Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep (1984)

Another attempt by John Nathan-Turner to please the fans by bringing back villains non-Who fans barely remembered, this suggests that in these seasons, Doctor Who was essentially writing its own fan fiction. Here, the Silurians and the Sea Devils - cousin races introduced in a couple of Pertwee serials - return and collaborate on their old scam, getting rid of humanity (starting a nuclear war in a future where two power blocs are in an edge of doom, fingers-on-the-button cold war) so they can take over. The monster races, who self-describe as Silurians and Sea Devils though it was established that these were inaccurate tags hung on them by stupid humans, suffer from baggy costumes and immobile rubber faces - the Sea Devils' swollen, stuntman head-covering necks are especially weak - and stand around hissing redundancies at each other. And that's not even counting the big panto dinosaur Myrka - justifiably laughed at as among the series' worst monsters.

There's one semi-good idea in the stress on a human with an enhanced computer interface brain who is an essential component in the missile launch system, with the professional killed off mysteriously before the story starts (by schemers Ingrid Pitt and Ian McCulloch) so an inexperienced whiner (Martin Neil) has to step in. Why such an inept fallible human device would be used is never addressed, but it's an early cyberpunk notion and sets up a finish whereby the unaugmented Doctor has to use his own brain to avert a deadly launch. Otherwise, it's the sort of script (by Johnny Byrne) that sets up early on that cylinders of a certain gas used in undersea base sealing would be deadly to all reptile life-forms so a weapon which can be used against the monsters is handy.

The Doctor is smugly annoyed about war-mongering (understandable in the year of Threads and The Day After) and wonders why he even likes human beings; he keeps rabbiting on that the monsters are honourable and ought to be co-existed with, though this bunch spend all their time fiendishly plotting and seem no better than anyone else around. Another fan moment is the final line ('there should have been another way'), which is lifted from the finish of the seminal serial that introduced the Daleks. The other regulars suffer: Janet Fielding has bad hair and a filmy dress, while Mark Strickson overacts to the point of hysteria.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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