Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep (Story # 131)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Peter DavisonDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-03
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Warner
Movie Reviews of Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep (Story # 131)
Movie Review: "I sometimes wonder why I like the people of this miserable planet so much."
Summary: 3 Stars
Over the many decades of its existence, Doctor Who has always been a show full of ideas--almost endlessly inventive and creative. "Warriors of the Deep" is no different. What a fantastic idea, bringing back the Silurians and the Sea Devils! The basic concept of this story brims with excellent potential and fantastic possibilities. All of which gets tanked like the Titanic by inept realization and shoddy production, sad to say.
What could've gone wrong? The Silurians and the Sea Devils, reptilian Earthlings from before the age of humankind who want their planet back, definitely count as some of the more intriguingly original and complex foes (one can't really say villains per se) from the era of the Third Doctor. Now more than a decade and two Doctors later, surely their tale can be developed in new ways. And to some degree "Warriors of the Deep" does indeed manage gestures in this direction, giving them individual names and personalities, revealing little aspects of their society and politics, and alluding to their ethical systems and life philosophies. On a different level, furthermore, those subtle but vaguely noticeable hints of a Cold War allegory wafting about before in the Silurian/Sea Devil stories by Malcolm Hulke are here cleverly brought vividly to the foreground by Johnny Byrne. He rephrases the conflict as that between two (wisely unnamed) competing human power-blocs in 2084, a conflict the reptilians intend to capitalize upon by hijacking an undersea station and provoking both sides to destroy each other, leaving the Earth all for themselves again. In 1984 such a "mutually assured destruction" premise was sure to get a viewer's attention, no doubt about it. And it still has something to say yet.
But whenever you bring back old foes there's always the risk of diminishing returns, and that's what happens here. All the moral complexity of the human/reptilian conflict is glossed over rather than actually portrayed and explored as it was before. It's taken for granted, really, and you have the Doctor ranting about how nice and civilized the Silurians are to his companions and the other (realistically unlikable) humans on the military sea-base, but so far all this story has in actuality shown them doing is being sneaky, mean, and nasty. In a misplaced attempt at continuity, the Silurians claim that twice before they offered the hand of peace to the humans and aren't inclined to do so again. This is a gross misrepresentation and oversimplification of the prior two stories that we are apparently meant to take at face value--a vast proportion of those stories' greatness owes itself to the fact that inevitable tragedy was brought about by aggressive and narrow-minded individuals on BOTH sides. To put all the blame on the humans and absolve the reptilians sounds sophisticated at first but in the end vastly mutes the intriguing moral dilemma involved (as well as being just factually wrong). To add insult to injury, the Silurians' ethical justification for triggering genocide is the most laughably contorted heap of mendacious sophistry imaginable, but again we're clearly meant to take it seriously--the Doctor, our compass of right and wrong here, listens to it all without so much as a blink or sarcastically wry smile. In short, the whole conflict driving the plot is unsatisfying and unconvincing, sinking the overall story like lead. Clunk.
A million other things go wrong with the actual production, and it would try the patience of this reviewer and any hapless readers to list them all. The extras go into them in hilarious detail, anyway. An important point key to the story though would be the actual costumes for the Silurians and Sea Devils: they look cooler and more realistic, and even have some animatronic eyelids, but something about their design is obviously more hindering than the earlier ones in the 1970's so that the reptilian characters come across as far less agile and realistic in their actual movements, making the battle scenes almost embarrassingly laughable--don't expect one of these Sea Devils to die with a back flip like in 1972. Anyway, and speaking of Cold Wars, Karl Marx might as well have been referring to "Warriors of the Deep" when he quipped that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.
P.S. I know, I know, I keep referring to the two prior stories featuring Silurians & Sea Devils ad nauseum, but those classics and this DVD can all be obtained in one conveniently nifty package: Doctor Who - Beneath The Surface (Doctor Who And The Silurians / The Sea Devils / Warriors Of The Deep).
Summary of Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep (Story # 131)
"These human beings will die as they have lived-in a sea of their own blood!" The year is 2084, and two power-blocs are poised on the brink of war. Using a series of undersea complexes and deep-space satellites, each bloc carefully monitors the other's movements, slowly edging towards the moment when one will launch an all-out nuclear attack on the other. Arriving on Sea Base Four, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are rapidly drawn into the web of intrigue which enmeshes this era's paranoid political maneuverings. Not everyone on board the base is working for the same team, and the officer directly responsible for implementing the bases nuclear capability has died in mysterious circumstances. Amid this already tense atmosphere, the crew of Sea Base Four faces an even greater threat to mankind. The Silurians and Sea Devils, prehistoric reptile men who went into hibernation millions of years before, have reawoken and intend to launch another attempt to reclaim the Earth from humanity. The Doctor must tackle enemy sabotage and face the Myrka, a giant marine monster. But can he prevent the Silurians from implementing their "final solution" - launching the missiles to start a war that threatens to wipe out the human race?DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Featurette
Music Only Track
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Production Notes
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