N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Episode 3 of The Underwater Menace has to be seen to believed: it’s absolutely crackers!
“You’re not turning me into a fish!”
Polly, The Underwater Menace: Episode 1
From hapless priests to hapless guards and hapless companions with everyone running around like headless chickens and Professor Zaroff getting more bonkers by the second, it’s twenty-five of the silliest minutes of Doctor Who you’re ever likely to see.
In amongst that, the Doctor dons a pair of Ray-Bans and another dodgy disguise as he hides in an Atlantean market place. There’s also an Irishman trying to placate Atlantis’s Fish People (surely this is not where Kate Bush got her record label name from?), who throw shells at him for his trouble and then swim off to perform a ballet.
And of course, it ends with everybody’s favourite line in the most-over-the-top-mad-scientist contest: ‘Nuzzink in ze vurld can ztop me now!’
If only The Underwater Menace‘s other episodes were this enjoyably daft!
Sadly, the only other notable thing about The Underwater Menace is that it represents the first time I’ve been able to view a complete Second Doctor episode. Season four is particularly badly affected in this regard, with only ten out of its original forty-three episodes currently existing in the archive and not a complete serial amongst them (The Tenth Planet comes closest, with just one missing). The situation improves somewhat in seasons five and six, but for the moment the parlous state of the archive means my marathon viewing remains a disjointed venture.
When I watched The Underwater Menace as part of my marathon back in December, it was the only story to feature a surviving episode that had not seen an official release on DVD.
Ten months later, to the surprise of most Doctor Who fans, we had it sitting on our shelf and so, before I moved onto the Third Doctor, I thought I’d take the opportunity to revisit it.
Whilst the DVD release is worth having simply for the restored Episode 2 of course, we now also have a serviceable if perfunctory telesnap reconstruction to sit alongside the soundtrack for the first and final episodes.
My opinion of the story hasn’t wavered much in the intervening months, although the current 2015 television series did make me wonder if The Underwater Menace had seen the first appearance of the Doctor’s sonic sunglasses (this being pre-sonic screwdriver). If nothing else it shows the Doctor has form when it comes to donning a pair of Wayfarers.
So yes, it’s all still a little bit bonkers!
