Synopsis:
Polly is to be surgically altered to become a Fish Person. Labour Controller Damon bears down on her with a hypodermic to sedate her when the lights begin to flicker in the operating theatre. The Doctor has sabotaged the power supply in Zaroff's laboratory, pretending to have done so by accident.
Damon goes to confront the professor, suspecting that he has diverted the energy away from the rest of the city for his own grand scheme. Ara seizes the opportunity to free Polly in his absence, and hides her in a secret chamber hidden behind the huge stone face of Amdo in the temple.
The Doctor learns of Atlantis' history - of how a few of its people survived in air pockets when the city flooded. The city continues to be ventilated by the volcanic shaft.
Zaroff's plan is to bring the city to the surface once more. Rather than raise the land mass, however, he intends to lower the ocean. He is drilling a shaft designed to drain the sea.
The Doctor spots an obvious flaw with this, and realises that the Professor is well aware of it himself. If a mass of cold sea water flows into the Earth's molten core, there will be an explosive reaction which will split the planet in two.
It is clear that Zaroff is quite insane, determined to destroy the world purely because he can.
Elsewhere, Ben and Jamie are taken to the mine workings where they meet a couple of shipwrecked sailors - Sean and Jacko. When the newcomers help them hide a compass from their overseer they decide that they can be trusted. It transpires that they have an escape plan. Ben and Jamie ensure that they are paired with the sailors on a work detail.
The Doctor is left alone with Damon in the laboratory and uses a mix of chemicals to overpower him and escape.
He needs to warn the Atlanteans that they are being led to destruction by Zaroff. As he hides from Damon and his guards, he comes across Ara and asks her for her help. Whilst she diverts his pursuers, he will have the opportunity to speak with Ramo at the temple. He had earlier observed how the High Priest had resented Zaroff.
He is able to convince Ramo that Zaroff's plan will not only destroy the city but threaten the entire planet. The priest agrees to take him to see their ruler, King Thous.
Ben and Jamie escape the mines with Sean and Jacko, and find themselves in a series of tunnels. They split up to explore. Jamie almost falls to his death now a deep crevasse, but is rescued by Ben.
Following another passage, they find themselves at the secret chamber behind the idol, where Ben and Jamie are reunited with Polly.
The Doctor has been given some temple robes in order to impersonate one of Ramo's colleagues, and they are able to gain an audience with Thous in the throne room.
The Doctor gives him the same warning about the professor as given to Ramo. The King listens then has them withdraw, telling them that he will consider what the Doctor has said and inform them shortly of his response.
Ara brings food and a change of clothes for Polly to the secret chamber. The fugitives will use this as a base whilst they work out a plan to reunite with the Doctor and escape the city all together.
Thous summons the Doctor and Ramo back to the throne room and gives them his answer.
The doors are pushed open and Zaroff marches in with his guards...
Written by: Geoffrey Orme
Recorded: Saturday 14th January - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 21st January 1967
Ratings: 7.5 million / AI 46
Designer: Jack Robinson
Director: Julia Smith
Additional cast: P G Stephens (Sean), Paul Anil (Jacko), Noel Johnson (King Thous), Gerald Taylor (Damon's Assistant), Graham Ashley (Mine Overseer)
Critique:
With Frazer Hines coming on board the TARDIS as a regular, and contracts having been issued to Anneke Wills and Michael Craze for a further three serials, Innes Lloyd now approached Gerry Davis and instructed him that Ben and Polly be written out at the end of these contracts. The reasons are several, and contradictory, and we'll look at them when we get to The Faceless Ones.
The final draft of this episode was delivered on Monday 28th November. Geoffrey Orme had rethought the main Atlantean characters - Thous, Lolem and Ramo - in order that it should be the latter who is the one to be convinced by the Doctor and join forces with him. Interestingly, one Atlantean who seems equally antagonistic towards Zaroff - Damon - wasn't considered for this role.
Zaroff was eager to have the Doctor be impressed by his scheme for Atlantis. The Doctor's penchant for dressing up was to continue, with him being highly pleased with his temple robes. Sean was always intended to be an Irishman, with Jacko described as "dour".
Polly was originally supposed to faint when she heard someone enter the temple, which would prove to be Ben and Jamie with their new friends.
Zaroff's female assistant Steen would have featured prominently in this episode, but the character did not survive the rewrites.
The only filming required for this episode was completed at Ealing on Friday 16th December. These were the cavern scenes in which Ben rescues Jamie from falling into a crevasse. Only Craze, Hines, Stephens and Anil were required, with the regulars missing rehearsals on the third instalment of The Highlanders.
Joining the cast this week was actor Noel Johnson, who had become famous as the voice of secret agent Dick Barton on BBC radio, and "Pilot of the Future" Dan Dare on Radio Luxembourg.
This instalment saw the debut of the professor's laboratory set. Shawcraft Models of Uxbridge provided an illuminated model of Atlantis in cross-section, which the scientist used to illustrate his ocean-draining scheme to the Doctor. This prop can be glimpsed, in colour, in the 8mm movie "Follow That Dalek" which can be seen on the DVD of The Chase.
The other new sets included the mining chamber and rock tunnels. King Thous' throne room was a redressed set from the first episode (the reception room) which had a raised dais added.
On the temple set, the Doctor used a sealed clay pot filled with water to illustrate to Ramo what would happen if Zaroff succeeded. The exploding pot was achieved with the use of a small blast charge. Look closely on the cleaned-up DVD and you will spot the wire.
Only a single recording break was planned on the evening, just before the Doctor and Ramo enter the throne room.
At one point the Doctor is seen to disguise himself with oilskins and a sou'wester. This action was ad-libbed by Troughton during the afternoon's camera rehearsals.
One cut was made prior to broadcast - a scene between Ben / Jamie and Sean / Jacko. In this the Doctor's companions discovered that this was the lost city of Atlantis, which Ben had always assumed to be a legend, and the sailors believed that they had been prisoners here for around two years. Sean also explained that there were many shipwrecks in the vicinity of the island - not all of them accidental.
This idea of ships being deliberately wrecked is never developed in the story, which would have given an added dimension to the plot.
The first and second instalments of The Underwater Menace were cleared for wiping in July 1969. 16mm film prints had been sold to only a handful of countries. In the 1980's, a copy of this episode was purchased by a film collector - a copy which had seen cuts made by the Australian film censor. These included further shots of Polly being threatened with a hypodermic syringe, as had been removed from the close of the preceding instalment.
In 2011 the collector returned this copy to the BBC. It was shown at a "Missing Believed Wiped" event at the BFI in London that December. The rediscovery of the third episode of Galaxy 4 (Airlock) was announced at the same time.
In the same way that opinions about The Enemy of the World were influenced by its then sole-surviving third episode, so fans had always judged The Underwater Menace by Episode 3.
When we were able to see this episode - the earliest surviving Troughton instalment - we were pleasantly surprised. What written synopses and soundtracks can't give you are moments of visual comedy, visual effects, some sets and costumes, and physical performances by cast members.
Here, we get to see things like the Doctor's attempts to sway Ramo - including the facial expressions and the knocking on his skull to indicate Zaroff's madness. We also got to see the Doctor indulging in his love of costume disguises. We knew he dressed up, but never got to see the delight on his face when he did so. It should be noted that Joseph Furst also delivers a more restrained performance as the mad scientist.
It's a far superior instalment to the third, but not quite strong enough to raise the status of the story overall.
The Morning Star reviewed the story not long after the second episode had aired. The critic described the writing as "increasingly painful" and disliked Troughton's clowning.
- After a strong start, the ratings take a sizeable dip of almost a million, and the show slips from 43rd most popular for the week to 64th.
- Noel Johnson will return to the series to play MP Sir Charles Grover in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
- The P in P G Stephens stood for Peter, giving him the same name as the actor playing the priest Lolem in this story. He used initials as Equity rules prohibited actors having the same name, professionally. Often called upon to play doctors or Irish priests in comedy shows such as Only Fools And Horses, he also featured in the films Oh! What A Lovely War and Burke & Hare drama The Doctor and the Devils.
- The scripts for the story were typed up phonetically for both Zaroff and Jamie. The latter had words or phrases like "Ye canna'" instead of "You can't", whilst Zaroff's had "zem" and "ze" instead of "them" and "the".
- Cliffhanger recaps were generally a mixture of restaging the action in studio, or simply replaying a telerecording of the closing moments of the previous week's episode. For this story all of the recaps were restaged at the beginning of the following week's studio.
- It has been pointed out that Zaroff's scheme would not, in fact, destroy the world. That might only happen if the entire ocean went into the magma at the exact same moment. Drilling a shaft and letting the sea flow in gradually would only create a "singing kettle" effect - a giant steam whistle.
- The January edition of the BBC's staff magazine Ariel featured an image of the Fish People in their undersea grotto, with a jokey caption about it being a club holiday resort.
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