"By the all-beating heart of living Atlantis!"

Review: THE UNDERWATER MENACE
Audio soundtrack of incomplete story, written by Geoffrey Orme, directed by Julia Smith, 1967

The vilification of this story says a lot about DW fandom’s humourlessness; it’s a blast. Obviously it’s also shite, but to see it purely in that way misses the point that there’s absolutely nothing offensive here, and certainly nothing to justify it as contender for ‘Worst. Story. Ever’. I really would take this absurd comic book runaround over dreary stories like The Three Doctors, The Face of Evil, Planet of Fire – which nevertheless, have perfectly serviceable reputations. The fact that this essentially harmless piece of fluff is singled out as especially dreadful does at least show how extreme its excesses are – but even this is in its favour, as far as I’m concerned; by comparison, all those other stories are too mediocre to even bother hating.

What to say, then? The Underwater Menace is FUN. That about covers it. It’s set in ATLANTIS, for god’s sake – that’s absurd enough to get me on side for starters, but it gets better: the bushy eyebrows! Why? Never mind, here come the crap stereotypes, psychotic music, and gypsy Doctor! (I love how rascally Troughton looks when he leaves his piratical gold hoop on.) All this AND Ben in rubber!

Even the eternally derided Joseph Furst’s Zaroff is fantastic value for money, and at least his utter, overblown lunacy is acknowledged within the story. The moment when the king gives him a look that says, ‘You’re nuts!’, but just says, “Oh, nothing…” is priceless. Zaroff even kills people with harpoons – somebody bring this guy back! All his overblown dialogue is fab (pointedly ignoring ‘that’ line. Though not that well, obviously), but the Zaroff scene that tickled me most was when someone declaims the line, “May the wrath of Amdo engulf you!” at him, but he replies with a contemptuously dismissive, “I’ll take my chances – get out!”. I think it’s the smug self-confidence of his lunacy that makes him so entertaining… In that respect he’s a surprisingly effective flipside to the Doctor.

The general po-faced response to a story which so clearly doesn’t warrant (any) deep analytic study is just depressing – Patrick Mulkern, on the Radio Times’ episode guide page, describes it as "camp bilge," although he at least acknowledges the enjoyable sight of “fit duo Michael Craze and Frazer Hines cavorting around in tight wetsuits”. Everyone always bangs on about how Doctor Who is all about diversity – and, yes; it should be – so the assumption that this is automatically crap or ‘worthless,’ just because it’s a lightweight story strikes me as slightly ridiculous. It’s not so much a case of this being crap, just that it goes into a tongue-in-cheek area of B-movie absurdities, more so than is the norm in Doctor Who – whereas, say, Frontier in Space or Earthshock try to be ‘better’ than that (ie, slightly less hackneyed), but they end up worse because they’re flat and tedious (in my personal opinion, but you get the point).

Tsk. All I wanted to say was how unexpectedly enjoyable this story is (particularly the existing episode three). How grim that I’ve felt the need to justify such an inconsequential opinion to death! That took the fun out of things. Maybe I’ll go and watch it again.

“I suppose I’ll have to drive you like a Grecian cur into the city… Come, dog!”

Review: THE MYTH MAKERS
Audio soundtrack of missing story, written by Donald Cotton, directed by Michael Leeston-Smith, 1965

The Myth Makers is one of those stories which, despite knowing what it’s about, I’ve never really heard much about… So it was a bit of a delight to find it’s a total gem.

I’m an enormous fan of Hartnell’s years, but I find that I can still be swayed by the general view that the stories were ‘a bit shoddy,’ ‘too slow,’ etc (despite the fact that I think, at its best, this period’s production values were at an all-time high compared to the majority of the later years, relatively speaking) – so it almost came as a (pleasant) surprise just how snappy this story is!

It's wonderful to hear a ‘comedy’ Doctor Who story that is genuinely funny – I love The Romans, but I wouldn’t describe it as pant-wettingly funny, as it is often portrayed. I don’t want to just list quotes, but, er, I think I’m going to. Paris is particularly good value for money – I love the re-imagining of a Trojan warrior as an inept Carry On imbecile; he reminded me of Hugo in The Vicar of Dibley, actually, crossed with David Hemmings’ Dildano in Barbarella (“I’ll put it round your secret neck”). I particularly like Paris’ “Now I suppose I’ll have to drive you like a Grecian cur into the city, won’t I… Come, dog!”

All the derogatory stuff about Cassandra was entertaining too (“Oh, go and feed the sacred snakes or something”). Her, “You’re not putting THAT in my temple!” of the TARDIS tickled me too.

Also: the comment about “galloping religious mania”;
“It seems there’s a man lurking behind that flaccid exterior after all!”;
“Catapults? Sounds like a vulgar oath to me.”

Not being particularly action-packed (although, thanks to the wordplay, it never drags either – if anything, four episodes felt too short), the story transfers wonderfully to audio, which is particularly nice as it emphasised the links between this and Marc Platt’s grown-up-Vicki Frostfire audio. I’m not particularly sold on the idea of the audio adventures, so I’ve never become very involved with Big Finish – well, I say ‘very’; Frostfire is the only one I’ve actually listened to. (Audio just seems like a slightly clumsy medium to me – compared to novels and televised stories, it has the worst of both worlds… But I digress.) I could really feel the links between young Vicki leaving the TARDIS here, and the older Vicki/Lady Cressida in the catacombs in the Companion Chronicles story. Maureen O’Brien even sounded exactly the same. Having listened to the audio first, there was a nice sense of continuity (not in the fan sense) between the two stories.

It’s also amazing how far Vicki has come since The Rescue. It’s often said that there’s little character development in the companions, so it’s wonderful that even one with relatively little status within fandom like Vicki really has matured by now – and she’s completely charming. Even her romance with Troilus is sweet and well played, and doesn’t become trite. Also a nice ending for her – I wasn’t convinced at first (it just seems as if she’s been forgotten), but her telling the Doctor that she has decided to leave off-screen is really effective; it fits with the frantic events of the Greek attack, and is slightly less 'literal' than the thinking that these scenes always need to be shown.

Whilst on the topic of companions: Katarina – what the hell?! I’ve previously listened to The Daleks’ Master Plan (ooh, I love a Doctor Who with honest-to-god grammar in the title…); I wasn’t expecting miracles from her debut (in fact, I’d forgotten about her until she randomly showed up), but I thought she might at least have some part to play here. Ah, well… she’ll soon be a space popsicle.

The other main thing that strikes me: Hartnell, wonderful as ever - but why has no-one ever really picked up more on the whole ‘the Doctor is responsible for the fall of Troy’ element?! I know he regrets giving the Greeks the idea for the horse once he’s actually in it, but it sounds like it’s motivated more by self-preservation than guilt at instigating a massacre! Very strange how sometimes the Doctor’ll emote for ages about one little character (or whatever… can’t think of an example off the top of my head. Erm, Lytton), and then doesn’t trouble himself about causing the fall of an entire city! Not to mention The Aztecs’ patented ‘messing around with history’ thing.

All in all, The Myth Makers is deeply underrated; it feels very effortless, loads of fun, but with a pleasingly dramatic ending, which stops it feeling too inconsequential.