolves like wet tissue paper.

The acting’s pretty much par for the course. Troughton continues to delight, as expected, and our lead villain doesn’t disappoint when it comes to chewing the scenery. I was surprised there was any left by the time he was finished. A serial this silly hinges on the villain, and Zaroff is just plain fun to watch–and “NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!” has become a household phrase. Well, it has in my household. Well, it has for me, personally. Everyone else is begging me to stop.

This is not hard, serious science fiction, and I don’t think it was ever meant to be.

And that’s just the way I like it.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars.