UNADULTERATED BOORISH OPINION: WAS IT REALLY SO BAD? WARRIORS OF THE DEEP

Not quite a new type of essay, but a new series that I'll be featuring in my UNADULTERATED BOORISH OPINION style of essays. 

This will be similar to the "Unsung Classics" that I, sometimes, like to write about but it will have its own slant. While an Unsung Classic is a great story that should have gotten more props than it deserves, "Was It Really So Bad?!" is about stories with legitimate problems to them that I feel have been blown out of proportion. They're not quite Guilty Pleasures (we've written about those in a BOOK OF LISTS series. Here's the first of the five - just keep clicking to the next entry if you want to keep going:  http://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/05/book-of-lists-top-five-guilty-pleasures.html). Guilty Pleasures are legitimately bad but I still like them, somehow. A "Was It Really So Bad?" story may have misfired on a few fronts but I still wouldn't call it a legitimate "clunker". It's still actually quite decent most of the time. But, because of a few rough patches, Fandom has decided that it absolutely sucks. My point in this particular type of essay is to try to build a bit of a case in the tale's defense. 

If you think the story I'm defending stinks then I probably won't change your opinion. But I'll still enjoy the cathartic value of stating what I think about the whole thing and how much it irritates me that fans crap on something that was actually half-decent. 


WARRIORS OF THE DEEP - WAS IT AS DEEPLY CRAPPY AS THEY CLAIM? 

It's the mid-80s. We've all just settled down from a really fun anniversary celebration that wasn't big on plot but still hit all the right notes with nostalgia. Season 21 comes along a short while later and we're all anxious to see what it holds. "Hooray!" We rejoice, "The Silurians and Sea Devils are coming back!"

What ends up hitting our screens, however, doesn't make us rejoice so much. There are a few glaring problems with Warriors of the Deep that let Fandom down so much that they turned on the whole thing rather quickly. So much so, that it tends to make it on to a lot of peoples' Worst of Lists.

This can happen when an old monster is brought back and the story is a bit lacking in places. Even in the New Series, we've seen this occur. Sontaran Strategem/Poison Sky, for instance, was a passable tale. But, because it had Sontarans attached to it, our disappointment becomes magnified. An okay story becomes more heavily reviled because it failed to re-introduce an old foe effectively.

I suggest that Poor 'Ole Warriors of the Deep got hit that way, too. If we can look past a few things and get over that it's not the best story featuring Silurians and/or Sea Devils (though, it's not the worst, either) then we actually find that there's still a fair amount of decent things about it.



THE GOOD STUFF

There's an interesting behind-the-scenes story that many fans feel contributes quite strongly to the detriment of Warriors of the Deep. Johnny Byrne, the author of the story, specified in the script that Seabase 4 should be very dark and gloomy and appear very worn down. It was meant to symbolize how the Cold War, itself, had gone on way more than it should and was causing everything to decay. The production team, for whatever reason, chose to go another way with it. Which is, ultimately, how things go in the Biz. What you write on the page doesn't always make it to the screen. Johnny Byrne, however, ended up having so many problems with this that he never contributed again.

But, as much as Byrne's specifications might have helped contribute to the atmosphere of the adventure, I don't think that going against his wishes did any actual real damage (though some fans would like to think otherwise). The truth of the matter is, the sets to Warriors of the Deep look great. Aside from a wobble here and there during action sequences and some very obvious 80s digital images on display screens, they hold up quite well. Everything looks pretty slick, really. So we shouldn't complain too hard that Byrne's vision wasn't accomplished. Cause what we did get was still quite impressive. So let's brush aside that Popular Fan Objection here and now. Sea Base 4 might not have looked the way it was intended to be - but it still looked pretty good. Some might even say awesome. 

Another great strength to this story is pacing. Earthshock set this interesting precedent in the Peter Davison Era. If a famous monster from the past was coming back, then the whole plot needed to feel like things were moving very quickly. There was a stronger emphasis on action and there might even, perhaps, be a bit of grittiness to the whole thing. Warriors of the Deep accomplishes this quite well. It doesn't quite "hit the ground running" like Earthshock or Resurrection of the Daleks did. We do get some establishing scenes that move a little more lazily. But that sense of pace does start kicking in fairly early in the game. Once the TARDIS confronts the defense satellite, a very nice sense of urgency ensues. The scenes are stacked against each other quite effectively for Parts 1 and 2 as things propel at a very good speed. That idea of the TARDIS crew always being in peril is well-established in the first half of the story. We really are whisked along quite nicely in the adventure. But things feel more tense than normal. Which, again, is the way things seem to work when Doctor Five is dealing with a returning monster. Honestly, those first 2 parts of Warriors of the Deep are pretty damned solid.

Some folks get upset that the Silurians have shells, now. That it's a blatant attempt to cash in on the Ninja Turtle Fever that was going on at the time. I'm not sure how valid of an issue that is. The costumes for both species actually look quite good. There's a bit of a problem with the heads here and there - a Silurian mask was not put on properly at one point. And the heads of the Sea Devils are actually hats that hang off the artistes poorly, sometimes. But these sort of problems happen quite often in Classic Who. I find it hard to get too caught up in it. But I do think that the updates that were done to both creatures were very strong.


THE NOT-SO-GOOD STUFF 

For me, Part Three is where some real problems start to arise. The cliffhanger to Part One was great. That was actually a really good fight sequence. But Part Two's ending signposts a big issue on the horizon. The sequence of events is well-written. We are genuinely concerned for the Doctor and Tegan as they get trapped on the wrong side of the bulkhead. But the execution of that scene falls very flat. And much of the direction in Part Three continues suffering.

The real problem here, of course, is the Myrka. Even by Classic Who standards, the visual is just too embarrassing to handle. Again, as a concept, it works well. It's nice to see a very different kind of monster trying to be created. But what we actually get is laughable. It's just difficult to handle a pantomime horse with any degree of seriousness. It doesn't help that several cringe-worthy visuals happen around the thing, too. Our first sight of it through airlock doors that are blatantly not made of metal is pretty ludicrous. As is the "fight" that Ingrid Pitt is meant to have with it before she perishes. It's all pretty awful. This is a legitimate Fan Objection that I can't really dismiss. The Myrka really does ruin things for a bit.

What Fandom doesn't seem to notice is that the writing is also only doing so well in this episode. Warriors of the Deep, I feel, would have worked so much better if they had started doing those three-parters in the McCoy era right here. Byrne is really trying to sustain the episode when there isn't quite enough plot. There's some structural issues, too. The most blatant being just how long it takes for Commander Vorshak to get from the bulkhead to the Bridge. Watch it for yourself. Everyone else displaces themselves quite quickly after the Myrka and the Sea Devils break through. Vorshak just seems to stroll along during all the peril. Did he stop for a bowel movement or something?  

There's another really silly writing choice that gets made that I feel needs to be highlighted. When Nilson is uncovered as the traitor - no one thinks to disarm him. Wouldn't that be the first thing one would do in a military operation when someone is suspected of treason?!  Instead, Nilson makes his escape and leads us to a very weak cliffhanger.

Really, for my money, Part Three is where things go off the rails for a bit. Most complaints that are leveled against it cannot be disputed. This is where Warriors of the Deep becomes legitimately bad.

Does it stay bad, though?

I don't think so....


BACK ON TRACK

It's almost like Part Four brushes the third part's dust off of itself and gets back on its feet. Quite mercifully, both Nilson and the Myrka are dead. The issues they created die with them and we can get back to the real plot.

The pace really starts to pick up again. Some quick captures and escapes happen to pad things out a bit but not too much. As is often the case with Doctor Five Returning Monster Stories, there is a nice moment where the Doctor abandons his gentle disposition and "lets rip" for a few minutes with unadulterated outrage. This time, though, his target is humanity, itself. He is truly disgusted by Preston's desire to wipe out the enemy with hexachromite (which, admittedly, could have been introduced more subtly in Part One!). It's quite the speech that sits almost as strongly as the verbal attack against the Cyber Leader in Earthshock. I'm very impressed by it.

The tension that ensues once the hexachromite is released into the ventilation system is extremely well-performed. Those last few minutes of Tegan and Turlough running around trying to save the Silurians while the Doctor attempts to stop the missile run really are frantic. Our three leads sell the moment very well and we're even holding our breath a bit.

Again, we can make a bit of an Earthshock comparison, here. This final scene is extra effective because it actually works against itself a bit. There are two well-placed contradictory elements going on. Which makes the peril of the moment all-the-more effective. In Earthshock, they're trying to save Adric. But, at the same time, they can't. If they do, established history could be corrupted. In Warriors of the Deep, they want to preserve what remains of the Silurian Triad - but also can't. Because, no doubt, Icthar will try some other way to wipe out humanity if he survives. This is actually some pretty solid writing. It tears us in two different directions and makes the climax of the story that bit more exciting.

The ending of Warriors of the Deep does take a pretty big risk. Some feel it didn't work. I, however, am of the "This is a Super-Cool Ending" Camp. But then, I also liked the broken math badge in Earthshock. So maybe I'm just a sucker for when the show tries to stray from its regular "well, we saved the day lets go back to the TARDIS" formula. Because the Doctor looking over the devastation and pronouncing: "There should have been another way." is absolutely spectacular. It really rams home what the whole story is trying to say about War. The Cold War, in particular. That, basically, we need to find a better way.

A bit corny, perhaps? Probably. But, sometimes, corny is nice...



ONE LAST FAN OBJECTION TO DISMISS....

Okay, I've made my case. Aside from some bad stuff in Part Three, I think this story does half-decently. A lot of the Popular Fan Objections have, by my definition, been cut down to size (you may think otherwise, of course - and you're perfectly welcome to your opinion!).

But there is one last complaint to deal with. It doesn't refer so much to the specific story, itself. But rather, how the story affects the larger scale of continuity.

We seem to be under the impression that the Doctor, in this point in his timeline, has met the Silurians and Sea Devils on three occasions. Those incidents were all shown onscreen in Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep. Some confusion ensues, however, when references are made in Warriors of the Deep to Silurians and Sea Devils that don't seen to make sense. The Doctor claims to have knowledge of Myrkas, Triads and has even met Icthtar. But we never saw any of this happen in those two previous tales. Fans are angered that Warriors seems to have gotten its continuity wrong.

The answer is simple, really. I go into this in far greater detail in my the CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES that I do about Silurian History (I'll post links at the bottom of the essay), but Warriors of the Deep is referencing untelevised encounter(s) that the Doctor has had with the Silurians. It's entirely possible, in fact, that the Silurians and Sea Devils that we see in this story have absolutely no knowledge of the onscreen adventures the Doctor had with them. In the same way that the Silurians we've been seeing in New Who don't seem to know about the groups of Homo Reptilia he's met in the Classic Series. These are creatures that have been living in hibernation chambers scattered throughout the planet. It's likely that there's not a whole lot of communication going on between them. So the Doctor's encounters with them can be very isolated. 


THE FINAL ANALYSIS

Now we have, officially, dealt with all the problems and strengths of Warriors of the Deep. I'd like to think that my analysis has shown there are far more positive points to the tale than negative. Not sure if you see that, yourself. But, as I said earlier, if I didn't change your mind on the matter - the cathartic process of it all was still nice! 

Nonetheless, I hope I've helped you to re-evaluate things a bit.




That's all for now for this new series. Hope you've enjoyed it. From time to time, we will look at other stories that I feel have always gotten more flack than they deserve (you can bet that both Twin Dilemma and Time and the Rani will show up here, someday). I look forward to ranting further on such matters....   

Want a bit more elaboration on those unseen Silurian/Sea Devil stories?  Here are links to my Comprehensive Homo Reptilia History:  

Part 1:   
http://robtymec.blogspot.com/2017/09/chronologies-and-timelines-probable.html

Part 2: 
http://robtymec.blogspot.com/2017/10/chronologies-and-timelines-silurian.html