Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace [DVD] [1967]

'The Underwater Menace' is one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made! Certainly the weakest of the Patrick Troughton era. Episodes 2 and 3 survive complete and are presented in full on DVD. However, episodes 1 and 4 only feature telesnaps/photos alongside the audio soundtrack. It's a shame the missing episodes were not animated. Even on the leaflet that comes with the DVD it says "This is the closest Doctor Who ever got to a cartoon". It's with some irony and dismay then that half the story wasn't a cartoon! I can't help but feel that had half of 'The Underwater Menace' been animated it may have made the overall story more enjoyable. I really think the animators of 'The Power of the Daleks' should have animated episodes 1 and 4 of 'The Underwater Menace' first. That would have been a perfect test run then before a bigger project like 'The Power of the Daleks'. Because had there been any issues of quality or design, then these could have been rectified and improved on with a better story like 'The Power of the Daleks'. People probably wouldn't have been too fussed if the animation was a bit rough around the edges in places. Especially on a story so poorly regarded as 'The Underwater Menace'. They would just be happy that it was animated and 'complete'. However, what we got was a story released still feeling very incomplete! The extra's are good though.

t's customary to criticise this story because of the appalling costumes of the 'fish people' in particular, and the Atlanteans in general, and because of the acting of Zaroff. Those don't really bother me; Dr Who has much worse. What does make me criticise this story is the fact that the story makes no sense whatsoever. How did Atlantis get there, and why? What is Zaroff's motivation for wanting to destroy the world? (besides the fact that he is 'mad' he doesn't have one). What are all those slaves mining for? Why does the Doctor's plan for dealing with the situation apparently change several times an episode without cause? Why is a society as technically advanced as this unaware of the principles of refrigerating seafood?

Not a terrible release, but could have been so much better.It's a shame that the restoration team wasn't allowed to have more input on this. But the BBC demanded they do this as cheaply as possible.It was clearly rushed out after a delay.The story is enjoyable, if you take it for what it is - a whimsical bit of fun, not to be taken too seriously.It would have been nice to get the missing episodes animated, or at least have more telesnaps included. Even some production notes on how it was made, or how they tracked down the missing episodes would have been a nice addition.Nice to see it on DVD though.

I'm just glad to see the serial on DVD. I could complain all day about the "simple" effort to reconstruct the first and fourth episodes but I find it easier just to accept it and move on. It is was it is.The serial itself is rather bonkers but immensely enjoyable. Joseph Furst is incredible as mad villain Zaroff and a very young Catherine Howe makes an appearance as servant Ara. The music and direction are very much of their time but charming nevertheless. There are some very strange elements like the fish people that turn people off but I rather like them because of how offbeat they are. I mean, it does make a refreshing change from the Daleks8/10

I bought this for the reasonably cheap price that it was given I'm a fan of the Patrick Troughton episodes. I knew that Jamie (Frazer Hines) had joined the show's core of The Doctor, Ben and Polly in the serial before this and as a result, all of the subsequent scripts up until The Faceless Ones had to go through a few rewrites to accommodate this arrival in the Tardis.I found the telesnaps of Episode 1 and 4 to be the hardest to get into. I felt that without a little bit of even subtitled narration which could've told me what was going on between the snaps taking place, it felt a tad boring to watch. I was even left with thinking why couldn't the BBC even place the normal opening and closing credits onto this piece to make it seem a little more original in areas.By all means, Episodes 2 & 3 are the finest and they move in great speed unlike the latter two mentioned and I found the most enjoyment out of them. Its a tad quirky of a story given its set in arguably a mythical place but otherwise, the characters seem to fit in well minus the Fish People who I thought weren't the finest. Plus a little bit of the incidental music was a tad weird to me.I do wish the BBC had animated Episodes 1 & 4 like they supposedly were going to do for this as its now a massive loss but at the same time, they wanted to get this out just for the sake of it I suppose.Overall, its a story that is there if you want to watch it however to me, I look at this as I had to get it for my collection. At the time of writing this, I look forward to purchasing The Macra Terror in March 2019 which should be 10x better than this story I hope.

It isn’t the story that lets this down to three stars but the reconstructions on lost episodes 1 and 4. All there is are telesnaps which are not of any bad quality and the corresponding audio is of a great quality, but there are no annotations to tell you what is going on in each telesnap which is a bit bad when there is visual action going on with no dialogue.The actual story is good with the first doctor who parable about Atlantis and a mad scientist. It does drag in episode 3 a bit but this does not take away from the very armospheric feel to the story.

They did not bother animating the missing episodes so they are just audio with stills. For £10 I expected more and should have read the reviews! Avoid until the BBC pulls their finger out and produces animations for the missing episodes.