3 out of 5

Directed by: Julia Smith

It has its highs and lows, but most notably, Underwater Menace shows how much Troughton reinvigorates the show.  Thrust into a very Hartnell-esque predicament – a stumble into capture and misunderstanding (admittedly not too different from the previous serial… or many Whos) – instead of shushing the assistance of his companions away with curmudgeonly mutterings, Troughton jumps into action and embraces help whenever necessary.  This keeps Menace afloat (come on, I use that phrasing frequently) even when some of the usual plotting and production fumbles cause it to lose its way.

My few word summary actually pretty much covers it, but to fill-in-the-blanks on the story, we’ve stumbled into Atlantis, where their local religious cult wishes to sacrifice the Who Crew to their god.  Doc barters his way out (man, wait, this is really similar to the previous eps) when he recognizes the name of one Professor Zaroff, trusted scientist of the Atlanteans.  He has a smart-guy to smart-guy chat with Zaroff before realizing the dude’s maybe a mad scientist, and then spends a couple of eps trying to get the rest of Atlantis to see the truth, which is where the story stalls, taking a roundabout way to bring things justifiably together.

There’s some interesting stuff here in terms of light world-building in constructing the Atlantean society, but it starts to feel a bit half-baked in the serial’s latter half, like details only existed to create hurdles for the story.  The character acting is pretty solid, though; although Zarkoff is playing a cliche, actor Joseph Furst gives him a nice dose of control underlying his madness that lets you believe he could get from point A to B.  The main Atlanteans also perform admirably, the script and their representations giving depth to roles that could have easily just been “doubter guy” and “supporter guy” and so on.  The working class is somewhat hilariously out of place, but it adds flavor to the interesting extras sprinkled throughout Menace.  And then there’s the fish people… and the absolutely out there “underwater” sequence.  The production design does a fair job with its budget, and the costumes are almost haunting, but get too much screentime to remain as such and then begin to remind me of the horrible bee people from – what was that, Web Planet?  Ugh.

But as I started, this all underlines Troughton’s importance, and how he’s written with companions to match his intelligence and directness.  Polly, Ben and Jamie are all capable (excepting some brief damsel-in-distress nonsense); we trust them, as we trust Doc to actually know what’s what – dig those groovy undercover shades, Troughton – as he chuckles his way through danger.  Otherwise, Underwater’s meandering latter half and regrettably cheesy costumes would make this a more boring affair than it turns out to be.