Warriors of the Deep Part One

The one where the Silurians and Sea Devils return...

With all that celebratory shenanigans safely out of the way, Doctor Who could get back to what it does best: telling fun, exciting adventure stories full of monsters and villains. Warriors of the Deep opens Season 21 with some impressive modelwork, and one of those busy, bustling futuristic sets full of people going from A to B. It feels remarkably like a Pertwee era story straight away.

And in more ways than one. Less than two minutes into part 1, the story's returning monsters, the Silurians, are unceremoniously dumped on screen in the directorial equivalent of being pushed on stage before they're ready. The redesigned Silurian masks are gorgeous, honouring the 1970 versions but making them more detailed, while Tony Burrough's viridescent underwater sets are wonderfully lush and aqueous (thanks to some very green lighting by Peter Smee!). Like the cave sets of Doctor Who and the Silurians, the prehistoric creatures look effective in gloom and murk.

However - and it's a big however - there's also plenty wrong with the new-look Silurians. Originally, their third eyes were used to control things, be it objects or people's minds, but here they merely flash an uncharacteristic red in time with their speech, like Dalek "ears". And as for those voices, what have they done to them?! There's an incongruous electronic tinge to their voices, replacing the original deep-toned speaking style with a tight, throaty, almost geeky voice which is completely wrong for an organic creature.

And they... speak... sooooooo... slow-ly... They move and speak in the same manner as Cybermen (they even say "Excellent!"), walking stiffly across the set like they're wading through invisible treacle, and every line of dialogue is delivered like their batteries are running down. The scenes featuring the returning monsters should be exciting and dynamic, but instead it's as if the Silurians are still half-asleep. "It has been a long time," bumbles Icthar. Yes, it feels like a long time since you started that sentence too!

I almost sunk my head into my hands when I saw what director Pennant Roberts had done with/ to the Silurians. They look great, until they either move or speak, at which point they become awful, generic lumbering "Doctor Who monsters". The Silurians are inherently not generic monsters, anybody who's seen their 1970 debut would recognise that. Here, they may as well be Cybermen, or Nimon, or Taran wood beasts!

The dialogue's ropey too. I suspect it's more script editor Eric Saward's input than writer Johnny Byrne's, but you've got characters saying stupid things like: "We must remain undetected until we are ready to act", "We are ready to begin" and "We are ready to enter". There's a whole scene between Solow and Nilson which groans under the weight of the most purple of prose. "The sudden demise of Lieutenant Michaels has paid us an immediate dividend," says Nilson (and he says "dem-eeez" too!), followed by the bogglingly bad: "Don't bleat, Solow... If your conscience bothers you, lock it away in a strong box until our task is completed." What?! Who the hell speaks like that, even in 2084?

Sigh... What else have we got? Well, there's Burrough's impressive sets for Seabase 4, which looks suitably solid and multi-level (although the inclusion of a spiral staircase is an intriguing extravagance!), and the corridors are convincing because they have ceilings and are often low-lit. It might have been nice to have some underwater light effects strobing through port holes or viewing windows in places, just to drive home the fact they're underwater and not in some generic spaceship, but it's a minor quibble. I love the sliding cargo doors and the reinforced wall panels too. Burroughs gave good corridor in all of his Doctor Who stories (there are similarly robust futuristic ones in Four to Doomsday and The Two Doctors).

The cast which populates Seabase 4 is pleasingly mixed-sex and multi-ethnic, again reminiscent of a Pertwee story. While there are two white male testosterone farms in the form of Tom Adams and Ian McCulloch, there's also the willowy Tara Ward, the Israeli-born Nitza Saul (a former Playboy model, don't you know?) and, of course, Polish Hammer horror icon Ingrid Pitt, looking very, very different to her last Doctor Who role in The Time Monster.

Judy Pepperdine's Seabase uniforms make everybody look like an action figure from a half-remembered 1980s cartoon adventure series (remember M.A.S.K? Or BraveStarr?). They do not reflect the military nature of the base at all, and look more like shell suits than uniforms. What use anybody would have of pockets on the knee is baffling. And the people of 2084 seem to love their eye shadow too, even the men, to the extent that make-up designer Jennifer Hughes makes everybody look like they're in a Steve Strange lookalike contest. It's a look, I suppose...

Byrne builds a convincing world where two power blocs are poised on the brink of mutually assured destruction, where people are "plugged in" to computers in order to control them. It's all very forward-thinking and Matrix-like, and I do like the time taken to establish young Maddox's insecurities about being the only sync operator on the base. It is a bit silly that there's only one operator on the entire seabase (Lt Michaels was mysteriously electrocuted), and that a young work experience kid has been ordered to sit in while they wait for the replacement to arrive. Trusting an inexperienced rookie to operate Seabase 4's nuclear missile system seems remarkably blase and irresponsible of Commander Vorshak.

There's a nice little scene between Martin Neil's Maddox and Nitza Saul's Karina which, while lacking any real chemistry between the two, at least sets them up as proper characters and confidantes, with their own fears and opinions. It's good to have this background on Maddox's insecurities before he's jacked into the missile computer, because we understand his fears and doubts, and can share in them too. We even get a glimpse of Karina wondering whether her friend Maddox will cope with the pressure when he's plugged in. The fact the computer tricks everybody with a simulated red alert is pretty sadistic though!

Meanwhile, the Doctor (who's been to the barber's), Tegan (who's been to the salon) and Turlough (who's still dressed as a schoolboy) are struggling to fend off a rather aggressive spaceship in Earth's orbit. The atmosphere aboard the TARDIS is pleasantly genial, with Turlough now insisting he no longer wishes to get to his home planet, as he believes he'll learn more travelling with the Doctor. This, understandably, makes the Doctor a tad suspicious, as all Turlough's cared about since the moment they met is getting back home. Maybe the Doctor's wondering if Turlough's in the clutches of the vengeful Black Guardian again?

The Doctor (who disloyally wishes he'd swapped the TARDIS for a Type 57 while he was on Gallifrey) manages to affect an eccentrically named "materialisation flip-flop" to escape the confrontational Sentinel 6, and the TARDIS is plunged into a lovely amber glow as we hear the time machine's ancient engines groan like a waking leviathan. Great stuff!

The TARDIS crew explore Seabase 4 without being detected until Turlough calls for a lift, alerting the bridge to their presence. I love the bit where the lift doors slam shut on Turlough, and Mark Strickson jumps forward unexpectedly. It's easy to miss, but it's a nice little character moment, whether it was intentional or not. There's also a nice bit where the men try to force open a cargo door, to no avail, then Tegan nonchalantly slides it open and steps through!

There's some lovely use of silhouette as the regulars explore the corridor sets, but when they enter the chemical store and discover cannisters of the gas hexachromite, the method by which the Silurians will undoubtedly be defeated in part 4 becomes prematurely clear. "It's part of a sealing compound for undersea structures," explains the Doctor. "It's lethal to marine and reptile life." OK, I see where this is going already!

With the team being hunted as intruders, they try to return to the TARDIS, but instead happen across a magnificent reactor chamber, a multi-level set with gantries bordering a watery pool below. Burrough really has excelled himself here, squeezing both scale and depth into one set to make the cliffhanger quite epic. The Fifth Doctor isn't known for his fisticuffs, but here he punches a man, and kicks another in the face, having already overloaded the base's nuclear reactor as a mere distraction while they escape. "This is madness!" Tegan accurately exclaims (I love it when she says: "I don't like running into chambers that have 'Radiation, Keep Out' written on the door"!).

The Doctor rather alarmingly topples into the watery depths below in a remarkably realistic stunt. Tegan immediately tries to rescue the Doctor, but is stopped by a characteristically pessimistic Turlough, who tells her in no uncertain terms: "Face it, Tegan. He's drowned!" He's not even going to try and see if the Doctor - his mentor and the man he wants to learn so much from - is still alive. He just gives in, because basically he wants to run away to save his own skin. What a coward!

I've not mentioned the fact the Silurians have woken up their "Sea Devil brothers", but seeing as it took them so long to do it, I think I'll wait until part 2.

First broadcast: January 5th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Tony Burrough's impressive sets.
The Bad: What have they done to the Silurians? They look OK, but as soon as they move or speak, all credibility goes out the port hole.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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