The Underwater Menace

The Underwater Menace is the partly missing fifth serial of the fourth season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 14 January 1967 to 4 February 1967. The story constitutes Jamie McCrimmon's first journey with the Doctor as a travelling companion. Only two of the four episodes are held in the BBC archives; two remain missing. Episode 2 is the earliest surviving episode to feature Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and also of Frazer Hines as companion Jamie McCrimmon.

Plot

The TARDIS lands on a deserted volcanic island. The Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie are captured and taken in a lift down a shaft below the seabed. They become prisoners of the survivors of Atlantis. Their High Priest, Lolem, declares they are to be sacrificed to the great god Amdo. As they are about to be fed to a pool of sharks Professor Zaroff arrives. He is a renegade scientist who has devised the technology from which the plankton food the Atlantians live on has been refined. The Doctor persuades the Professor to hire him for his scientific staff. Zaroff has a plan to raise Atlantis from the sea.

Jamie and Ben are sent to work in a mine, while Polly is marked out by scientist Damon for conversion-surgery into a Fish Person, one of a band of altered amphibians that farm plankton for the city. The Doctor interrupts the electricity supply, postponing the conversion operation. Damon blames Zaroff. Zaroff is planning to drain the sea into the Earth's core to restore the landmass to the surface. This will generate vast amounts of steam, which will crack the Earth's core and destroy the planet. Zaroff tells the Doctor that this is his ultimate aim! Polly is freed by a servant girl named Ara, and the Doctor escapes from the laboratory.

Ben and Jamie meet two shipwrecked sailors similarly confined, Sean and Jacko. All four escape using a secret mine shaft which emerges in the temple of Amdo—where Polly is hiding. Ara protects them, providing food and hiding them from the guards. The Doctor meets a priest named Ramo who is resistant to the influence of Zaroff on the Atlantean court, he warns him that Zaroff really means to destroy Atlantis. Ramo smuggles the Doctor before Thous, King of Atlantis, so that he can voice his warning. The King believes in Zaroff and hands the Doctor and Ramo over to him as prisoners. The Doctor and Ramo are taken for execution at the Temple of Amdo where Lolem is given the opportunity to make another sacrifice. However, a ruse by Polly and the others convinces the priests that a statue of Amdo has found voice. The Doctor and Ramo are spirited away into a secret room behind the statue while Lolem believes his god has swallowed the offering. When Lolem reports this miracle at court, Zaroff denounces it, insulting Amdo and sowing seeds of doubt in the mind of King Thous.

The Doctor decides to cause a revolution by creating a food shortage. He realises the plankton-based food will not last long before perishing, so decides to cause its farmers to stop supply. Sean and Jacko are sent to persuade the Fish People to revolt. They succeed in causing a production strike relatively easily. The Doctor and his friends head off to tackle Zaroff himself. The Doctor disguises himself as a gypsy soothsayer at the Atlantean market and helps trigger a ruse to separate Zaroff from his guards. Zaroff is captured by the Doctor's party and taken to the secret room behind the statue, where the crazed man boasts that his plan is unstoppable. Having faked a seizure, Zaroff manages to get hold of a trident and stabs Ramo, who has been left to guard him. Ramo survives, but is badly wounded, while Zaroff escapes. The megalomaniac has found his loyal guards and returns to the royal court mob-handed, where he confronts Thous. The King is aggrieved by the strike among the Fish People and has lost his faith in Zaroff to raise Atlantis from the sea. Zaroff responds by shooting Thous, while his guards take on the royal protectors in pitched combat. In Zaroff's own words, "Nothing in the world can stop me now!"

With Zaroff gone, the Doctor finds Thous bleeding but alive in the throne room and has him taken to the secret chamber for safety. He then determines to flood the lower portion of Atlantis so that the reactor and Zaroff's laboratory are destroyed. Sean and Jacko are told to alert the Atlantean populace to flee to the higher levels, while the Doctor and Ben head to the generator station to put the plan in motion. Once there, they cut through cables to render the reactor unstable. All over the lower portions of Atlantis the sea walls start to perish. Jamie and Polly are caught in the flow but succeed in swimming to safety. Sean, Jacko, Thous and a penitent Damon are also fleeing the lower reaches of the city, though Lolem is missing, presumed dead.

Zaroff has now become totally mad, obsessed with his scheme to destroy the Earth. Ben and the Doctor confront him and, with the city in ruins, his guards and technicians all flee. With the water level in Zaroff's lab rising, Ben succeeds in trapping the madman behind a grille to prevent him from reaching the detonation controls. Zaroff drowns while the Doctor and Ben flee, unable to help him. After a long slog, they make it to the surface and are there reunited with Jamie and Polly. Knowing that some of the Atlanteans—including Thous, Sean and Jacko—will have survived, the quartet return to the TARDIS and the Doctor operates the controls. They are only just taking off, however, when an external force seizes the craft and hurls them uncontrollably around the console room.

Continuity

• The Doctor signs a note to Professor Zaroff as "Dr. W.", apparently suggesting a surname. (See further discussion of the Doctor's name here.)
• This is the first of three different explanations for the sinking of Atlantis in Doctor Who, the other two being in The Dæmons and The Time Monster.^[1]
• As the two preceding serials – comprising the start of Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor – The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders, are entirely missing, episode two of this serial is his earliest surviving complete episode, and also the earliest extant episode to feature Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon.

Production

Working titles for this story include Doctor Who Under the Sea and The Fish People. The history of this script is particularly troubled. After its commission, it was dropped from the production schedule, partly because of concerns that it would require a higher budget than was available. A new script by William Emms, "The Imps", was commissioned to replace it; Emms, however, subsequently fell ill. When it was realized that it was unlikely that Emms would be able to complete changes to the script, which was due to begin shooting in a month, the original script, now titled "The Underwater Menace", was brought back into the schedule. A further complication arose because Frazer Hines was brought on as a regular member of the cast barely a month before the serial was due to start production, and his character, Jamie, had to be worked into the script. Because of all of these problems, the individual episodes were recorded just a week before they were due to be broadcast.

In December 2011, the BBC announced that Episode 2, previously missing, had been discovered among material bought by former TV engineer Terry Burnett with only cuts from Australian censors missing. The missing frames are still held by the National Archives of Australia, and once re-incorporated make the episode complete for the first time since the master tape was wiped in the 1970s.^[5][6]

Actor Patrick Troughton was reputedly particularly unhappy about the production. He is reported to have described the show as having "ridiculous costumes and make-up of the fish people". Producer Innes Lloyd appeared to concur, admitting "it did look like something from a '50s American 'B' movie".^[7]

Cast notes

Colin Jeavons later appeared in the Doctor Who spin-off pilot K-9 and Company. Noel Johnson later played Sir Charles Grover in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Peter Stephens had previously appeared in The Celestial Toymaker.

Commercial releases

In print

The Underwater Menace

Author	Nigel Robinson
Cover artist	Alister Pearson
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	129
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	21 July 1988
ISBN	0-426-20326-7

A novelisation of this serial, written by Nigel Robinson, was published by Target Books in February 1988.

Home media

As with all missing episodes, off-air recordings of the soundtrack exist due to contemporary fan efforts. In February 2005, these were released on CD, accompanied by linking narration from Anneke Wills.^[8] Episode three was released on VHS in 1998, along with the documentary "The Missing Years". They were later included on the Lost in Time DVD set; several brief surviving film clips were also included.

Episode 2, which was found in December 2011, had been planned to be released on DVD in 2014, but no exact date was ever stated.^[9] In June 2014, Steve Roberts, the project leader of the Doctor Who Restoration Team, said that there are no classic Doctor Who DVD releases currently planned. "From where we're standing, it's looking like the range is dead."^[10] In December 2014 BBC Worldwide announced that they hoped to release the title in 2015, probably in December^[11] - however, in February 2015 BBC Worldwide issued an updated statement saying that the title had been removed from their release schedule altogether.^[12]

See also

• Doctor Who missing episodes

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Second Doctor

• The Underwater Menace at BBC Online
• Photonovel of The Underwater Menace on the BBC website
• The Underwater Menace at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• The Underwater Menace at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• Doctor Who Locations - The Underwater Menace

Reviews

• The Underwater Menace reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The Underwater Menace reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• On Target — The Underwater Menace