1. It was a pretty wet Saturday in London. Perfect weather for Fish People. I made my way from Marylebone train station to Waterloo via the Bakerloo line, before crossing over to the BFI Southbank on foot. There was no sign of Professor Zaroff trying to submerge the capital.
2. It had been 413 days since the last Doctor Who animated reconstruction was shown at the BFI Southbank. The Abominable Snowmen was screened for the first time on Saturday 3^rd September 2022 whereas the debut screening of The Underwater Menace took place on Saturday 21^st October 2023. So it’s been a fair old wait.
3. Of course, this isn’t actually the first time that The Underwater Menace has been shown in some form at the BFI Southbank. Episode 2 was screened on Sunday 11^th December 2011 at the ‘Missing Believed Wiped’ event [1] upon its recovery from the private film collection of Terry Burnett. This meant it had been 4332 days since the last screening of Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace at the BFI Southbank. At the time of writing, it remains the earliest surviving Troughton episode of Doctor Who within the BBC archives.
4. The auditorium was largely full, but not absolutely packed to the gills like it had been just one month earlier for The Five Doctors. The attendance was reminiscent of that for The Abominable Snowmen screening last year. There were sadly a fair number of empty seats, particularly in the two rows directly in front of me. So I had a pretty good view of the screen.
5. There are probably two good reasons for the shortfall in attendance. Firstly, the lack of any major guest on the post-screening Q&A, such as Frazer Hines or Anneke Wills. And secondly, the general fan consensus of The Underwater Menace, which in case you weren’t aware is pretty low going by the rankings displayed in Doctor Who Magazine over the decades [2].
6. As is tradition, there was a short quiz before the start of the screening where audience members can shout out answers to win Doctor Who-related prizes. There was a question that stumped the audience for a good minute or so, something about an adaptation of which Shakespeare inspired something in Warriors’ Gate (bit random, I know). It stuck in my head because it’s something I’ve just never witnessed in all my dozen-or-so trips to the BFI. At least I could tell you Nigel Robinson wrote the 1988 Target novelisation of The Underwater Menace.
7. Anneke Wills had recorded a short introduction to be shown before the start of the screening. She was sat at her home in Devon, safe and sound, recounting a few of her memories from working on this story and doing the voices of characters she did for the 2021 audiobook reading of The Underwater Menace. There was some laughter and cheering when she said, in her best Zaroff voice, “Nothing in the world can stop me now!”
8. Episode 1 begins. Ah yes, the title sequence doesn’t have Troughton’s face – because that didn’t change until The Macra Terror. Just a reminder of how early this story is during Troughton’s tenure. And also just the fanatic attention to detail we get with these releases.
9. This is the third Doctor Who animation directed by AnneMarie Walsh that I’ve seen on the big screen at the BFI (after The Faceless Ones and The Evil of the Daleks) and I think there are more improvements in the animation. I think I can spot there are more different angles and profiles for each character and improvements in the fluidity of their movements. But also, something just seems uncannily off about Ben’s face. Oh well.
10. The Doctor doesn’t wear his “stovepipe hat” [3] at all during the animation, unlike the original production in which he wears it during Episode 1 (and Polly then wears it during Episode 4). Instead, he walks past it on a hatstand as he exits the TARDIS. For shame, I should like a hat like that! And wait – what is going on with those TARDIS doors? Okay, I take back everything I said about fanatic attention to detail.
11. This story is explicitly set in the (for the original time of broadcast) near future. The Doctor already knows who Professor Zaroff, a hitherto unmentioned character, is prior to the start of the story. Their arrival in the mythical underwater city of Atlantis by ‘magic elevator’ is barely remarked upon. These are, to varying degrees, unusual details for a Doctor Who story. I’m trying not to think about it the logic too much.
12. I thought the animation would help ‘sell’ the story of The Underwater Menace to a larger audience given its wacky and cartoon-logic nature. It does in some respects, such as the bright, contrasting colour palettes and the greatly expanded upon and embellished sets. But I could also see the animation was never going to replicate the characterful performances of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor nor Joseph Furst’s Professor Zaroff.
13. The Fish People now swim like actual Fish People living in a large aquarium rather than standing in an underwater set made from cardboard and tissue paper, or being hung in the air by ‘invisible’ wires. Now that’s quite different from their previous animations, which have primarily consisted of humans and Daleks. It adds some credibility to the original production’s over-ambitious vision, but I suspect fans will argue it lacks the original’s low-budget charm.
14. Speaking of low-budget charm, I actually quite like the cheapness of these animations. Is that a Hot Take? Because it does actually fit with Classic Doctor Who’s low-budget charm. It would be all sorts of wrong if it looked like a professional Disney animation instead. Disney are clearly not paying for this!
15. After two episodes, I started wishing I had the confidence of writer Geoffrey Orme plotting a Doctor Who adventure. The number of coincidences and contrivances in this story was getting ridiculous. But in fairness, it is a ridiculous story; that’s sorta what makes it fun to watch. I told myself to stop counting them so I could just enjoy the rest of my afternoon.
16. Mark Ayres was invited on stage for a short chat between Episodes 2 and 3. The primary source for the animation’s new audio master track was, predictably, from Graham Strong’s off-air recordings, whilst the theme music is taken from the BBC’s master tape of the theme, since Graham would cut these out to save on tape. In fact, his recordings are so good that they have replaced the audio on the surviving film prints of Episodes 2 and 3. Some minor sound effects have also been added to help ‘sell’ the animation.
17. It was difficult to watch Episode 3 (and, I suppose, Episode 2) without comparing it to the surviving episode. The camera shots and framing choices just seemed to be lacking in any dynamism, but this is probably a constraint of the animation format. It just about manages to convey the story, which is sort of a triumph given the serial’s fast-and-loose approach to plotting.
18. The infamous Fish People ‘ballet/worker rebellion’ sequence in Episode 3 now primarily consists of one Fish Person doing some sort of visual mime to communicate to other Fish people what to do. It was like watching your family play charades on Boxing Day, if your family look drunk and confused.
19. There was a massive cheer and round of applause after Professor Zaroff shouted “Nothing in the world can stop me now!” at the cliffhanger of Episode 3. I was delighted by this response. This is the only proper way to react to a Doctor Who villain declaring their ambition to destroy the world.
20. I noticed that Zaroff’s delivery of the same line at the reprise of Episode 4 was identical to that given at the end of Episode 3, which wasn’t the case in the original production as they re-recorded the cliffhanger ending each week. I suspect they’ve done this with all the reprises to avoid extra animation work at these points, which is a shrewd choice.
21. In a surprisingly charming deviation from the original production, Professor Zaroff’s octopus playfully entertains the notion of pressing the plunger that would blow up Atlantis before swimming off into the ocean never to be seen again. I have no choice but to, as the kids say these days, stan. This octopus is now my favourite character in the entire story.
22. Wait – so the main cast travel down to Atlantis by some ‘magic elevator’ but then at the end they just rock climb their way out of the city and get back to the TARDIS? I suppose it makes sense because, really, you shouldn’t be using a lift during a fire escape; this one isn’t even a drill!
23. Y’know, people following these animations through for the first time in story order are going to get such a visual whiplash when they move onto Episode 1 of The Moonbase, which looks completely different. But that’s not my problem!
24. After the screening, there was a panel consisting of director AnneMarie Walsh, special features collator (and former animator/producer) Charles Norton and producer Paul Hembury. AnneMarie said they’d had 15 months to work on the animation, the longest production cycle of any four-part animation to-date. They also discussed how they had to treat the animation as its own separate production, deviating from the original camera script and production design when they needed to consider the strengths and limitations of the animation format.
25. Paul Hembury – according to various Doctor Who ‘news outlets’ – somehow managed to confirm that there were more animations along the way by explicitly not confirming that any more animations that were along the way. But I still bet there will be a new one released next year.
26. Ian Levine, a wealthy Doctor Who fan and rival producer of animated missing episode reconstructions, begged the panel to confirm that an official animation of The Smugglers was being worked on. AnneMarie said “No.” The audience reacted uproariously.

The Underwater Menace is out now on DVD (for the 2nd time!) and on Blu-Ray.

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Footnotes

[1] The Black Archive #40: The Underwater Menace by James Cooray Smith, p26.

[2] Out of the 21 Patrick Troughton-era stories, The Underwater Menace ranked 20th in the 1998 and 2009 polls, then 19th in the 2014 and 2023 polls. But what do readers of Doctor Who Magazine know, eh?

[3] Apparently it’s a Paris Beau? See The Black Archive #40: The Underwater Menace by James Cooray Smith, p75.