Warriors of the Deep Part Four

The one where there should have been another way...

It's tried and trusted, a proven way to stop your assassin in his tracks. "Your turn!" hisses your wannabe killer as he raises his lethal ray gun to shoot you dead. And then you use your secret weapon, the inestimable art of being terribly polite: "How do you do! I'm the Doctor. Haven't we met before?"

It's a fool-proof way to convince your enemy that he shouldn't kill you where you stand at all, but instead spare your life, disobeying his leader's direct orders to the contrary. Of course, the Doctor and Sauvix haven't met before at all, it's a cunning ruse, and the daft lizard falls for it.

Meanwhile, Turlough and Bulic are imprisoned in the dormitory, where Turlough spies a familiar shape on the wall. "What's this?" he asks, pointing at a grille. "Ventilation shaft," replies Bulic. Yes, of course it is. This is Doctor Who by numbers, after all. What else would it be?

The Doctor is taken to the bridge to have a chat with his old friend Icthar, who was apparently in Doctor Who and the Silurians, just as it is suggested Sauvix is a returning character also. The Doctor convinces Icthar that he is the same man who tried and failed his people twice before, which isn't the most convincing way to try and broker peace now. After the events of Doctor Who and the Silurians, and then The Sea Devils, Icthar says that they've finished with the notion of mediation, and all they want now is a "defensive war" in which the Silurians provoke mutual destruction between the opposing human factions, leaving a scorched Earth for the lizards to rule once more.

These Silurians are not honourable or noble at all then, they're just as spiteful and petty as mankind. Icthar's simply on a quest for revenge to wipe out the primitive apes using their own deadly proton missiles. It's a sequel to the Pertwee stories, but by no means a satisfying one.

This aside, the production continues to lurch from disaster to catastrophe, although not quite as completely as in part 3. Sea Devils bump into each other as they turn to leave, entire walls wobble as people climb through ventilation shafts, and people die as unconvincingly as possible (both Tara Ward and Tom Adams manage to make their deaths half-baked).

Mark Strickson continues to put 101% into every scene, even managing to pump some characterisation out of these otherwise lamentable scripts. After the heroism of part 3, Turlough reverts to his more recognisable mode of self-preservation, giving up on even attempting to rescue the Doctor because he believes he'd die trying. "What is it about Earth people that makes them think a futile gesture is a noble one?" he asks, reminding us that he isn't human, only humanoid. His endless quest to please himself may seem alien to us, but that's because he is alien. Nonetheless, Tegan is distinctly unimpressed by his protestations, and insists on leading the way to rescue the Doctor.

Remember in part 1 when the TARDIS crew happened across tanks of hexachromite gas, which is lethal to reptile and marine life? It was a well signposted solution to the problem the Doctor faces as the adventure reaches its end, and although he is reluctant to use the killer gas, he's happy to use it as leverage to convince Icthar to halt the missile crisis. The effect the gas has on the Sea Devil is pretty gruesome, with green goo oozing disgustingly from its eyes, its face melting, as it writhes in agony. This is the latest in a string of goopy effects in the Davison era, following on from the liquefied Snyder in Earthshock, the mushy-headed Omega in Arc of Infinity, and the suppurating Mara in Snakedance.

In the end, Icthar and his cronies are taken down by the deadly gas after Bulic pumps it into the ventilation system, and it's down to the Doctor to take control of the computer by syncing up in lieu of both Maddox, or Lieutenant Michaels' replacement. Of course, the Doctor manages to prevent mutually assured destruction, but fails to save a single soul on Seabase 4 in the process (apart from the absent Bulic). The final shot of the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough ("They're all dead, you know...") surrounded by the corpses of the Silurians, Sea Devils and humans is a sobering way to end the serial, one of director Pennant Roberts's only positive creative choices.

"There should have been another way," croaks Peter Davison. No, there should have been another script. How Warriors of the Deep made it onto screen, when there were so many other ultimately unused scripts floating about at the time, I'll never know. I'm intrigued by some of the unmade stories from this period which would probably have been ten times better, such as Christopher Bailey's May Time (which became The Children of Seth, adapted by Big Finish for the Sixth Doctor in 2011) or Peter Ling and Hazel Adair's Hex (adapted by Big Finish as Hexagora in 2011). There were also story ideas rattling round called Ghost Planet (by Robin Squire), Parasites (by Bill Lyons), Poison (by Rod Beacham), The House That Ur-Cjak Built (by Andrew Stephenson) and The Place Where All Times Meet (by Colin Davis) - without knowing much about any of these, I'd place a bet that any one would probably have been better than Warriors of the Deep!

Johnny Byrne, whether responsible in whole or in part, dishonoured Malcolm Hulke, creator of the Silurians and Sea Devils, almost completely. At the end of the day, it's Byrne's name on the titles, but script editor Eric Saward must take a good share of the blame too, for having virtually no respect for the carefully sculpted ethical masterpieces Hulke produced in the Pertwee era, and no understanding of what the Silurians and Sea Devils were about. Why bring them back if they're not going to be written truthfully, and for the right reasons? It was a similar travesty when the Sontarans were brought back in The Two Doctors, and I'm sure the return of the Ice Warriors and the Autons in the aborted Season 23 would have seen similar misrepresentation.

The common element here, of course, is the bloke overseeing the scripts. Saward can point the finger of blame all he likes at the late producer John Nathan-Turner, but when it comes down to it, he was ultimately responsible for the quality of the scripts that got made, and Warriors of the Deep was an out-and-out failure. There's barely anything good about it, from the lacklustre direction to the lamentable cast to the appalling dialogue. Some kudos must go to set designer Tony Burrough, but other than that, Warriors of the Deep is a massive embarrassment, the first thing Doctor Who presented after the glorious 20th anniversary celebrations. It's not the most embarrassing entry on Peter Davison's CV - that must surely be his shameful contribution to The Tomorrow People story A Man for Emily - but I'd imagine it's not his proudest career achievement.

Or, in fact, anybody's.

Time for a quick side-step... What is the right nomenclature for the Silurians and Sea Devils? Well, the TV series tried to put right the incorrect use of "Silurian" by suggesting a better name for them would be Eocenes, but when it was suggested that too is incorrect, further attempts to pin down their race have been proffered: the nonsensical Homo Reptilia (in Hulke's 1974 novelisation Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, as well as the 2010 TV story The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood), Psionosauropodomorphae (translating as 'psychic lizard-foot shaped', in 1993's novel Blood Heat), Earth Reptiles (the 1996 novel The Scales of Injustice) and Reptile People (the 1995 Doctor Who Poster Magazine short stories The Little Planet and The Behemoths). In Blood Heat, the Sea Devils are referred to, unhelpfully, as Aquatic Silurians, while Alan Moore's graphic novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen retcons the famous Creature from the Black Lagoon (the Gill-Man from the 1950s films) as a lizard-man, or Sea Devil. So, more than 50 years after they first appeared, we're still no closer to having a definitive name for the Silurians and Sea Devils. Got any ideas?

First broadcast: January 13th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: That final scene.
The Bad: Just everything.
Overall score for episode: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 3.5 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Awakening...

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

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