you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast
each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or
audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion
hello and welcome to another episode of fusion patrol i'm eugene and i'm simon and tonight we
are looking at once again the underwater menace however this time the animated version uh just
for your edification. We previously reviewed this in April of 2016, back in episode 256 of our
podcast, when they had just released the Telesnap only version. And just for that walk down memory,
I'm going to give you the synopsis I gave of the episode from back then. So here we go.
The newly added companion of Jamie is taken on his first space adventure, sort of space
adventure, part of this adventure with Ben and Polly and the second doctor who is still
very early in his regeneration.
And they land somewhere that apparently looks like Cornwall, except that the sedimentary
rock that's so obviously in front of them is claimed to be volcanic rock.
And so the doctor says they're not there and they find a cave and then they're all
captured.
And then they find the remnants of Atlantis in the caves.
And Professor Zaroff, who's crazy and wants to blow up the planet.
The doctor does things to stop him.
And that's all the summary I'm going to give you.
And I think I may have embellished the story just a little even at that level.
Well, the summary is still great.
But the new animation you did for it is excellent.
Yes, yes.
I have actually made a proper one this time for it.
And so I just wanted to give you my mindset when you're listening to the last one as to how much I gave this story.
So here we go.
Underwater Minus proper synopsis part one with disbelieving new companion Jamie in tow the TARDIS
arrives on a rocky Mediterranean coastline they are soon captured and taken deep underground to
Atlantis from the clues they determine they are sometime in the future post 1968 from the brilliant
underwater based food the doctor determines that the famous missing scientist Zaroff must be living
among them. There is little time left as they are all to be sacrificed to Ando, god of Atlantis.
The sacrifice takes the form of being fed to the sharks. Before they are sacrificed, the doctor
manages to get a sympathetic Atlantean, Ara, to take a note to Zarov. Reading the note, which only
says, I have a secret, Zarov has the doctor released. The doctor bargains with his secret
to get the others spared. This works, but the doctor reveals his bluff. There was no secret.
Zorov is actually amused by this and recognizes the doctor as a fellow scientist, and he takes the doctor to his laboratory.
Jamie and Ben are sent to the mines, while Polly is sent for conversion to be a fish person and farm the undersea crops.
Polly is about to be operated on when the episode ends.
Part 2
in Zorov's laboratory the doctor sabotages the power accidentally delaying the fish operation
on Polly delaying it long enough for Aura to rescue her meanwhile Zorov explains his plan
to the doctor Zorov has convinced the Atlanteans that he will lift Atlantis back above the waves
to do this he will drain the oceans into a shaft they've been drilling deep into the earth's crust
The Doctor immediately sees the folly of that.
Draining the oceans into the super-hot core of the Earth will simply create a massive steam explosion and destroy the Earth.
Surely, Zaroff must realize that.
Yes, but it will lift Atlantis in the process, counters Zaroff.
Zaroff further explains that he's doing this as the ultimate act of a scientist because he can.
The scientist's dream of supreme power.
The doctor instead realizes that Zarath is just insane and promptly escapes from the madman.
In the mine, Ben and Jamie meet two other topsiders, Sean and Jacko.
The Atlanteans capture shipwrecked survivors and put them to work in the mines.
Sean and Jacko want to escape, and they have a plan.
With Ben and Jamie's help, they escape into some unused caves and tunnels, searching for a way out.
Ara takes Polly to a hidden place in the temple of Ando.
The doctor overhears Ramo, a priest, expressing his doubts about Zarath and approaches him,
explaining that Zarath plans to destroy the world and requests to be taken for an audience with Thos,
leader of Atlantis, to put his case.
Ramo agrees.
The tunnel that Benjamishan and Jacko have been exploring leads them into the hidden place in the temple,
and they meet Polly.
The doctor is taken to Thos and explains that Zarath is insane,
And after Thos gives the doctor's account due consideration, he turns him over to Zaroff.
End of part two.
Part three.
Zaroff orders the doctor and Ramo to be sent for sacrifice, although it is clear that Thos
has begun to see the truth in the doctor's words.
Zaroff may indeed be a bit unhinged.
During the sacrifice, the god Amno, sounding suspiciously like Ben, has the priest bow
in supplication, giving the Doctor and Ramo the opportunity to escape into the hiding place,
where the TARDIS team is reunited and begins to hatch a plan. Zaro's food source, while brilliant,
spoils within hours. If they can get the slave fish people to strike, they can cut off the city's
food supply. Shun and Jacko are said to organize the workers' industrial action. The Doctor and
others will kidnap Zaro, which they do, and take him back to the temple hiding place.
Zaroff boasts that his plans are already in motion and cannot be stopped.
The doctor doubts Zaroff's ego will allow the final act to occur without him,
but goes to check anyway, leaving Polly and Ramno guarding the suddenly stricken ill Zaroff.
It is a trick, and he kills Ramno and takes Polly prisoner, escaping into the tunnels.
Jamie rescues Polly, but Zaroff makes good his escape.
Zaroff finds his way to Thaus, who tells him of the rebellion.
Zarath wants them all killed, and Thaos again notices there might be a hint of madness in
Zarath's actions. So, Zarath shoots him and has his guards kill Thaos' guards.
Nothing in the world can stop him now! Part 4. Thaos isn't really dead, and the doctor finds him.
They take him back to the temple. The doctor comes up with a desperate plan to stop Zarath.
He'll have to flood Atlantis and destroy Zarath's machinery. He could use the help of his entire
but Polly and Jamie have wandered off and gotten lost. He'll have to make do with Ben. First,
they bluff their way into a power station and cut off a power that holds back the sea,
starting the inrush of the sea. This happens near where Jamie and Polly are lost and they scramble
ever upward for the rest of the episode, trying to escape the rising water. While all the others
organize an evacuation of Atlantis, the doctor and Ben go after Zaroff. First, the doctor lets
Zaroff's staff know what the actual plan is and that the ocean is flooding in soon to kill them.
They flee. Zaroff is made of sterner, madder stuff and has prepared for the eventuality that
someone might try to stop him at the last minute. The controls are in a room that can be sealed
from the inside. Zaroff seals himself inside behind the bars and taunts the doctor, saying
that he cannot stop him. Ben is also worried about drowning and flees, leaving the doctor alone.
The doctor cuts the power to the lights, luring Zaroff out of his cage to activate the emergency lights.
During the distraction, Ben slips into the cage, sealing it, but not before escaping.
Now, the controls are trapped behind bars and Zaroff cannot reach them.
The doctor and Ben evacuate.
Although the doctor feels that they must go back to rescue Zaroff, Ben prevents it and Zaroff drowns, still straining to reach the controls.
Through what is no doubt a miracle Amdo, Jamie and Polly have escaped.
finding themselves overlooking the TARDIS and soon from another tunnel,
the doctor and Ben find themselves in the same place reunited.
They leave Atlantis to its fate.
All right.
The underwater menace.
I should let listeners know that I have just completed listening to our old
episode.
So I have fresh in my mind,
some of the thoughts that we had about that one so that I can keep my
comments to um kind of how it's improved i'll go so far as to say how it's improved uh from the
version so uh and i should say i have not just listened to it so i don't have those things
fresh in my mind and i was i was curious how long ago it was if that i mean seven years i've
probably forgotten quite a lot of it i guess we a little bit we we we should explain that this is
This is one of those occasions where we're revisiting an old story
because we have watched every single Doctor Who that has been,
every missing Doctor Who where an animation has been done for the podcast.
And we then went on and watched every single reconstruction that was released.
And Underwater Menace was one of those,
although only in the very kind of minimal sense.
It was a reconstruction.
Yeah. Yeah. Reconstruction was released, I guess, back in 2016 then. And now we have had a full animation of both the two missing stories and the two existing stories of the four part serial in both black and white and color.
And I will say I watched entirely the color animations for this go round.
And I've had a look at both the color, the black and white animations, and the recons that are provided on the new Blu-ray release.
Are they better than the old recons?
Oh, good.
Well, that's something.
They're not the same.
Let me say that.
We should point out.
The old ones, in the old podcast, there's an awful lot of us, both of us, complaining about what a terrible, terrible reconstruction job it was.
there i think you said there's a point not not eight frames per second uh of of recreation or
something um sometimes you go two three scenes with the same picture on the screen that there's
a scene where they go let's go let's go this way and then they spend a long time talking
and and or not even talking just the sounds of footsteps and all they're showing you on the
is a door a closed door and so you know it was it was truly an abysmal telestap recreations the
worst i've ever seen and it was put out and i i doubted that it would even be released in the
united states that is not true they did release it it's just as bad since since i'm not going to
say an awful lot about the reconstruction i will i will throw in now then my thoughts on the
differences with the reconstructed episodes that you get on the blu-ray and again these are the
reconstructions are just for the two missing episodes and they are very different in style
from the ones you were talking about so for example one of the things i remember us talking
about even though it was seven years ago was the fact that there wasn't enough kind of indication
of who was speaking and that a kind of common way in which they do that in reconstructions is
okay so they've got they haven't got any new telesnaps to use but they've got a telesnap of
each speaker and they put the the picture up of whoever is speaking to give you a sense of that
and that kind of thing is there there's also i and i i think you know this is kind of one of the
only real benefits in my view of the reconstructions over the animations is the fact that
where you do have existing clips from the original episodes,
then they get integrated within that.
And they have done that here in a way that they didn't do with the,
the 2016 version.
So that's quite important.
I don't think you could do that in the animation because it would be a very
kind of jarring change.
Yeah.
Especially considering how different it looks.
Well,
exactly.
Exactly.
And so all of the kind of stylized choices that are made in the animation
that we will come on to you would be reminded of those repeatedly every time you switch back to the
clips so i don't think you want to do that so i think the recons do a job in the sense that they
give you that who is speaking and the kind of bare minimal visual uh stimulus to to keep your
attention focused on the audio plus bridging to the clips but one of the ways in which they do that
is because they don't have telesnaps showing everything that's going on screen so for example
there's no there's no picture of the the netting uh when they get captured in a net so in that
instance it's drawn on um i think we saw something a bit like this in the galaxy 4 recons in in the
original galaxy 4 recons with kind of very uh slightly strange crude animations slipped into
to the recons where a lot of action was happening and I guess they felt it was necessary to show
what was on screen and so we've got some pretty horrible drawings imposed on some of the telesnaps
and still images in this and that's where I'd kind of say there's a the drawback is compared to the
2016 recons but overall really is no comparison it's a much better experience if you're only
watching the recons even never mind the animations okay so let me ask this question because one of
the things that came out uh during our review of crusade was that i watched it with the subtitles
turned on and i still felt that there was some issues and i guess there was a separate i don't
know whether it was an audio track or video track or something explaining what was going on on the
screen that i didn't see or hear and with from our old conversation it's clear there was nothing
like that on the old recons and did they add anything on here that says oh they're being
sacrificed to sharks or something like that no okay so you're still no there isn't but there
isn't anything there isn't anything where it obviously needs it the only the only thing was
as i say where there are things on screen or there are there are yeah there are things that
you see on screen like the net you might not necessarily you could probably infer it all
from the dialogue but it's a question of do you know about it straight away well or do you only
know about when someone explains what's going on implicitly that the shark bit was a very
specific issue because in our original one uh i did not know they were being sacrificed to sharks
until we got to episode three and someone in dialogue said,
I should have let them sacrifice you to the sharks.
I'm like, oh, is that what they were doing in episode one?
Because I don't know at all, because the tele snaps they had.
I mentioned the fact that there was a picture of a shark,
but there was, you know, no, no clue why there was a picture of a shark going on there.
So it was, you know, with, with, and we should add, I'm sure we've said this somewhere in
the intervening years, subsequent to us doing that podcast.
I was at a Gallifrey one convention and somebody from the reconstruction team was there and
they said in no uncertain terms, they were given a very strict remit.
They were not allowed to use pictures out of sequence.
They could only use a set of pictures that they were given, which were presumably these,
the ones from the doctor who website reconstruction and they were not allowed to do any
embellishments of any kind that was that was the mandate on high and say you do this and that's it
and that's why it's so awful and they were you know basically maybe i need to go back and watch
that because there there is at least one image of the the shark scene and i i don't i mean
i don't remember what we said about these pictures do these pictures have rounded edges do these
tele-snaps recreations have rounded edges because that's something we mentioned they were using
they were using ones that had already been pre-cropped with like pretend like this is on a tv
screen which was apparently what they were handed so see they probably went back and actually got
more snaps that they had somewhere in the archive and improved what they were doing but yeah it was
it was really bad you'd go you'd go a couple scenes three scenes sometimes watching the same
picture that had nothing to do with what was going on on the screen it was it was uh it's truly
awful that was an embarrassment and an insult to to try selling that uh the way it was done
um you know giving it away free with breakfast cereal maybe but not not paying uh for it uh so
So you thought Underwater Menace was like wonderful, fantastic story.
Any different now that you can actually see what happened?
No, no, no.
I mean, I think the issue was that you couldn't get beyond the recon to realize what a fantastic and wonderful story it was last time around.
So I'm hoping that the animation has revealed that to you.
But no, I already knew that.
It has elevated it from worst Troughton story to mediocre Troughton story.
so yeah it moved it a long way up the list it's all right it's like i'll take that because a
mediocre trouton story is brilliant so but i i do think i do think it's highly entertaining
i still have exactly the same key core problem with it and that is and and we had a long discussion
we don't need to add on in the future but my key core problem with it is i i have an extreme problem
with any story where the protagonist wants to kill himself in the process of wiping out
everything. I mean, he's mad. I get it. At least in this one, he's mad when Davros and the Daleks
want to wipe out all of existence or when Rassilon wants to wipe out all of time, which are both
extremely stupid goals. Strategically, very bad. Yeah, we say, oh, yeah, they're mad. But no,
Zoroff's mad. I mean, he's cuckoos. You knock your, knock your forehead with your fist and no one there kind of mad thing. He's, he's playing it full arm barking mad, but how anybody could not have figured that out is another story. But yeah, but it made a lot more sense.
It, you know, there are an awful lot of scenes where they're just kind of walking around in this, in this story.
And so it helped.
It helped a lot.
And I think, you know, one of the reasons I watched the animations, because I've already seen the two existing episodes in the past.
I didn't feel that I need to do that again.
Sure.
You know, no eyebrows, no eyebrows.
We got rid of the eyebrows on the Atlanteans.
So that's an improvement.
just just right off the bat and i think the fish you mean the animations an improvement over the
live action original yes yes you know it's kind of like in uh in an abominable snowmen where they
decided to actually make the uh tibetan characters look ethnically tibetan instead of white guys in
yellow face yeah yeah they made the atlanteans look like beings it's this guy with uh eyebrows
stuck on his face um yeah i mean i said there are there are not there are a number of those
design decisions that i that i i'm kind of interested in i'm going i'm going to kind of
leapfrog over a point about the animation in general to dive into a point about the animation
in particular so my so my take on on the animation here is i'm very pleased to see
it animated yep there are my kind of rating of the animation overall is it's not the best
animation that we've ever seen but it's certainly not the worst yeah there are particular issues
in my view with the color animation and that is to do with some of the changes that have been made
And I'm not against making those changes. But the problem is that they have changed the colour of the Atlantean people to essentially a sort of grey colour that distinguishes them from human.
Yeah, I get why they did it. It kind of if you were watching it without the sound, it kind of looks cool.
It you know, it adds that extra kind of not otherworldly because it's the same world, but that othercontinantly look to them.
But it doesn't make sense because the dialogue is very clear that they do look human.
And when they have that initial discussion, they're talking about getting Polly to go and talk to them because she's a linguist.
But it's not that they look foreign.
You know, no one could seriously think, oh, it's just that we don't speak Italian or whatever.
Or, you know, we need Jamie to go and speak Gaelic at them.
There's something new there from the fact that we're seeing a different color.
So I don't have a problem.
I don't have a problem with them changing things.
I've said in the past, I don't mind them changing things.
But I think it's important that the dialogue track that they're using and the visuals that we get match.
So I think when they make changes like that, they need to edit the dialogue.
They need to cut out the bits that don't fit with the changes that they made.
See, I don't see that that doesn't fit.
I mean, these are people who've been living in caves for centuries.
Of course, they're going to be a bit gray.
That makes far more sense than, well, they've suddenly got bushy eyebrows.
Why is that?
You know, I agree.
I agree.
It makes sense in terms of if you're making the design decisions from scratch.
The problem is that is not what they did.
And the dialogue from the original reflects the fact that that is not what they did.
They do not comment on the fact they look great.
They comment on the fact that they look like foreigners.
Well, and they I don't know that they would look like foreigners because they had big bushy eyebrows either.
But they do already think they're in the Mediterranean.
So they would think they are foreigners to them to begin with.
They don't think they're in England or Scotland.
So, I mean, I didn't, you know, they're dressed funny.
And so they've got a bit of a power.
I mean, that might be the first thing.
Oh, look, they're in some quaint ethnic costumes.
They're foreign.
I don't have any problem with the idea that they just assume that they're not English.
But, I mean, they weren't so gray as to be, you know, they were, you know, green or something where you'd go, oh, those are definitely aliens from another planet.
They're just cave dwellers.
They look distinctly different.
They do not look like you could mistake them for any member of the TARDIS crew.
And so even if you give it a pass on the fact that, you know, they make the comment about them just looking like foreigners, there's then that where where the doctor dresses in the the Atlantean robes and the priest tells him in these robes, no one will challenge you.
Well, they might actually because you don't look great.
They were for that.
They wouldn't have challenged him in the black and white version.
Well, I think Troughton's eyebrows are relatively bushy, actually, but I do also think that the eyebrow thing is like, it's not, is nothing like as obvious.
The skin tone thing is a very, is a kind of very prominent feature.
It's much more obvious than the eyebrows were.
and I think that it would be hard to hard for them to believe that he wouldn't be challenged
or at least for them to kind of question oh well you know is this going to be all right again it's
not commented on because in the original version that wasn't the that wasn't a design choice that
they made it's not a it's not a kind of criticism of the design choice it's just if you're going to
make these changes you've got to make sure that the soundtrack and the dialogue matches up to it
and they needed to make edits and it's 100 not an issue if you watch it in black and white
so the black and white version of the animation is absolutely fine
well all right eyebrows aside what other changes in animation since we're on that topic spring to
mind if any you mean change changes from the live action to the yeah to this yeah this version well
I mean, mentioning the kind of Atlantean costumes, I think the headwear is now distinctly inferior.
But I understand that some of those, there are those considerations that you have to make when it's animation.
Too much detail.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
It doesn't, it doesn't, the new headwear is good and it's better to make it different than to try and do a kind of obviously inferior copy.
I don't think it's as good, but, you know, that's fine.
I also think that the octopus is a good choice, like not trying to do the more complicated fish, but have something in there doing its business.
And was it pulling the top off a Dalek Emperor model?
I didn't see that.
No, I couldn't.
In the animation?
No, I wondered if they'd reused that from somewhere else.
I do have a question.
And that is, was the octopus even in the original?
Well, no, that's the point.
The octopus relates to kind of replaces the sort of spiky fish thing in the tank.
Did the spiky fish thing in the tank suddenly come close to maybe almost pulling, pushing the lever down for Zaroff at the end? Or was that just made up completely?
Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it? Because episode four doesn't exist.
Yeah. And man, did we have problems with it? And this does sort it out.
so i tell you we did uh i think i was closer in my interpretation of what happened than than you
were sorry that you can go back and listen and admit well you mean the animation is closer to
your interpretation of things than my interpretation of things but it's the animators interpretation of
things that we're seeing presumably well i'm guessing they had a script to go by to see what
was going on but it had to do with the we know they didn't stick to that necessarily it had to
if it was your way then it didn't still didn't make any sense and that is the bit where zarov
locks himself in a cage then the doc ben runs off and pretends to run the doctor does something i
was thinking the doctor managed to open the cage it turns out in the animation anyway that that
you know ben slips in when zarov comes out to turn on the lights that ben closes it and runs back out
and then it gets trapped.
You thought Zarath was on the side
with the plunger,
which didn't make any sense,
and I was sure he had to be on the side that wasn't.
I think by the end of it,
I had convinced you,
but the scene is so bad in the reconstruction.
I don't remember any of this.
It's so bad in the reconstruction
that you just can't...
But no, Zarath only died
because Zarath refused to leave.
And there was the,
is Zarath trapped behind the gate,
where is Zara just too stubborn to leave?
And he definitely seems too stubborn to leave in this.
And it doesn't make any sense if he was trapped with a switch
because he would have just, you know, pushed the switch.
But yeah, anyway, I don't throw one out there.
In general, I think it was a lot of improvement.
You know, the market isn't the size of my bathroom
that they're trying to run around.
All right, maybe my living room.
And so that's an improvement that in general, things look bigger, more expansive, kind of viably sized.
I think they did the temple very poorly.
I feel like in the episodes where you can see it and and a couple of and I did watch the behind the scenes and stuff.
So I have actually recently seen some of the reconstructed stuff that like the hidden passage behind the temple was a little more credibly hidden than the way.
It wasn't very credibly hidden.
Don't get me wrong.
But then it is portrayed in the animation where, you know, it's just they keep popping out and there's people all around them and they pull their head back behind it.
It's like, at least it was kind of in the shadows in the original.
Here it's just right front and center of the room.
It's like, I don't, I think they could have done better with giving the impression that
there was a secret passage back there.
But yeah, I mean, I appreciate the fact that I actually know what was going on with the
shark sacrifice and the planks and the tipping of the boards and all that stuff.
Okay.
Now it makes sense.
They actually did, they did add a little bit of tipping, which I suspect was animation in the recon for that, just to give an indication of what's going on. But yeah, it definitely helps.
Okay. I'm almost, I'm almost certain they didn't, well, no, they must, I don't know. Didn't want to go back and watch the recons, the old ones, but I don't know.
No, no, no.
They said they didn't do that.
They said they didn't do
It wasn't a major thing, but they didn't show as clearly as they might have done what was going on.
And that's the scene when Polly is being taken down in the lift.
And there's this dialogue which says they tied her up.
You, I don't know what we would have got in the original part one, because obviously it's missing.
But you would imagine there might have been some shot of her, you know, rope around her wrist or something like that.
But we don't even see her hands are behind her back until a later shot, which I didn't totally understand because given they show it, why they couldn't have re-sequenced that.
But that was an instance where I thought the animation didn't show us what was going on as clearly as it might have done.
But clearly better than it did do without with the episode gone completely.
One of the other changes that I felt was quite a positive change was the fish people costumes, which are kind of like up several grades in terms of style and sexiness.
because the original costumes they're they're fine or whatever but the the new kind of design has
a lot more flair this kind of the the strapless dresses and they seem to fit a lot better and
everything which obviously you know you can much more easily do when you're drawing them
um but that that that for me was a definite upgrade so that you know that counteracts the
downgrade in the atlantean head headwear as far as i'm concerned i'm gonna say i don't think that
sexy was the word that would have ever come from my mind for describing the new the the new gods
but oh okay uh i yeah i don't know i didn't think they were to prove fish people yeah yeah i guess
maybe if you live near the ocean that might be a thing i don't know that must be what it is
um they still a little bit we i think they kind of sort of tried to almost ape the wire work
a little bit in the swimming when they did it now did you want you watched the animation even
you did not watch any of the originals this time yeah yeah i re-watched that sequence i wanted to
watch that again i presume you you went back to that as well i did not watch the original sequence
except in as much as i saw it in some of the behind the scenes stuff on that so and i did
i don't know i i felt like when i was watching the animation that they certainly did not go okay
how would fish people really be moving around and they still kind of held to that sort of
staged uh positioning that that you'd get with the wire work so i thought it was a
funny i think i did get a little bit better idea you know about that they were having a fish
conversation you know we need to go on strike i would i don't i didn't think they were trying to
to necessarily copy the technicalities of it but i do think maybe they were trying to copy
the aesthetics of it the aesthetic there's something yeah yeah there's something quite
there's something quite memorable about that sequence it i mean it could be memorable because
it is so obviously it's it's obvious how they staged it and yet it's also i mean it's obviously
done with wires as you say and it's the kind of thing that you could see done in a theater
but done in a theater it would have a terrific effect because seeing someone flying around is
is kind of impressive and so it would be with live television in 1967 or whenever this was
but i think that the animated version you didn't you didn't feel like you were watching
air breathing people pretending to be fish it felt much more underwater so it yes the animation
definitely added something to it without losing that aesthetic so i actually felt quite positive
towards that animation well i i didn't yeah no i it's it's an improvement off the original but
what i'm getting at is you know if i see fish i envision you know even when they are still
they suddenly flip away suddenly and quickly yeah and you don't get any of that with the fish people
right they're still sort of they're still sort of floating more so than fishing i guess no but
yeah they don't look like they've got the kind of fish equipment to do some of that stuff yeah but
if you're going for the look if they were doing it modern in something modern they would definitely
give them the fish feel to it not just the fish look if you want to call that the fish look well
yeah yeah maybe with disney money maybe with it maybe we'll see if we get a an underwater return
to atlantis yeah oh boy return for that again yeah uh well they've rebuilt it you know they're
going to rebuild it at the end and so the doctor could return and see the civilization that was
built after his destroying it kind of thing it could be you know it's like a return to scarrow
return to atlantis because yeah sure they've destroyed atlantis a couple times but you know
once they destroyed atlantis back in antiquity and then this this one they destroyed it in the future
back then and so you know they could return atlantis in the in the 20 22nd century where
they've teamed up with the silurians to take over the world we were digging new caves and we found
that's what that's a free idea for the doctor who uh production team that they want it no i will
make no claim to remind me if you remember we haven't uh we did not do the color version of
power of the daleks is that right i think they never did we never did no we never did yeah okay
so i've i've not seen it because i think the first one they came out with black was black and white
right in the animation and and that's the one they did well they were they released what they did was
they they they released it many times it was a slightly it was a slight change in the process so
the power of the daleks was the first animation after a long gap sounds familiar and they animated
it in black and white but after power of the daleks everything else was animated in color
and then they produced a black and white version what they did with power of the daleks was
they actually also produced a color version so they'd animated it in black and white
they then produced a color version and that was what was released
the both black and white and color versions of it i thought those were two separate releases but
all right no maybe there was a second there was a second release of power of the daleks with
improved animation which we have also not looked at we have not looked at that we we did look at
power of the daleks the animated one of the animals we just i i may be wrong but i saw we'd
only looked at the black and white version well if there was a color version i would have watched it
i'm sure of that but i i just feel like i didn't have that choice but again i i could be
misremembering but where i'm going at that is okay did they use the really dull credits that
they use this time so i got i got a note about that saying how much i like the credits this time
but i think the like the point about it is this is the first time we've seen that title sequence
in color isn't it well unless they did power of the daleks that way see that was my well power
of the daleks the color version has has the titles in black and white so you go you go from
the black and white titles in in into color and obviously the macro terror coming after this
has got the later title credit sequence hasn't it i don't know if the original had because i haven't
seen the original as macro terror but by then by the time i think by the time they'd released the
macro terror they'd already animated some of the later serials and colored the later title sequence
I mean I know you probably don't
I don't remember on our conversation but
for their choice
of colorizing the
trout and face credits
using the same
technique that they did with the Pertwee stuff
with basically overlaying a
color wheel feels as
authentic as you're gonna get
if you were trying to do color
so
I was fine with that
choice you know instead of them like
animating the various colors into the swirls and whatnot they just said no no this is how they did
it in 70 bop we'll just we'll copy that and i i like that choice in this one they just tinted it
blue so it looks like that weird color you get off of a black and white tv like
yeah no i but i don't think i don't think the color wheel version of it would have worked
i'm not sure that i don't know i'd have gone with blue like old television blue but i don't know
that's fair i don't know i just like it i just thought yeah it's kind of yeah i it was it was
probably the thing about the color that i like the most because i mean i obviously i have a
particular issue with the changes in color creating contradictions as a dialogue but i also did think
generally the color was quite inferior to the later season four episode i'm not wild about the
color in power of the daleks but i think i probably did admit in some of the discussions
when i particularly remember thinking this about the macro terror and possibly evil of the daleks
that the color was very subtly done it was atmospheric and it actually added something
and I was enjoying watching it in colour.
This one, even if I hadn't been annoyed
by the plot-specific changes the colour implemented,
I still think I would rather watch it in black and white.
I didn't think the colours were great,
but the titles were the exception.
I liked the colours of the title.
Because there weren't any.
There was, but there really wasn't.
It felt like it fitted and it felt like,
if you're going to stick with the original,
titles and obviously they they could have just ditched the original titles then it then i think
you've got to go with something that's relatively simple and i i think i mean you're not disagreeing
with that but you're saying a different color would have been better and i think i don't know
yes i don't know about the episode i was fine i was fine with the colors in this story uh as they
chose them and i am taking this on the following situation so for example in evil of the daleks
um there were some very brightly colored scenes like in the tricolor cafe and i went up but when
they're in the house they've gone kind of moody and because it is sort of moody and sort of uh
dark and and that that's the feel of the episode that's that that is keeping the spirit if there
is anything we will say about the underwater menace is that it is as over the top as it can
get in this story and so bright loud colors don't bother me it's like yeah you know somebody was
working on this script and they said yeah let's just go for it but they're not i could they're
not that loud it's that's not loud maybe not the right word really they they are colorful they have
it's more like it's more like the i don't know if this will translate for the for the transatlantic
listeners but it's more like the the kind of the macro terror faceless ones evil as the daleks
they're all pharaoh and ball and this is dulux oh no we don't speak welsh okay it's a question of
taste i did i thought that the color choices were tasteful and aesthetic in those that the earlier
animations compared to this one i i think this was closer to fury of the deep let's say but the
interesting thing about that is that it's is is the as far as i'm aware because this is this is
Anne-Marie Walsh animating this one so she was also the director on Mako Tara Face the Swan's
Evil of the Daleks but I guess where this also takes us to is the general animation quality
and it's a little bit of a disappointment to me that when we've got such a big chunk of season
four animated in a sort of continuous chunk of season four animated with what i think is a very
kind of high quality and consistent animation style and this precedes that lengthy chunk
they've shifted back from doing the 3d quite sophisticated 3d animation to doing completely
2D animation so it's not the same style at all and it's not bad I mean apart from the things
I've discussed I think it kind of shows you what's going on and it's you know it's it's not
horrible ugly drawings like some of the animations but it's not it's not a level that they've been
hitting and I you know I kind of still think the invasion is the best animation ever but
I did think that the season four animations were I mean they were different because they were doing
this kind of 3d thing but they were getting to a level of quality that was kind of approaching
what they got with the invasion and this this ain't that it really isn't that nothing in this
animation triggered my response no it's fine it's fine it's fine it was perfectly fine and I I
literally have zero notes other than about the animation except a snarky comment
about the fact that i would imagine i don't know but i would imagine that the sequence where
polly can't go up the whatever at the beginning climbing up the whatever was too much for her
was probably equally as lame as Polly not being able to walk up the steps
or look basically like steps of rock in the animation.
It's like, really, Polly? Really?
They don't look like they're really climbing, per se.
They're just sort of walking.
And then I thought, yeah, in the studio it probably looks just as bad, just different.
It possibly did.
And I think we've complained quite a lot about walking in the animations.
And I don't think that as it goes, walking in this is at all bad.
And so.
And there's a lot of it.
There is a lot of it.
And so in a way, it kind of serves, it serves that basic function of showing you what's going on.
Doing so in a relatively kind of pleasing way, visually speaking.
And without any kind of jarring inconsistencies or without kind of...
I assume there is a much lower budget on this animation.
That's why they've gone for the 2D or whatever.
I think that's a good choice.
If you've got less money, then what you should do is go for something that looks consistent
and where you can produce something serviceable within your budget.
And I think that's what they've done.
And it's just a pity that they didn't have the budget that they obviously did somehow have with all of those other 3D, more impressive animations.
Well, if they if they could stick to this level of animation and get done with the rest of them, I would be absolutely fine.
And I will just add, since I've got it here in front of me at the moment, that if they were to animate three more stories, all of Troughton would be filled in.
Actually, two more stories, all of Troughton would be filled in.
Three more stories, all of season four and five would be filled in.
So I'm thinking there's the Highlanders and Wheel in Space.
Is that it?
For Troughton, yes.
And the Smugglers for Hartnell.
Ooh.
I know, they're close.
They're close, and it seems like Wheel in Space is a no-brainer.
I know, I can't believe they haven't done it, because they already did 10 minutes of it.
I'm sure we've talked about it.
Yeah, the whole thing with the Highlanders and the, oh, it's a historical blah blah blah, and costumes and whatnot.
I'm not buying that argument that it's that big of an impediment.
However, the Wheel in Space just makes no sense whatsoever that they haven't done that one.
it's a big important
Cyberman story
so like
why has that one been done
well it's a big important Zoe Herriot story let's get our priorities
right that too
that too but I mean you know
and then you're done with season 5 and you can release
the blu-rays and actually have
everything on there
and not only that you can have
the entire
season 5 done
behind the sofa on the blu-ray extras
and we can
see how they respond to uh to all that have we i don't i i don't watch all the behind the sofa
things but have we had any where they've i know as good we haven't shada oh shada they've they've
they've looked they've watched a an animation and what did they make of the animation bit
well let's see so the people watching it were colin baker and matthew waterhouse uh uh katie
manning and uh nicola bryant and oh graham harper uh and i can't think of the other two people's
names but it's the fx guy that does all those things and the costumer and i don't know i have
the subtitles turned on and uh because you know they're speaking english and it covers up the uh
the names and i i don't but he's you'd know him he's one of the model makers he's kind of
dark curly brown long hair oh i did the model for that or my you know i i hated canine that guy
and like and then the the costumer for i think that season uh the woman i can't think of her name
might be a june or something um and they went into the animation you know you see stuff and
then they cut into the animated scenes and they quite liked it they they they thought wow this
the fans must love this you know this to have this back and and they they they had no problem at all
i think they've some were surprised they didn't even know the animation was coming so yeah like
it was it worked uh it worked pretty well uh i think their biggest complaint was that lala didn't
look as good as lala looks it's like that animation of her is not very good yeah but uh yeah
yeah so yeah we're we're we're close uh we are really close to closing out you know come on
you've got all that disney money compensating for doctor who now and then you're going to be
selling a bunch of doctor who merchandise you should be getting some revenue stream in now
let's let's get this done you're not spending any money making doctor who now make doctor who dvds
blu-rays um i think again taking care of things that were really awful in the original uh
reconstruction awful in the original reconstruction the cliffhangers are uh much better in this one
in the animated version hey i even though there's nothing in the world can stop me now can't really
be improved on but yes apart from that fair point you know the the you're not turning me into a fish
and uh those did work better uh there was there was a little bit of like oh i should watch the
next episode at that point which there was not in the uh reconstructions my goodness they really
really sidelined jamie and polly in episode four didn't they yes like it's not a great story for
polly no no and you know and i saw this in the behind the scenes talking and and we did discuss
it a little bit but it was when i watched the behind the scenes piece and they showed a couple
clips of it it was so much more obvious that they have just taken the lines for ben and polly
and shuffled them around and added jamie into the mix so yeah that's kind of understandable
and in some cases it's like person a says something person b replies to something and
then person c counterpoints it but that definitely should have been person a following up like no i'm
defending my thought or whatever but but it isn't because it's just three different people and i'm
not entirely sure they just gave ben's lines to jamie i think they gave some of polly's lines to
jamie's too i think they just shook him up put him in a box wrote him down put him in a box on
slips of paper and then pulled him out and then said okay you you you you you you there we go
read him in this order i don't care who says what it it does it does come off rather badly that way
the final sequence makes a lot more sense um but the you know that's what actually i i recall it
being pretty bad ending but at least it made a little more sense uh in this one let's see i
didn't remember the line about what do you say what's that in meters when they were talking to
the future shipwreck people i guess they'd gone metric thought oh cool uh and uh yeah i think
that's all i have on this i don't think it's worse than horns of nyman anymore
I should say no
that's my
yeah that's my
I still do not think that this is an
homage to You Only Live Twice
it's only better than You Only Live Twice
it's
that was your idea
I'm
done with this
I'm glad it's back I appreciate
the fact it now falls into the
rank of watchable Doctor Who stories
which it was not in that
recreation of that original
I had it on my shelf
but it was never ever going to be watched again
I mean there are Doctor Who
stories that have never been missing
that I wouldn't classify as watchable
but yes
this definitely
this definitely makes it
even more
fun to watch
so when it is available in the United States
it's not, it is currently available
in the uk it will be available in the u.s eventually um if you're a doctor who fan
give the bbc your money show them you care it's such i'd like to send them back my old copy
with a note it says you owe me for this i want my money back on this one now that you've put
out a proper version this was a con do you have anything else on it i do not
All right. Well, we do not have anything. This should go out in December of 2023. That is our expected release date during Who-cember. So we are, if my schedule works out right, we have already done all of the 60th anniversary specials.
specials and uh next week we're looking at the church of uh church on ruby road for um for the
finish of who simber yes the final episode of the month of dotty yeah so uh siren thank you for
joining me it's a pleasure as always and listeners i do hope you'll join us all again next time
on Fusion Patrol.
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Addendum for our U.S. listeners.
After we recorded this, we have found out that they have set a release date in the United States for The Underwater Menace on Blu-ray.
And that is January 9th, 2024.
It's available for pre-order now from various resellers.
So you can just watch it very soon.