Warriors of the Deep Part Three

The one where the Myrka, Silurians and Sea Devils storm Seabase 4...

I felt really proud of Turlough watching this episode. He gets involved, he risks his life, he takes a stand and he fights for what he feels is right. As well as protecting his own neck, he gets involved in a bit of fisticuffs, steals a rifle and threatens Nilson at gunpoint in order to rescue the Doctor and Tegan. "The commander's orders were to keep that bulkhead closed," says Nilson. "I know what the commander's orders were," replies Turlough, waving a rifle in his face, "but now I'm giving you mine. Open that bulkhead!" You go, Turlough!

Turlough spends a lot of time racing around corridors, weapon in hand, and ends up helping to defend Airlock 5, like a true Boy's Own hero, in the same vein as Ian or Steven might in the 1960s. It's great to see this usually cowardly, self-serving character show some guts, although he spoils it rather when he's locked up in the dormitory with Bulic and suggests they escape back to the TARDIS!

Most of this episode is spent waiting for the sea creatures to get from A to B (and they don't quite manage to get to B before the episode ends). Director Pennant Roberts has no talent for action, although this is not helped by the soporifically slow way the Silurians and Sea Devils move. They take an absolute age to do anything, and seem to spend a stupid amount of time preparing and getting ready. There's one scene where Icthar asks: "Is the manipulator ready, Tarpok?" and there's a full 11 seconds before Tarpok manages to reply: "Yes, it is fully charged." Icthar then announces that "we must prepare to join our troops on the seabase." These guys are forever getting ready to do things, and very rarely actually doing them.

The word "ready" is used in Warriors of the Deep almost 20 times, illustrating how the Silurians are getting ready to act, to begin, to enter, or to attack. They're always on their way, but rarely arriving.

The ponderousness of the Silurians and Sea Devils becomes laughable when we're asked to take seriously the threat they pose. The Doctor warns Nilson at the end of part 3 that if he fires his gun, "every Sea Devil in the area will come running". Really?! I don't think 'running' is the right way to describe how these ridiculous creatures move. Also in this episode, Icthar instructs: "Inform Sauvix we are coming." Yes, just not very quickly...

The whole thing's a shambles. I understand the story was produced in a bit of a rush, but you really can tell. There are ill-considered camera shots where you can see the Silurian and Sea Devil masks haven't been tucked in at the back, or where the Sea Devils' helmets are so heavy that their floppy heads lean to the side, like they've got permanent cricks in their necks. And what's that surprisingly phallic prop used by the Sea Devils to burn through the bulkhead? "Bring forth the cutting device!" instructs Sauvix, in just one example of countless lines of dialogue that can be written down with confidence, but certainly not spoken with any amount of realism.

The dialogue really is appalling. Who can tell how much of what we get on screen was written by Johnny Byrne, or was added by the infamously periphrastic script editor Eric Saward? Nilson in particular speaks in impossible phrases which make him sound more like a comic book character than an actual human being. "The work goes well", "Your usefulness is at an end", "Be still, woman. Pity all the Doctor's efforts were to no avail"... Who talks like that?!

Then there's the Myrka, one of the worst things ever to appear in Doctor Who. It sways about indecisively, trying desperately to look menacing but failing on every level. There's the briefest glimmer of style when director Pennant Roberts uses a point of view shot to show what the Myrka sees, but he doesn't manage to frame it right, never achieving anything effective. When you see the Myrka in long shot, it goes from bad to worse - how can we possibly take seriously Tegan's claim that it's "practically indestructible"? - although when it electrocutes four innocent crewmembers, the effect is quite shocking (literally). Sadly, the supporting actors don't die convincingly, lowering themselves to the floor gently like schoolkids pretending to be asleep in their first drama lesson.

As the Myrka wobbles along the corridors and the Sea Devils advance with their pop guns (a nice nod to the disc-shaped weapons of The Sea Devils), the viewer is supposed to think this is a terrifying army of sea monsters rampaging their way through the seabase, their prime target being to take the bridge and massacre the human crew. But what we see is a laughable, often embarrassing pantomime of inept performances, writing, direction and design. The mercifully brief scene where Ingrid Pitt karate-kicks the Myrka is the peak of this substandard mess.

Moment after moment, line after line, it tumbles onto the screen like a barrage of mediocrity. "How fares the course of battle?" Icthar asks Sauvix. The Sea Devils take an age to cut through the bulkhead door. "We must capture the bridge without delay," Icthar tells Sauvix. The Doctor takes an age to cobble together his ultraviolet contraption. It's a plethora of failure, a panoply of catastrophe.

Amongst all this dross there's a subplot struggling to stay afloat, involving a conspiracy between Nilson and Solow, who have conditioned poor Maddox to mess up the seabase's sync computer. They are obviously enemy spies, agents of the unnamed opposing power bloc, trying to sabotage Seabase 4 by rendering it defenceless. The plotters' ultimate aim is to get away in an escape pod, before the seabase is attacked, and everybody in it perishes. It's a shame this plot by Solow (a superfluous character) and Nilson isn't given more prominence, as it would have been if written by Malcolm Hulke in the Pertwee era, to add a human dimension to proceedings. Sadly, it's importance is drowned by the ocean of chaff that washes around it, but I do like the Doctor's line: "There isn't time for your petty feuds".

I could go on and on... Why does the Doctor think the Silurians want to take control of the seabase's proton missiles with a view to possibly destroying Earth? In part 2 he was going on about how honourable the Silurians are, so why would he suddenly presume they've become marauding murderous megalomaniacs intent on destroying not just the primitive apes, but themselves as well? Johnny Byrne has reduced the Silurians to generic comic book 'monsters of the week', lacking any true motivation beyond the fact they are "nasty monsters". If Malcolm Hulke was spinning in his grave before, he'd be whirling like a top by now.

The cliffhanger has a Sea Devil gun down Nilson, before turning its weapon on the Doctor and Tegan (remember her?) and hissing: "Your turn!" Absolutely nobody is convinced by any of this.

First broadcast: January 12th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Contrary to popular assumption, the seabase's corridors are not brightly over-lit, and do have shadow and shade (good for obscuring ridiculous sea monsters).
The Bad: Everything.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Warriors of the Deep is available as part of the Beneath the Surface BBC DVD box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Beneath-Silurians-Warriors/dp/B000ZZ06XQ