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Post by matthewsee on Jan 31, 2014 19:25:36 GMT -5
I have just finished watching the Patrick Troughton episode The Underwater Menace Episode 2 recovered in 2011 but I will not make my remarks on it until hopefully I see it again on the forthcoming DVD release of The Underwater Menace sometime this year in which the release will consist of existing episodes two and three and the animation of missing episodes one and four.
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Post by matthewsee on Jan 10, 2016 19:08:34 GMT -5
Episode 1:
Enjoyable beginning to this story as Jamie has his first story as a companion after joining the TARDIS crew of the Second Doctor, Ben and Polly at the end of the previous story The Highlanders.
The Doctor and his companions soon find themselves in the lost city of Atlantis.
When his companions were up for sacrifice, the Doctor having discovered that the famed Professor Zaroff is here sends a message for him. Thanks to the Doctor's message Zaroff saves the companions from sacrifice in return for information that the Doctor promise to give him.
Curiously enough the Doctor signs his message as "Dr W"!
Quite terrifying cliffhanger for Polly as Damon is about to make her into a fish person.
This episode is among the 97 episodes that are still missing and is presented on the DVD release as still images with the surviving audio soundtrack.
To be blunt the result of this presentation of the episode is not quite satisfactory and it is not on the same level of the fan reconstructions of the missing episodes.
With the fan reconstructions they have scrolling texts to explain what is going on explanations that the soundtracks are not able to provide. With the official DVD presentation it provides no such texts.
For instance Polly found a piece mentioning the Mexico Olympics in 1968. The fan reconstruction explains Polly's discovery of this piece with the text but the official DVD presentation with no such text offers no explanation on this and therefore the viewer does not quite understand why the Mexico Olympics got mentioned in the first place.
For the commentary for this episode is that of Toby Hadoke's interview with Michael Troughton, son of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton. Among the comments made is that Michael never appeared in Doctor Who.
This interview obviously was made before Last Christmas on Christmas 2014 where Michael finally made an appearance in Doctor Who. However this DVD release was released almost a year after Last Christmas which rather makes that comment quite outdated!
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Post by matthewsee on Feb 5, 2016 21:09:20 GMT -5
Episode 2:
With its recovery in 2011, this is earliest surviving episode from the Troughton era.
It is a fascinating look visually on how Troughton played the Doctor in those early days of his tenure.
A highlight of this episode was when the Doctor tries to convince King Thous that Zaroff is as mad as a hatter.
Impressive when the Doctor demonstrate to Ramo the likely outcome of Zaroff's experiment.
The DVD subtitles undignifyingly refer to Polly as Woman and Ben as Man. Obviously the DVD subtitle writer was not well verse with the characters.
Among the comments in the commentary in this episode is Anneke Wills (Polly) revealing that Troughton disliked not only working on this story but also the director Julia Smith.
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Post by matthewsee on Feb 29, 2016 21:54:49 GMT -5
Episode 3:
Prior to the recovery of the previous episode, episode 3 was the only episode to exist for this story and therefore the first existing episode of the Troughton era.
I first saw this episode on its first commercial release in the VHS set of The Ice Warriors and I think I was somewhat bewildered by the fact that it came in the middle of the story as adjusted to my viewing of it.
This is in contrast to me watching it now with the full understanding of what has been going on so far.
Certainly quite a trick that enabled the Doctor and Ramo to escape from being sacrificed to Amdo.
That sequence with the Fish People was beautifully done. Presumably they were same Fish People that the Twelfth Doctor mentioned in The Caretaker.
What a trick when the Doctor and his party captured Zaroff but too bad he escaped and killed Ramo in the process and of course leading to that funny cliffhanger of Zaroff saying that nothing in the world can stop him now!
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Post by matthewsee on Mar 18, 2016 18:00:48 GMT -5
Episode 4:
Zaroff's "Nothing in the world can stop me" line which marked the cliffhanger of the previous episode does not really have same impact when hearing it in the reprise in this the concluding episode of the story. The line here sounded like it got downplayed for effect.
Not bad resolution to the story with the end of Atlantis and Zaroff being trapped behind the gate going down with it.
Like the first episode, this the concluding episode is missing and instead presented with still images accompanying by the soundtrack of the episode.
Unfortunately most of the time the characters' dialogue does not match with the picture that is currently on-screen which makes viewing of the episode quite jarring.
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Post by matthewsee on Jan 13, 2017 19:49:31 GMT -5
Included in The Underwater Menace DVD Special Features is The Television Centre of the Universe Part 2 presented by Yvette Fielding,
This had Yvette Fielding going through BBC TV Centre with three Doctor Who luminaries including fellow Fielding, Janet Fielding.
At one time the subtitle presented what Janet Fielding had said but it was actually Yvette who said it. Obviously the subtitle writer got confused between the two Fieldings.
Production Assistant Jane Ashford recalls the making of Earthshock with production footage of that story being included here.
Ashford mentioned that Earthshock was directed by Peter Grimwade. Despite the mention of Grimwade’s name, when Grimwade spoke in the production footage, the subtitle still refer to him as Director.
Obviously the subtitle writer wasn’t paying attention between the two Fieldings and the identification of Grimwade as Earthshock’s director.
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