21x1. Warriors of the Deep
Writer: Johnny Byrne
Director: Pennant Roberts
Script Editor: Eric Saward
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Synopsis: The TARDIS is forced to
materialize on an underwater sea base, charged with maintaining deadly
weapons for potential use in a global conflict, that comes under attack
by a joint force of Silurians and Sea Devils planning to trigger a war
that will eradicate humanity and allow them to reclaim Earth.
Review: I can respect "Warriors of the
Deep" for what it tries to do - create an analogy to Cold War
brinksmanship while posing a dilemma to the Doctor in which peaceful
resolution might not be possible - but there are too many problems with
how it goes about its business for me to recommend it. For starters,
despite his later attempts to resolve the situation without violence,
the Doctor is strangely hostile and careless towards the Sea Base crew
at first. In an attempt to avoid capture, he sets the station's reactor
to overload as a diversion, which seems like a very selfish risk to
take even though he expects that the crew will disarm it, and he then
tries to fight off the guards rather than explain himself. Frankly,
it's not surprising that they're suspicious of him and the TARDIS crew
given their intial behavior.
The script is also less than seamless in its portrayal of the Silurians and Sea Devils themselves. The Doctor Who creative
team seem to have zeroed in on their potential as tragic villains based
on their appearances during the Pertwee era, but they also seem to be
inventing new backstory rather than building on what was already
established. None of the Silurians ever identified themselves by name
in their first appearance, and yet the Doctor recognizes "Icthar" as
someone he knows and previously assumed dead - if this character is
supposed to be one of the original Silurians, it's unclear which one,
or why. The fact that the two species have a valid claim to Earth
prevents "Warriors of the Deep" from being a simple "innocent humans
vs. aggressive alien invaders" conflict, hence the Doctor's lament that
"there should have been another way" after killing them, but the script
is a little too on-the-nose in having them literally echo the Nazis in
calling for a genocidal "Final Solution." The situation at the end is
also a bit contrived - the station happens to have a supply of
hexachromite gas (which is lethal to reptilian life) on hand, but
nothing that could be used to stun and imprison the Silurians and Sea
Devils, and the normally inventive Doctor is unable to come up with an
alternative in time to stop the missile launch.
The first
episode, which focuses more on the Cold War analogy, is probably the
best of the four, featuring the TARDIS running afoul of a hair-trigger
automated defense satellite, a compelling character who believes he
might be unable to "press the button," and a drill designed so that the
base crew can't tell whether or not it's the actual beginning of a
global war. But after that, there's just too much dubious
characterization, contrived plotting, and subpar action.
The Myrka, a monster that the Silurians and Sea Devils unleash on
the base, is particularly embarrassing, and the tactics - if one can
even call them that - employed in the gun battles between the humans
and their attackers reminded me of nothing so much as an infamous
zero-budget horror movie called The Creeping Terror,
in which the army somehow fought against an "alien" that was clearly a
barely-mobile piece of carpet and still somehow managed to lose. Overall, the script might have done better to dispense
with the Silurians and Sea Devils and simply do a story about Cold
War-style mutually assured destruction with the Doctor attempting to
play peacemaker between humans.
Rating: **1/2 (out of four)
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