The Underwater Menace

The TARDIS takes the new crew on their first adventure, landing them on an island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Jamie is baffled but impressed with the new adventure he finds himself experiencing, and he begins to form fast bonds with his fellow companions. Within minutes, however, they are all captured and taken to an underground temple to be sacrificed. The island is actually the top of a volcanic vent, and at the bottom is the lost city of Atlantis where the survivors of its demise into the sea are counting on famous scientist Zaroff to raise them back above the waves. Zaroff has already performed a miracle by creating new a food source and creating a workforce of "fish-people" to harvest it underwater, so raising a sunken city should be nothing. The Doctor realizes that there is no way to physically raise the sunken land, but Zaroff's plan is not to raise the city so much as to lower the water level by draining the ocean into the Earth's core. Yes, Atlantis will be above the waves again, but only in little bits when Zaroff's plan blows it up.

There are three references to Atlantis in Doctor Who lore, this being the first. Atlantis gets dragged up as a plot device in a lot of series, but the location is always in dispute; this time it is in the Atlantic Ocean, but a future adventure will ignore this story altogether and place Atlantis somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. These Atlanteans do not bear a heavy cultural similarity to the Greeks as is commonly done; here we see a beleagured people worshipping a fish-god named Amdo, with fish motifs everywhere, but they exist side by side with the lunatic science of Professor Zaroff. The Doctor notes that Zaroff was a world famous scientist who disappeared in a storm of contorversy and caused a great deal of blame to fly back and forth between the East and West political theatres of the modern world. The fish-people are a slave race, made up of troublemakers and lost seafarers who have been surgically adapted to living underwater. Some of the fish people effects are a bit hard to take, with actors slowly swinging around on strings against a backdrop of coral and bubbles (I was reminded of some of the less successful shots of the Menoptera from The Web Planet). Polly herself comes close to becoming a fish person but is saved by a friendly Atlantean who does not trust Zaroff. Jamie and Ben get the sexual exploitation treatment once more, showing up clad in tight rubber wetsuits disguised as guards (oooh more body contours! Gary Russell must be thrilled!). While his companions are roughed up and menaced, the Doctor gets cose to Zaroff by pretending to admire his work and be enthusiastic about it, until he realizes the truth and must work to stop him. And Zaroff is just plain mad. Not only does he have this kooky science-fictiony mad scientist name but he's also got a mess of white hair and wears a cape at times!

As the decision to make Jamie McCrimmon a regular to the series was a hurried one, The Underwater Menace was subjected to a lot of hurried rewrites to accomodate him, and some of the lines that would normally have gone to Ben or Polly went to him instead. Must be hard to share out all those "What's going on, Doctor?" utterances between three young people. Still, they were doled out enough so that everyone does indeed have something to say, so when I listened to episodes 1, 2 and 4 on CD I knew everyone was on the set, and no-one was lurking around without anything to say. Episode 3 exists on the Lost in Time DVD set so there is still something of the adventure to look at and get an idea of what the whole serial looked like. Maybe it's Jay's influence with these viewings but I have gotten good at spotting the clumsy editing between scenes, and lo there are some in this. Interestingly enough though, some of them are in the non-existant episodes and can actually be heard. What can also be heard is the psychedelic syntheiszer soundtrack for the show which was very different from any of the scores of any episode at this time, even the warbling sounds of The Gunfighters. Now of course we have all sorts of musical treats in Doctor Who, including the ponderous presence of Britney Spears in 2005's The End of the World.

Atlantis never does rise above the waves again. And despite being convinced that "Nothing in the vorld can schtop me now!", Zaroff does indeed get stopped. For good. And the Doctor leads his triumphant band on a journey in the TARDIS, claiming to be headed for Mars.

Yeah, right.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MOONBASE