Season 21- Warriors of the Deep

 

I once found myself chatting with Pennant Roberts back stage at an event and when the conversation switched to `Warriors of the Deep` I pondered why he’d not decided to spruce up the atmosphere by having everything doused in emergency red lighting, like that on a submarine. Was it, perhaps, something technicians would not agree with, was it too expensive or was it because it was felt viewers would find the results too murky? As it turned out, it was none of these things. He agreed it would have definitely added something to what is a somewhat over lit production but admitted that, simply, nobody had time to think about it. This was a hint of what we now know was a troubled production that had two weeks’ time taken from its schedule. By those criteria it’s a miracle anything much turned up on screen. Even when things were proceeding as normal there were crazy deadlines and limited scope which was Doctor Who’s biggest enemy whatever the era.

So some forty-two years later we now have a spruced up special edition version that does indeed play around more with the lighting and also fixes that other bugbear; the Myrka. A new edit also sharpens the corners of what is a wordy story that, with one exception, also has slow moving `action` sequences. A lot of this is fixed in the new edit with more cuts between scenes to try and reflect the emergency scenario the story is portraying. The action is cut faster to avoid that thing of two sides standing about ten feet apart, firing at each other and still missing.

Yet there is nothing ultimately that can fix and script which is over stuffed with material- two reptile races plus their pet monster, a generously large set and a big cast. Surely the way to make it more effective would have been to reduce the cast, just have one invading species and a smaller crew fighting to deal with it. I suppose the original is quite close to being as good as it wants to be, its just little things that pull it back and perhaps those lost two weeks would have remedied some of those.

For example, the Silurian masks look excellent yet have even less movement than their predecessors while the Sea Devils get eye movement but wobbly Samurai helmets that look like they’ll fall off any moment. And what’s with their walking? The Silurians of old could walk normally and the Sea Devs were able to break into a run if need be yet both shuffle exceedingly slowly throughout this story. If costume makers could do it in 1969, then you’d imagine they would be able to at least match it fifteen years later. I would argue that you could work this story without the Silurians either and just use the Sea Devils especially as in both gait and behaviour the Silurians are treated like Cybermen albeit with that third eye blinking to indicate which of them is speaking like the Daleks’ lights. The latter has been removed from the special edition and the fact you can tell perfectly well which of them is talking proves it was never needed.

As for the Myrka….No purists can surely complain about the new iteration of this creature which in the original never looked anything like an actual animal. The problem really was it’s head which sways back and forth as it moves yet has no movement of its own so it’s roaring doesn’t even appear to be coming from the creature.  Pennant Roberts did try and shoot it in a manner that disguised its origins, a gift for the new version, but on such brightly lit sets its never really going to look convincing and sometimes it looks embarrassing. Obviously an extra two months back in 1985 was never going to deliver the special edition Myrka which looks terrific justifying its place in the story where it’s built up as something menacing, horrific and dangerous. The way it’s been integrated into the footage is superb and they have even managed to cut Solow’s infamous Karate Kid homage.

Though rarely bracketed alongside the prime examples of the show’s move towards more violent stories, `Warriors` is certainly a step towards that goal. Every character except for the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough ends up dead though not quite in the same gritty manner as `Caves of Androzani`.  By now Eric Saward was well established as a script editor with a penchant for killing as many characters as possible which was certainly achieved here, apparently Byrne intended a few would survive. However, they do tend to perish when the story has finished with them, Maddox being the prime example. I suppose this slaughter does underscore the Doctor’s last line yet that would have still have worked.

As was often the case, the characters are defined by their roles rather than anything deeper and with the exception of Maddox early on, we learn nothing about them. There is no believable cultural difference between then and now. They are just soldiers, technicians, engineers without any depth. Nilson’s character is unveiled as the undercover agent too soon in the narrative though the choices Ian McCullouch makes reveal his intentions almost from his first appearance.

Meanwhile the story has Tegan and Turlough at their most grouchy. Turlough in particular seems to delight in pessimistic commentary; at the end of episode one he concludes without any empathy or indeed confirmation; “Face it, Tegan. The Doctor’s drowned.”  Similar droll observations are peppered through the story. You get the impression he’d happily nick the Tardis and venture off without a glance behind. At the end he unnecessarily announces looking at the corpses, “They’re all dead, you know.”  I kind of like this, as if Turlough is trying to remain uninvolved and still be the sly onlooker.

The crew’s dialogue is fine, they are after all people doing a job and there are a few examples of something more down to earth peaking through. Yet the reptiles have a slow delivery which matches their gait. I actually laughed at a moment when one of the Silurians has to check something is in a box. Very slowly he lifts the lid to confirm its there. “Yes” he says. Exciting it is not. I think the scene has been excised in the special edition though.

What the story also loses is the moral range of the Silurians, evident in their first story. While there is a line playing homage to it, I felt it worked better when one of the three Silurians had doubts about their methods in the 1970 story. Here, they could any aggressive race; what made them different has been lost.The real shining light in the story is Peter Davison who rises above the material and ignores the less than convincing threats to deliver a very strong performance. The Doctor has a wiliness here, he takes real risks he guesses will come right and he’s also not afraid to wade into the action.

I’m not sure `Warriors of the Deep` will ever be in my pantheon of great Doctor Who but having watched it twice lately (old and new version) I can see more in it than I used to. And the Myrka is good now. Whoever thought that would happen?