CRRRRS 526 Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep

By Roy Mathur, on 2024-03-03, at 22:54:17--23:39:27 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show

A Trip to Greenwich Park

Herr Fygor Gestalt and I have piloted the trusty VIMANA (V.I.M.A.N.A/Vortex Interstellar Machine And Null Actuator) to the slope north of the statue of General James Wolfe in Greenwich Park. Knowing Londoners, it isn't at all odd that no one has noticed an ancient Indian palace rammed sideways into a major landmark.

My spells continue, so Fygor is making tea. Given that we've parked wonky, I've had to fiddle with the gyros to prevent spillages.

Production

Noteable Cast: Fifth Doctor: Peter Davison, Tegan Jovanka: Janet Fielding, Vislor Turlough: Mark Strickson, Solow: Ingrid Pitt (Hammer scream queen inc. The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula, Galleia in Doctor Who: The Time Monster (1972); pod 277)

Director: Pennant Roberts (Doctor Who and Blake's 7)

Writer: Johnny Byrne (Space: 1999, The Keeper of Traken, Arc of Infinity, Warriors of the Deep)

Producer: John Nathan-Turner

Location: BBC Television Centre, Shepperton Studios, BBC VFX Workshop (1983)

Broadcast: Story 130 and serial 1 of season 21, following the 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors, covered in 522, 4 x c. 25 min, first broadcast 5 January to 13 January 1984

Media: Target novelization by Terence Dicks (1984), VHS (1995), CD soundtrack Monsters on Earth with Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea Devils (2006), CD soundtrack only (2008), DVD Beneath the Surface with Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea Devils (2008), Doctor Who DVD Files Issue 83 (2012)

Zeitgeist

Five weeks at UK number one, including Christmas Day, was The Flying Pickets' one-hit wonder a cappella cover of Yazoo's Only You.

The band was made up of actors. This included the founder, Brian Hibbard, who went on to guest as Keillor in Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen (1987).

Story

The crew of undersea Sea Base 4 ignores something on their scanners that turns out to be a Silurian battle cruiser spying on them.

The Doctor wants to show Tegan Earth's future, but they are confronted by an armed satellite, Sentinel Six, and escape by piloting the Tardis to the undersea base.

The missile sync operator is unable to test the base's missiles. An officer and the base Doctor, enemy spies, convince the base commander to remote control him. In reality they want this so they can use him to sabotage the base.

The Doctor is captured and taken to the bridge where he warns them not to engage the battle cruiser. He is ignored, the base defences go down, and the Silurians attack with the help of their brethren Sea Devil soldiers and a Myrka monster, that the Doctor destroys with a heavy gun modified to shoot ultraviolet rays.

Many are killed in the fight, including the spies. The Silurians prevail and Tegan and the Doctor are captured and taken to the bridge. The Silurian commander says that they will destroy all humans by starting a war between the humans by launching the base's missiles.

The Doctor escapes, finds hexachromite gas cannisters lethal to reptiles and, after a more deaths when a Sea Devil discovers them, reluctantly pumps it into the ventilation system.

The Silurians and Sea Devils start collapse, while Tegan try and fail to stop them from dying by administering oxygen, while the Doctor painfully interfaces with the computer to stop the launch. By the end, all the Silurians and Sea Devils, and most of the crew are dead.

Thoughts

His companions looking in askance at each other at another instance of the Doctor's barely competent flying skills is priceless.

Tegan figuring out how to open the unlocked door echoes Clara opening the unlocked door of the Tower of London cell imprisoning the Doctors in New Who's The Day of the Doctor. This is another case of, as Vroomfondel says in Douglas Adams' The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "...our minds must be too highly trained..." I sympathise with overthinkers; something I see in myself and many of my eccentric family.

The near future humans' predilection for eye make-up is symbolically war paint, denoting the warlike demeanour of a trigger-happy species last seen in Doctor Who and the Silurians (1970), combined with the later threat of The Sea Devils (1972) in this story. One can't help feeling sorry for the Silurians and their Sea Devil underwater brethren. I pity the first aliens we may one day meet

I liked the creature design generally, though I thought the Silurian suits looked like suits not bodies. I liked the Silurian head designs more than the Sea Devils, partly because I love the lights that blink in time to their speech. The behaviour and voices of the Silurians was more charismatic than that of the sinister and dour Sea Devil soldiers. However, the Seas Devils looked better in overall design. I especially liked their Samurai-like costumes reflecting their honour as warriors. The genetically altered Myrka sea dragon-type beast was interesting in how it killed with electricity like some real world fish; rays, skates, and electric eels, etc., but the costume was pure pantomime horse.

I don't think I've mentioned it, or at least not for a while, how I've enjoyed Tegan's colourful outfits. Very 80s, but stylish, rather than excessive.

Turlough is surprisingly heroic in helping to save the Doctor and Tegan, fighting, shooting, and generally not being an amoral craven coward.

The heavy weapon the Doctor modifies to emit UV reminded me of the big gun Bayban the Butcher blows himself up with in Blake's 7: City at the Edge of the World. Though that format of weapon with a parabolic dish is common to science fiction, but I did enjoy the gold mylar foil that made it look more spacey.

Doctor Solow's attempt to kung fu the giant Myrka is a hilarious and memorable death scene. What possessed Ingrid Pitt or was she directed? At least it brought levity to an otherwise grim story.

A human wired into a computer system is also a familiar trope to sci-fi horror, something Elon Musk, a supposed sci-fi fan seems blissfully unaware of as his monkey killing Neuralink experiments marches into human trials.

Remote controlled humans are yet another staple of sci-fi. If you want experience the horror of being able to remotely control humans with tech, read Stephen R. Donaldson's The Gap Cycle, which covers just about every horrible thing you could imagine happening with such power.

The Doctor says, "I let them down once." Referring to earlier encounters. At the end it appears he has done so again. It's a sad ending with two implacable sides not content until the other is utterly annihilated. A final solution, poison gas; there's a nasty Nazi theme running through this story. Tit for tat genocide would make a fine headline that would not look out of place on the front page of a newspaper today.

Trivia

Sea devil creature design is by John Friedlander. He is also the prop designer who created the fetish doll of Hammer House of Horror: Charlie Boy that we talked about in CRRRRS 524. The sea devil heads were acceptably fishy and alien, though not at all threatening, but the bodies looked like bulky rubber suits, taking a big leap of imagination to pretend they were real.

Of Freidlander's other Who work, I said in 524:

Friedlander was a mask maker, creature and prosthetics designer for Frontier in Space, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks' Davros, and The Sea Devils, and VFX for The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, and Colony in Space.

I love it when my revisits comes together. Sorry, Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith.

Back Soon

I'm sorry I've been away, but as I said at the top of the show, things have been hard. I'll be taping another tomorrow and another the day after next to make up for the shortfall so please be sure to help me keep this show going.