Warriors of the Deep
The TARDIS lands on an undersea base in 2084 at the height of international nuclear tensions. The travellers are imediately suspected of espionage when they are discovered but there are larger issues at play: the Silurians have re-emerged and together with an elite group of Sea Devils they plan to launch the missiles in the base's armoury and trigger a holocaust that will wipe out humanity and leave the planet free for its original inhabitants to take over.
Jay joined me for this one again, and I warned him from the outset that the Silurians here were not the same noble race that we first met in the Jon Pertwee era. The costumes were nothing like the originals, the voices were wrong, the entire manner of the reptiles was just not there; in the Pertwee days the Silurians moved a lot more fluidly and used their third eye to project their mental powers. The Sea Devils fare no better this time around, the actors being instructed to lumber around the sets when we all saw them running up the beach and storming a naval base in their debut years ago. The Sea Devil design stays the same, relatively; you can see that the costumes are made so the head is a hat just like in the old days, giving them some great height advantage. Their costume has gone from blue netting to a samauri-like armour. And the voices are pretty much the same although Sauvix, the leader of the group, whispers his lines and has traded the ability to open and close his mouth for blinking his eyes. I guess the props department could only work so much magic back then.
The design of the sea base itself was done quite well, the sterile white corridors shot from enough different angles that the base got a real feeling of size to it, larger rooms reconfigured on the set with what was probably relative ease, and one set in particular in the reactor coolant area with a raised gantry and water below - handy for beign knocked into for a cliffhanger. Jay noticed how when underwater Peter Davison looks as old as he does now, which is interesting; I suppose if we chucked him in the water at his present age he'd probably look older than Joan Rivers. Which really isn't hard considering how much work she's had done.
Warriors has a pretty large cast; as well as the three regulars - the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough - there are the three Silurians, the attack group of Sea Devils, the pantomime horse monster the Myrka (oh man what a sight that thing was), and then the military personnel of the sea base itself. Of course, in this era the whole purpose of a large cast was to kill everyone over the course of a few weeks, so when the dust - or, in this case, the toxic gas - settled only the Doctor and his friends were left alive. And then people were shocked at criticism about the show being violent. I for one do not find death in Doctor Who to be handed out like candy at Hallowe'en; if a character is killed off it generally is to prove a point and not just for the shock value (or in the case of Ingrid Pitt as Doctor Solow for the comic relief).
"There should have been another way," the Doctor says at the end of part four. I heartily agree; a bit more care could have been taken to make the monsters a bit more credible, or at least make their costumes stay together so when they fell over their bums didnt split open. And poor Bulic could have used a costume a bit less tight across his crotch; they say it pays to advertise but all this really did was give Jay and I something else to laugh at. Did the man not have any underwear that day? Oh yeah and we saw Tegan's bra strap.
NEXT EPISODE : THE AWAKENING
Jay joined me for this one again, and I warned him from the outset that the Silurians here were not the same noble race that we first met in the Jon Pertwee era. The costumes were nothing like the originals, the voices were wrong, the entire manner of the reptiles was just not there; in the Pertwee days the Silurians moved a lot more fluidly and used their third eye to project their mental powers. The Sea Devils fare no better this time around, the actors being instructed to lumber around the sets when we all saw them running up the beach and storming a naval base in their debut years ago. The Sea Devil design stays the same, relatively; you can see that the costumes are made so the head is a hat just like in the old days, giving them some great height advantage. Their costume has gone from blue netting to a samauri-like armour. And the voices are pretty much the same although Sauvix, the leader of the group, whispers his lines and has traded the ability to open and close his mouth for blinking his eyes. I guess the props department could only work so much magic back then.
The design of the sea base itself was done quite well, the sterile white corridors shot from enough different angles that the base got a real feeling of size to it, larger rooms reconfigured on the set with what was probably relative ease, and one set in particular in the reactor coolant area with a raised gantry and water below - handy for beign knocked into for a cliffhanger. Jay noticed how when underwater Peter Davison looks as old as he does now, which is interesting; I suppose if we chucked him in the water at his present age he'd probably look older than Joan Rivers. Which really isn't hard considering how much work she's had done.
Warriors has a pretty large cast; as well as the three regulars - the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough - there are the three Silurians, the attack group of Sea Devils, the pantomime horse monster the Myrka (oh man what a sight that thing was), and then the military personnel of the sea base itself. Of course, in this era the whole purpose of a large cast was to kill everyone over the course of a few weeks, so when the dust - or, in this case, the toxic gas - settled only the Doctor and his friends were left alive. And then people were shocked at criticism about the show being violent. I for one do not find death in Doctor Who to be handed out like candy at Hallowe'en; if a character is killed off it generally is to prove a point and not just for the shock value (or in the case of Ingrid Pitt as Doctor Solow for the comic relief).
"There should have been another way," the Doctor says at the end of part four. I heartily agree; a bit more care could have been taken to make the monsters a bit more credible, or at least make their costumes stay together so when they fell over their bums didnt split open. And poor Bulic could have used a costume a bit less tight across his crotch; they say it pays to advertise but all this really did was give Jay and I something else to laugh at. Did the man not have any underwear that day? Oh yeah and we saw Tegan's bra strap.
NEXT EPISODE : THE AWAKENING
Labels: Sea Devils, Silurians, Tegan Jovanka, The 5th Doctor, Turlough
posted by Sean Hoover @ 5:47 AM
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