Warriors of the Deep (splintered thread)

TiberiusDidNothingWrong wrote:So ... hmm, where's the decline? There were some 'weaker' seasons followed by great seasons and brilliant stories. Even in those 'weaker' Seasons there were a lot of good ideas, inspired writing, and a sense of fun that - sorry to say - I just don't get from NuWho. Are we to feign that NuWho has a better track record than this?

It was in something of an eccentric decline and state of directionlessness ever since Hinchcliffe left, with a few false dawns of quality still popping up now and again, but never quite lasting.

But I'd say Warriors of the Deep was where the show finally hit rock bottom and was cemented as a moribund series aimed exclusively at the undesirable cranks of fandom only. Which really leaves there being no point carrying it on anymore when its name becomes that sullied.

"Warriors of the Deep" is the first Davison story where he actually comes alive and isn't standing around like a spare part playing pocket billiards...

Rob Filth wrote:"Warriors of the Deep" is the first Davison story where he actually comes alive and isn't standing around like a spare part playing pocket billiards...

That sounds a bit like diminished expectations talking though.

I get that Season 20 was largely dull, and after a while of sitting through that dullness you start getting desperate for any kind of action to happen, no matter how moronic or grotty.

But the action and activity of the Doctor we got in Warriors wasn't necessarily good just because Season 20 starved us of any.

Tanmann wrote:But the action and activity of the Doctor we got in Warriors wasn't necessarily good just because Season 20 starved us of any.

I disagree, Davison sabotaging the nuclear reactor just enough to keep the bases security tied up as a distractive ruse was worthy of the Fourth Doctors ruthlessness during the Hinchcliffe era, as indeed his kick to the head of the pursuing guard.

Admittedly his Doctor is fighting impossible odds by trying to keep three utterly determined warring factions from destroying each other which is why he ultimately fails at the end of the story "There should have been another way", but this makes his character more interesting, complex and fallible than the dullard invulnerable immortal presented in NuWho and largely during much of Williams Tom Baker's era.

"Warrior of the Deep" is a complete falling down production disaster with appallingly bad direction, but I still rate the script and Davison bravely pulls in one of his best ever performances despite the the whole scenery, set and production values all falling down around his ears.  

Had Graham Harper been behind the direction and the production afforded more than half of the time allocated to it(thanks to the BBC and Thatcher pushing the General Election forward), I'd wager the majority of the audiences views towards this story would be somewhat different.

Rob Filth wrote:Davison sabotaging the nuclear reactor just enough to keep the bases security tied up as a distractive ruse was worthy of the Fourth Doctors ruthlessness during the Hinchcliffe era

I'm not sure the Fourth Doctor's ruthlessness was exclusive only to the Hinchcliffe era. He was pretty ruthless in the Williams era too, whether gunning down the Sontarans, blowing up the Graff, or proving willing to blow up Davros rather than let the Daleks have him.

However, the Doctor there seemed to be good at playing the fool. Sabotaging a nuclear reactor when he's under enough suspicion already, just suggests to me that this guy isn't *playing* a fool anymore.

Admittedly his Doctor is fighting impossible odds by trying to keep three utterly determined warring factions from destroying each other which is why he ultimately fails at the end of the story

I'd say that doesn't make him a failed peace-maker so much as a spitefully negligent war-prolonger, enabling the worst side when he could've stopped them from the beginning from the moment he discovered the Hexacromite.

Basically he 'failed' in the same way Neville Chamberlain 'failed'.

And the only reason he does only makes sense if you go along blindly with the story's incapability for moral distinction between those factions.

"There should have been another way"

Hmm, I much preferred that line when said by Ganatus at the end of 1963's The Daleks.

this makes his character more interesting, complex and fallible than the dullard invulnerable immortal presented in NuWho and largely during much of Williams Tom Baker's era.

Again that seems like praise largely based on diminished expectations.

I think the Doctor of Warriors is what happens when you try to make an underdeveloped, programmatic cipher character like the Fifth Doctor into suddenly bearing the weight of the moral voice of a story (and of its predecessors too). The writing ends up pushing the character into being an unhinged pious fanatical crank with nothing concrete or experienced to base his neurotic reactive principles on. And I don't think it makes him an *interesting* defective crank. I think if I looked in his head it'd be a bleakly empty place.

I certainly don't think it compliments the previous decades' work to develop him as an intelligent hero worth rooting for. Infact it rather turns the character into an impotent, unfit for purpose, defective dead end you can't do anything with, except pointless failures like Warriors.

"Warrior of the Deep" is a complete falling down production disaster with appallingly bad direction, but I still rate the script and Davison bravely pulls in one of his best ever performances despite the the whole scenery, set and production values all falling down around his ears.  

Had Graham Harper been behind the direction and the production afforded more than half of the time allocated to it(thanks to the BBC and Thatcher pushing the General Election forward), I'd wager the majority of the audiences views towards this story would be somewhat different.

At best I'd say the majority of the audience would simply see it as something rather cultish and moribund, and made exclusively for hardcore fans only, and impossible to care about otherwise (since the story apparently thinks the pressing nuclear annihilation threat is somehow a secondary concern to the Doctor trying to save a bunch of fictional, irredeemable reptiles).

They might see its ending as the cheap hack-job rip-off of Beneath the Planet of the Apes it is, but in general would probably think there were far better written and crafted anti-nuclear war dramas on the market to spend their time watching than this (they might even see it as the show going too preachy to be entertaining anymore, the same way as Jodie's era)

At worst, if they're shrewd enough (and even stuck with it to the end), they would see the story as a clueless, crass insult to anyone who's ever had real war (or any other form of violence) forced upon them and had to fight to survive it.

Tanmann wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:Davison sabotaging the nuclear reactor just enough to keep the bases security tied up as a distractive ruse was worthy of the Fourth Doctors ruthlessness during the Hinchcliffe era

I'm not sure the Fourth Doctor's ruthlessness was exclusive only to the Hinchcliffe era. He was pretty ruthless in the Williams era too, whether gunning down the Sontarans, blowing up the Graff, or proving willing to blow up Davros rather than let the Daleks have him.

However, the Doctor there seemed to be good at playing the fool. Sabotaging a nuclear reactor when he's under enough suspicion already, just suggests to me that this guy isn't *playing* a fool anymore.

He wasn't doing it to play the fool, but to keep most of the base staff busy repairing the damage he'd inflicted to make good their escape.

Tanmann wrote:I'd say that doesn't make him a failed peace-maker so much as a spitefully negligent war-prolonger, enabling the worst side when he could've stopped them from the beginning from the moment he discovered the Hexacromite.

and why were the Silurians "the worst side"?

They weren't the ones intent on destroying their own species and every other species on the planet.

Tanmann wrote:Basically he 'failed' in the same way Neville Chamberlain 'failed'.

He failed, but that makes for a far more interesting and complex character, however he also succeeded in preventing the planet and all life on it being utterly destroyed by armageddon weapons made by man.

Tanmann wrote:And the only reason he does only makes sense if you go along blindly with the story's incapability for moral distinction between those factions.

The reason he does it is for the same reason the third Doctor attempted to make the reptiles and humans make peace, because essentially the reptiles are the indigenous species to the planet.

Pertwee's Doctor failed too, just like Neville fucking Chamberlain.  

Perhaps you think he's shit too because he didn't don a rocket launcher and blow the reptiles up in a Rambo-esque fashion like proper heroes which we all root for are supposed to do?

Tanmann wrote:Again that seems like praise largely based on diminished expectations.

Not at all, fallible heroes are a darn sight more interesting than fucking invulnerable immortal gods who win out every time without consequences, that's why NuWho is such an unchallenging piece of moronic crap.

Tanmann wrote:I think the Doctor of Warriors is what happens when you try to make an underdeveloped, programmatic cipher character like the Fifth Doctor into suddenly bearing the weight of the moral voice of a story (and of its predecessors too). The writing ends up pushing the character into being an unhinged pious fanatical crank with nothing concrete or experienced to base his neurotic reactive principles on. And I don't think it makes him an *interesting* defective crank. I think if I looked in his head it'd be a bleakly empty place.

No, it shows that you clearly don't understand the story or the moral issues it raises.

Tanmann wrote:I certainly don't think it compliments the previous decades' work to develop him as an intelligent hero worth rooting for.

Like in Unearthly Child where the first Doctor tries to brain an injured caveman you mean? Or perhaps when he puts his travelling companions lives in jeopardy by deliberately feigning the fluid link being broken in "The Daleks"?

Why should the viewer brainlessly root for the central character anyway? He's supposed to be an alien with slightly different moral standards to you and I.  

Tanmann wrote: Infact it rather turns the character into an impotent, unfit for purpose, defective dead end you can't do anything with, except pointless failures like Warriors.

Rubbish.

If the 5th Doctor had been that impotent he'd have allowed the humans to fucking destroy themselves via a third party with their own armageddon weapons.

Tanmann wrote:

"Warrior of the Deep" is a complete falling down production disaster with appallingly bad direction, but I still rate the script and Davison bravely pulls in one of his best ever performances despite the the whole scenery, set and production values all falling down around his ears.  

Had Graham Harper been behind the direction and the production afforded more than half of the time allocated to it(thanks to the BBC and Thatcher pushing the General Election forward), I'd wager the majority of the audiences views towards this story would be somewhat different.

At best I'd say the majority of the audience would simply see it as something rather cultish and moribund, and made exclusively for hardcore fans only, and impossible to care about otherwise (since the story apparently thinks the pressing nuclear annihilation threat is somehow a secondary concern to the Doctor trying to save a bunch of fictional, irredeemable reptiles).

They might see its ending as the cheap hack-job rip-off of Beneath the Planet of the Apes it is, but in general would probably think there were far better written and crafted anti-nuclear war dramas on the market to spend their time watching than this (they might even see it as the show going too preachy to be entertaining anymore, the same way as Jodie's era)

At worst, if they're shrewd enough (and even stuck with it to the end), they would see the story as a clueless, crass insult to anyone who's ever had real war (or any other form of violence) forced upon them and had to fight to survive it.

So presumably you think nuclear war a good idea then?

Perhaps you ought to repeatedly watch Threads on loop for a few days.

and why were the Silurians "the worst side"?

They weren't the ones intent on destroying their own species and every other species on the planet.

Erm, yes they were. They were more determined to actually press the button than any of the humans actually were.

Besides I didn't see any Silurians take a bullet for the Doctor in the way Preston and Vorshak did.

He failed, but that makes for a far more interesting and complex character

Hardly complex.

I've never seen the Doctor's characterization so arrested or stunted.

The reason he does it is for the same reason the third Doctor attempted to make the reptiles and humans make peace

No, the reason Pertwee attempted to make peace was because peace was possible. In Warriors it wasn't.

Perhaps you think he's shit too because he didn't don a rocket launcher and blow the reptiles up in a Rambo-esque fashion like proper heroes which we all root for are supposed to do?

When did I say he should kill anyone?

No, it shows that you clearly don't understand the story or the moral issues it raises.

The warped moral message the story seems to have is that anyone who's ever been the victim of a genocidal army should either pride themselves on upholding the moral high-ground by dying passively and not fighting back..... or that they somehow got what they deserved if they *did* fight back.

At best it just doesn't have anything coherent or rational to say on war, that older stories (The Daleks, The Sea Devils, Frontier in Space, Genesis of the Daleks) hadn't already said far better.

All it does is have the Doctor come out with some trite, deluded platitudes and then contrive to kill off anyone with the sanity to disagree with him.

I'd hardly call that challenging.

Why should the viewer brainlessly root for the central character anyway?

It sounds like in the case of Warriors, you already do.

Rob Filth wrote:

Tanmann wrote:I certainly don't think it compliments the previous decades' work to develop him as an intelligent hero worth rooting for.

Like in Unearthly Child where the first Doctor tries to brain an injured caveman you mean? Or perhaps when he puts his travelling companions lives in jeopardy by deliberately feigning the fluid link being broken in "The Daleks"?

Why should the viewer brainlessly root for the central character anyway? He's supposed to be an alien with slightly different moral standards to you and I.  

So in other words you want it both ways?

You want to argue that the Doctor's moral stance clearly makes reasonable sense here and he has a worthy point to make about humanity's folly and failure to listen to "reason" from him, but at the same time that if he doesn't then he's not supposed to because he's an alien and can be as unreasonably wrong as he likes here?

Tanmann wrote:

and why were the Silurians "the worst side"?

They weren't the ones intent on destroying their own species and every other species on the planet.

Erm, yes they were. They were more determined to actually press the button than any of the humans actually were.

Besides I didn't see any Silurians take a bullet for the Doctor in the way Preston and Vorshak did.

That was because the humans were destroying every other species on the indigenous species planet and the reptiles were just allowing mankind to destroy himself which he had built the weapons for.

If humans weren't determined to annihilate each other they wouldn't have built the fucking things in the first place.

I can't say I remember any Sea Devils taking a bullet for the Doctor in "The Sea Devils" either, yet Pertwee's Doctor still tried to make peace with them, the fucking human-hating traitor!

Tanmann wrote:

He failed, but that makes for a far more interesting and complex character

Hardly complex.

I've never seen the Doctor's characterization so arrested or stunted.

Davisons 5th Doctor is actually more proactive than in most of his previous stories in "Warriors", he fails to save anyone on the base but prevents the planet from nuclear annihilation - that makes him a fucking hero in my eyes.

Tanmann wrote:

The reason he does it is for the same reason the third Doctor attempted to make the reptiles and humans make peace

No, the reason Pertwee attempted to make peace was because peace was possible. In Warriors it wasn't.

REALLY?

After the Sea Devils had slaughtered innocent people aboard the sea rig and scores of navy by invading their base and with Parliamentary Private Secretary Walker acting like fucking Rambo?

Of course peace wasn't fucking possible! Pertwee was acting like a human-hating traitor, how the fuck are we supposed to root for ineffectual scum like that or aspire to them being our heroes?

Tanmann wrote:

Perhaps you think he's shit too because he didn't don a rocket launcher and blow the reptiles up in a Rambo-esque fashion like proper heroes which we all root for are supposed to do?

When did I say he should kill anyone?

and where did I say he should kill everyone?

Tanmann wrote:

No, it shows that you clearly don't understand the story or the moral issues it raises.

The warped moral message the story seems to have is that anyone who's ever been the victim of a genocidal army should either pride themselves on upholding the moral high-ground by dying passively and not fighting back..... or that they somehow got what they deserved if they *did* fight back.

No it doesn't, if that were true Davisons Doc wouldn't have booted the guard in the head, sabotaged the reactor, blinded and killed the Myrka or reluctantly used the hexocromite gas on the reptiles.

Tanmann wrote:At best it just doesn't have anything coherent or rational to say on war, that older stories (The Daleks, The Sea Devils, Frontier in Space, Genesis of the Daleks) hadn't already said far better.

Actually it does it better than those stories because it tells us that there are no winners in nuclear war and that the Cold War was self-defeating.

Tanmann wrote:All it does is have the Doctor come out with some trite, deluded platitudes and then contrive to kill off anyone with the sanity to disagree with him.

I'd hardly call that challenging.

If that were true, he'd have strangled Tegan to death during Castrovalva.

Tanmann wrote:

Why should the viewer brainlessly root for the central character anyway?

It sounds like in the case of Warriors, you already do.

Not at all, I just recognise the moral messages it aspires towards rather than view it through a distorted lens because Grade laughed at the crap special effects and subsequently canned the whole series.

I like the Dalek moment when half-human Daleks all chant "HUMAN HATING SCUM!" and shoot the limbs off Silurians and Sea Devils trying to protect their own planet from mankind myself.

EDIT:I dunno why this post has been moved from the thread it was originally on, it makes no sense or context here.

Rob Filth wrote:That was because the humans were destroying every other species on the indigenous species planet

Why should the Silurians care about those other indigenous species?

It's not like they hadn't been plague bombing monkeys themselves long before man existed.

If humans weren't determined to annihilate each other

If they are, then explain Maddox.

He was hardly determined to press the button.

For that matter, explain Preston being determined to *stop* the Silurians launching the nukes that would annihilate her human enemies.

I can't say I remember any Sea Devils taking a bullet for the Doctor in "The Sea Devils" either

In that story they didn't have to aspire to that bar because neither did any humans.

Warriors is a different story.

yet Pertwee's Doctor still tried to make peace with them, the fucking human-hating traitor!

Where did I say peace wasn't worth a first attempt?

After all, not all the Sea Devils there were armed and on the attack.

Besides, there's a difference between being a peacemaker and a toadying appeaser.

Davisons 5th Doctor is actually more proactive than in most of his previous stories in "Warriors",

Diminished expectations talking again.

he fails to save anyone on the base but prevents the planet from nuclear annihilation - that makes him a fucking hero in my eyes

For finally, under protest, doing something he could've done two episodes ago?

(once his companions made clear they didn't want to be part of his suicide cult)

Wow.

You don't sound like a zealot at all.

Tanmann wrote:When did I say he should kill anyone?

and where did I say he should kill everyone?

And where did I say you said he should kill everyone?

Tanmann wrote:At best it just doesn't have anything coherent or rational to say on war, that older stories (The Daleks, The Sea Devils, Frontier in Space, Genesis of the Daleks) hadn't already said far better.

Actually it does it better than those stories because it tells us that there are no winners in nuclear war and that the Cold War was self-defeating.

And how exactly did The Daleks not tell us that already back in 1963?

Besides, the only thing Warriors shows as self-defeating is blind appeasement.

And I'll repeat. If the story's so anti-nuclear war, then why does the Doctor place his sympathies with the side that's actually most determined to press the button?

The fact is, there is no making sense of the point it wants to make. It's just a load of fanwank in search of a point.

The writers themselves (nevermind the casual audience) were clearly confused and confounded by all the continuity backstory and past motivations they had to invoke and abide by, forcing them to keep changing the script (made worse by the stubborn, petty bickering between JNT, Saward and Levine which inevitably got projected onto an equally stubborn, petty, indecisive and unfit for purpose Doctor).

So with the script having to be rewritten continually, and no sure convictions anymore in what the Doctor’s stance was meant to be, they had to make his vacuous anti-military protests and moral objections be about everything and nothing, right down to the fact that humans even has a survival instinct at all.

Not at all, I just recognise the moral messages it aspires towards rather than view it through a distorted lens because Grade laughed at the crap special effects and subsequently canned the whole series.

So basically yours is a religious devotion to that crap story's confused "moral messages" just because Grade's the anti-christ.

Gotcha.

Tanmann wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:That was because the humans were destroying every other species on the indigenous species planet

Why should the Silurians care about those other indigenous species?

It's not like they hadn't been plague bombing monkeys themselves long before man existed.

They didn't develop the means to extinguish all life on the planet like the humans had however which automatically gives the Reptiles a high moral stance in my book.

Tanmann wrote:

If humans weren't determined to annihilate each other

If they are, then explain Maddox.

He was hardly determined to press the button.

For that matter, explain Preston being determined to *stop* the Silurians launching the nukes that would annihilate her human enemies.

The russian bloc agents controlling Maddox were determined to effect nuclear war however.

Preston was obviously one of these wishy washy hippy degenerate pacifist scum who was a sleeper agent on board the base,

Tanmann wrote:

I can't say I remember any Sea Devils taking a bullet for the Doctor in "The Sea Devils" either

In that story they didn't have to aspire to that bar because neither did any humans.

Warriors is a different story.

Different story, but the same murderous reptiles who the Doctor was toadying up to after they'd butchered innocent people.

Tanmann wrote:

yet Pertwee's Doctor still tried to make peace with them, the fucking human-hating traitor!

Where did I say peace wasn't worth a first attempt?

After all, not all the Sea Devils there were armed and on the attack.

Besides, there's a difference between being a peacemaker and a toadying appeaser.

I'm afraid I don't recall the unarmed Sea Devils sitting cross-legged around with flowers in their gills and waving peace signs in that story.

I DO recall Pertwee toadying up to them after they'd butchered innocents aboard the Sea Fort and aboard the Sea Base however.

Tanmann wrote:

Davisons 5th Doctor is actually more proactive than in most of his previous stories in "Warriors",

Diminished expectations talking again.

Well it's hardly my fault Davison spent most of his first two seasons standing around playing pocket billiards before finally coming awake in "Warriors" is it?

Tanmann wrote:

he fails to save anyone on the base but prevents the planet from nuclear annihilation - that makes him a fucking hero in my eyes

For finally, under protest, doing something he could've done two episodes ago?

(once his companions made clear they didn't want to be part of his suicide cult)

Wow.

You don't sound like a zealot at all.

He was attempting to prevent conflict in the first place and save life, you moron.

Tanmann wrote:

Actually it does it better than those stories because it tells us that there are no winners in nuclear war and that the Cold War was self-defeating.

And how exactly did The Daleks not tell us that already back in 1963?

So a recurring theme from over 20 years previous is a no-no in your book then?

How many of the viewers in 1984 when "Warriors" was originally shown do you think had actually seen "The Daleks" at the time?

Tanmann wrote:Besides, the only thing Warriors shows as self-defeating is blind appeasement.

Yes, like "The Silurians" and "The Sea Devils" also do.

Tanmann wrote:And I'll repeat. If the story's so anti-nuclear war, then why does the Doctor place his sympathies with the side that's actually most determined to press the button?

Possibly because twice before the reptiles had been receptive towards making peace and living in coexistence with the humans before the humans fucked it all up?

Possibly because the reptiles hadn't actually devised the means to wipe out all life on Earth in the first place?

Possibly because they were the indigenous species and had first-right claims to the planet?

Tanmann wrote:The fact is, there is no making sense of the point it wants to make. It's just a load of fanwank in search of a point.

The writers themselves (nevermind the casual audience) were clearly confused and confounded by all the continuity backstory and past motivations they had to invoke and abide by, forcing them to keep changing the script (made worse by the stubborn, petty bickering between JNT, Saward and Levine which inevitably got projected onto an equally stubborn, petty, indecisive and unfit for purpose Doctor).

So with the script having to be rewritten continually, and no sure convictions anymore in what the Doctor’s stance was meant to be, they had to make his vacuous anti-military protests and moral objections be about everything and nothing, right down to the fact that humans even has a survival instinct at all.

Actually, had Levine not interfered then the script would've made absolutely no sense at all.

Johnny Bryne I like as a writer, but his sense of continuity is lousy, was it really too much to ask for JNT not to have bunged him copies of the previous reptile stories for reference material before asking him to shoehorn them into a script?

Tanmann wrote:

Not at all, I just recognise the moral messages it aspires towards rather than view it through a distorted lens because Grade laughed at the crap special effects and subsequently canned the whole series.

So basically yours is a religious devotion to that crap story's confused "moral messages" just because Grade's the anti-christ.

Gotcha.

Personally, I prefer scripts like "Warriors of the Deep" to pretentious and unintelligible crap like "Curse of Fenric" or "Happiness Patrol" and think that had it enjoyed some decent production standards instead of cack-handedly being rushed through in half of the normal production time it would be viewed on par with stories such as "Resurrection of the Daleks" or possibly even "Earthshock"

Rob Filth wrote:
Personally, I prefer scripts like "Warriors of the Deep" to pretentious and unintelligible crap like "Curse of Fenric"

How is it unintelligible? Were you popping into the kitchen to make a cuppa every ten minutes whilst it was on?

There are faults with this production but they mainly revolve around ....

   Bad acting - Tom, Ingrid and Ian. Pitt should have been dropped and Tara Ward's role perhaps extended.
   What i initially thought was a rather predictable plot line for the Silurians and Sea Devils - "we want our planet back". Although as a friend of mine at the time said to me "What else do you expect in a story involving those characters?"
   Over-lit sets.
   A truly awful fight scene with a pantomime horse. Or was it a dance? I can’t be sure tbh

But after 14 years of New Who I actually find it quite enjoyable these days, above flaws notwithstanding.

The story itself seemed well put together.. Overall it was plotted as a good action story let down by production values (aforementioned acting, lighting etc..,).

Strickson, Tegan and Davison were on form and i really enjoyed Davison's performance - a vulnerable Doctor doing his best to avoid a war between two species he respected but gradually having to come to terms with the impossibility of conciliation and so opt for the course of action he originally ruled out. This was a nice twist on Pertwee's excellent Silurian story where the Doctor was isolated from the day to day practicalities  of peace with the silurians and so could be standoffish and lecture the brigadier about sharing the planet. At the same time Pertwee had the luxury of a divided Silurian camp and he could play to those who wanted peace with the humans hoping to isolate the war mongers. In WotD the Doctor finds himself facing a united Silurian / Sea Devil front intent on warring against the humans.  He tried to break that block down but in episode 4 he has the sad realisation that that is not possible. With nuclear destruction imminent he has to decide in favour of what he considers to be the least worst option open to him.

In a way i now think this was a nice development of the Silurian story – now more intransigent and less trusting of the humans because of their past experiences of them.  As a result they are now intent on claiming the whole planet back for themselves with no intention to share.  Thus making the third Doctor’s stratagem  (and the Fifth Doctor’s initial one) for dealing with these creatures redundant .

I also thought the story made good use of continuity. Any adventure worth its salt will build backstory in to itself so as to give context and depth. The trick is to avoid over-complicating what is going on and alienating the casual viewer.  I don’t  think Byrne and Saward did make this story  too complicated in that sense. What continuity there was clearly explained and could be easily glossed over by the Mr/Ms Casuals in the audience.

Warriors of the Deep is not a good story because of the Silurians motivation.

These Siluarians are meant to have tried to make peace with us, only for humanity to attack them, leaving these guys as among the last of their kind. This is not made overtly clear in the narrative however. Its mentioned fleetingly, but not elaborated on.

To some viewers it appears that they are referencing the Pertwee stories so it looks a bit odd when they were the aggressors in both stories. Its worth noting that Ian Levine picked them up on this, saying they should make it clear that it was not the previous stories the Silurians were talking about, but Saward ignored Levine's complaints.

He felt the show didn't need to pander to the fans. Gee not bothering to make sure your story makes sense and blaming it on the fans. Doesn't that sound familiar?

As a result of this it looks like the Doctor is placating a xenophobic race of monsters who've done nothing but attack us at our expense. His dialogue about how they deserve to live more than us because they have more advanced technology is one of the clumsiest bits in the shows history and makes him look no better than the Daleks.

However the basic idea that a race tried to reason with us, and we nearly wiped them out, and now they want revenge so the Doctor still wants to find a peaceful solution doesn't undermine his morality. It shows that he isn't a racist who will side with races who just look like him.

He knows that the Silurians were genuinely wronged, and that they did try and live in peace before. Rather than kill the last of an intelligent race, who were driven to extinction almost by us he wants to try and convince both of them to live in peace.

Had he just been gun ho about killing the last of a race that humanity had almost wiped out then he would have come across as xenophobic. Ultimately however when the Silurians are going to kill all of us, then he has to act, but feels regret afterwards.

Its not a good story by any means. Its production is poor, its not that original, and the dialogue makes it come over as clumsy and ham fisted. Still compared to New Who's efforts like Death in Heaven its a fucking classic.

Rob Filth wrote:The russian bloc agents controlling Maddox were determined to effect nuclear war however.

Yes but the fact he had to be controlled and programmed to go against his human conscience, disproves your point that humans are "determined to destroy each other" doesn't it?

Preston was obviously one of these wishy washy hippy degenerate pacifist scum who was a sleeper agent on board the base,

Or maybe she was drafted, against her convictions.

I'm afraid I don't recall the unarmed Sea Devils sitting cross-legged around with flowers in their gills and waving peace signs in that story.

You saw the Sea Devils underwater city though, didn't you? And you heard about the huge numbers of Sea Devil civilians that were as yet asleep and impartial to the conflict. Just because there weren't any onscreen innocent Sea Devil civilians you saw doesn't mean they didn't exist and weren't a major factor in the Third Doctor wanting to make peace for their sakes too.

Well it's hardly my fault Davison spent most of his first two seasons standing around playing pocket billiards before finally coming awake in "Warriors" is it?

Yes but defending the production team who it *was* the fault of, does seem to be the hill you want to die on.

And my point was that it's possible for fans to get used to a crap phase of the show and as a result, then think the few refreshing glimpses of goodness in a following story make the story seem better than it actually is. And they can mistake those few 'improvements' for representing greater quality overall.

It's like those fans who say the early forest scenes between Colin and Peri in The Mysterious Planet are 'great' and 'must-see'.

They're not. In any other season they'd be nothing special. They're just not the usual bickering we got the previous season and so fans tend to elevate them to greatness for it.

He was attempting to prevent conflict in the first place and save life, you moron.

Then why did he end up saving no-one?

Obviously he wasn't attempting that hard was he?

It's almost as if the story isn't interested in showing him try. Only in showing him fail.

So a recurring theme from over 20 years previous is a no-no in your book then?

I'm saying there's no point if you're going to be redundant and moribund about it. If 1963's The Daleks did that theme better, then I don't see the point in bothering making Warriors if all it has to say has been said before and better.

Infact it kind of discredits The Daleks having done that theme well, if it's now associated, thanks to Warriors, with a show that's now handled that theme horribly and made by people who don't know what they're doing.

Possibly because the reptiles hadn't actually devised the means to wipe out all life on Earth in the first place?

DOCTOR: What is the purpose of this machine?
SILURIAN JR: That is no concern of yours.
DOCTOR: If I'm to help you, I must know.
SCIENTIST: This is the molecular disperser. It will convert the energy of the nuclear reactor into microwaves.
DOCTOR: Oh, for what purpose?
SCIENTIST: The microwaves will disperse the molecules of the filter belt which has enveloped this planet since our time.
DOCTOR: But if this process gets out of hand, it will destroy all life on the planet.

burrunjor wrote:Its worth noting that Ian Levine picked them up on this, saying they should make it clear that it was not the previous stories the Silurians were talking about, but Saward ignored Levine's complaints.

Levine for me is a very dubious source indeed. He will always try to take credit and big himself up as being more of a fixer and saviour of the show in dark times than he actually was.

I think half the claims he makes are nonsense and exaggerations at best for the sake of maintaining his own cult of personality (though to give him the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure there are instances where myths and chinese whispers about his 'achievements' and 'rescues' take a life of their own).

I've no doubt that he had some influence though (despite not being a writer, which should've disqualified him from having any say in the writing process), and made enough petty demands to help ruin the final product in the end.

As I've often said, I think he was to the show then what the feminists and SJW's are to it now.

Gee not bothering to make sure your story makes sense and blaming it on the fans. Doesn't that sound familiar?

What's frustrating is, there's a great opportunity the story has to achieve both filling in the audience on the Sea Devils' backstory, AND showing them as a more dimensional race, and the story completely misses it.

It's when Ictar is first reviving the Sea Devils. Right then you could've shown the Sea Devils being told by Ictar what events had taken place since they slept and the past encounters the rest of their race had had with mankind, which would fill the audience in too, and you could've shown the awakening Sea Devils actually struggle with the fact they're being awoken onto an immediate war-footing they didn't expect, against a species they've never met before. They could've shown reluctance there, or questioning what they were doing.

But we get none of that. It just seems short-sighted.

His dialogue about how they deserve to live more than us because they have more advanced technology is one of the clumsiest bits in the shows history and makes him look no better than the Daleks.

That bit was definitely one of Saward's writing edits. He was also responsible for killing off Preston and Vorshak (who were originally meant to survive), and worse, having them both die taking a bullet for the Doctor after he'd called their race 'pathetic' for not wanting to follow his suicide cult, and declared more interest in preserving the Silurians.

I don't think Warriors was ever going to be a great story, but I think it's possible had Saward left on The Five Doctors and not been involved in Warriors' script, then it might've turned out an okay story.

It shows that he isn't a racist who will side with races who just look like him.

Had he just been gun ho about killing the last of a race that humanity had almost wiped out then he would have come across as xenophobic. Ultimately however when the Silurians are going to kill all of us, then he has to act, but feels regret afterwards.

Actually I think he does come across as very racist in this story. Since he would probably not forgive this behaviour from a human genocidal militia, no matter what their genocidal 'ancient grudge' was meant to be. But he gives the Silurians a free pass just because they're Silurians.

It also means he must judge Ice Warriors and Zygons by different standards too as he had no qualms destroying them when they showed hostilities.

Still compared to New Who's efforts like Death in Heaven its a fucking classic.

I'd say they're both on par and as bad as each other for show-wrecking awfulness.

stengos wrote:I also thought the story made good use of continuity. Any adventure worth its salt will build backstory in to itself so as to give context and depth. The trick is to avoid over-complicating what is going on and alienating the casual viewer.  I don’t  think Byrne and Saward did make this story  too complicated in that sense. What continuity there was clearly explained and could be easily glossed over by the Mr/Ms Casuals in the audience.

For me though, I think the key is that when we were first introduced to the Silurians and Sea Devils in the Pertwee stories, we didn't immediately get told their backstory, but the story intrigued us as to who they are and what they want and whether their motives are benevolent or malevolent.

And that *mystery* and ambiguity is what drew audiences in, and by the end we knew enough about them to get why they acted the way they did, but sensed there was still something intriguing and imponderable about them and their civilization.

I think Warriors cocks that up though. The actions of the Silurians in that story are no better than those of the Daleks or Cybermen, and yet the Doctor keeps ascribing their 'noble' backstory and motives to them that the story doesn't support at all. It's not subtle about creating any intrigue, and arguably spoils the intrigue they used to have, and certainly doesn't give the audience any nuances to the reptiles that explains why the Doctor's sympathies are with them at all.

I think mainly the issue is, for the audience to understand these things enough, then it has to seem like the writers have a concrete understanding of what they're writing. But I'd say it looks like they started out thinking they did, and then came unstuck and kept having to correct themselves (or rather Levine kept insisting on correcting Byrne and Saward) as they went on, and between Byrne, Saward and Levine trying to interpret Hulke's original backstory three different ways, it comes off like they don't get it and end up making a collective confused hash of it. It seems like the writers didn't have a clue, and as such I don't see how the non-fan audience was ever meant to.

While I think Warriors is a pretty poor story, I wouldn't goes as far as cancelling the show or saying that it marked the death of Who as we did plenty of great stuff after with the odd crap story popping up.

I actually think "Warriors" contains one of Davisons best performances, his Doc is really at his most desperate whilst all of the scenery is falling down and all others hamming it up around with direction as slow and flat as a pancake.

His Doctor really actually ventures out from the shadow of Tom Baker for the first time in his fucking era.

The only other time Davison is at this most desperate is during "Caves" which had decent direction.

Had "Warriors" been given a decent fucking production(dim lit sets/ snappy direction/ properly staged gun battles etc) and with a few script tweaks such as not giving away the obvious Hexocromite resolution during the first fucking episode - I would've said the story would've been viewed as a Classic.

Sadako just has a bee in his bonnet over it because nasty Mr Grade laughed at the Myrka and subsequently cancelled his favourite programme and because the Doctor wasn't acting like Rambo or He-Man against the reptiles.

Hey, who likes moral ambiguity - the Doctor is just supposed to be a shallow arse-kicking hero who never gets it wrong or fails, right?

Commander Maxil wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:
Personally, I prefer scripts like "Warriors of the Deep" to pretentious and unintelligible crap like "Curse of Fenric"

How is it unintelligible? Were you popping into the kitchen to make a cuppa every ten minutes whilst it was on?

Nope, I've watched "Curse of Fenric" many times included the extended edition and it is convoluted pretentious nonsense with some of the most ludicrous dialogue ever (i.e. The Ace/Soldier seduction scene)

However all of these flaws were par of the course for Cartmell who seemed to think that adding intrigue and mystique to the Doctors character was to surround him with a hundred characters all in various throes of having mental breakdowns spouting baffling nonsense and acting irrationally without any clear motivation or rhyme or reason.

TheWatcher wrote:While I think Warriors is one of the worst stories of the classic era, I wouldn't goes as far as cancelling the show or saying that it marked the death of Who as we did plenty of great stuff after with the odd crap story popping up.

I think it was a 'death' of sorts, in the sense it was the death of the show's prior rationale. Being such a distorting misrepresentation of the show and its hero, that for reasons I can't fathom, was accepted as authentic, in an almost Orwellian "this new version is the past and always has been" way.

It just seems so depressing the idea that the Doctor's centuries' experience, heroism and wisdom, could still culminate in him becoming as hopeless, moronic, petty and defective as in Warriors (like Dicks and Holmes might as well have not bothered wasting their time developing the character into something formidable if their good work was going to be discarded).

It's like the show finally canonized the Doctor as being every bland, stupid, impotent useless thing the fickle public believed him to be (to the point he seemed inimical to being anything else), and the show as something po-faced and cultish. By the time Remembrance of the Daleks came along to disprove that perception of him as some programmatic do-gooder, I think it was too late.

I think an earlier cancellation seemed the nicer alternative to me because frankly Warriors made it look like the show's ongoing continuation and self-cannibalizing was only making it grow tired, petty, pious, moribund and inimical to quality that might contradict its continuity or dogma.

Tanmann wrote:It just seems so depressing the idea that the Doctor's centuries' experience, heroism and wisdom, could still culminate in him becoming as hopeless, moronic, petty and defective as in Warriors

Yup, I guess saving the humans from being utterly annihilated with doomsday weapons they had built, amassed and primed themselves was a pretty hopeless, moronic, petty and defective quality.

He should've let the twats fucking destroy themselves.

I always hated pacifism - I must admit.

I always saw it that the Doctor was certainly intelligent enough to realise its flaws, but had 'hardwired' the principle (amongst others) at some earlier date, to the extent that he chose to be willfully blind to its flaws with little or no malleability.

I don't know how 'pacifism' can be reconciled with the whole canon, or even purely the 5th Doctor's tenure, as an absolute ingrained ethic, so I guess an easier explanation for this particular philosophy is as a glitch over the process of his consciousness: to the same effect, but without consistency as he as an entity changes.

TiberiusDidNothingWrong wrote:I always hated pacifism - I must admit.

It sounds good on paper but does ultimately when applied as a dogma become an immoral philosophy based on making any and every appeasement and despicable excuse for an aggressor that really needs to be clamped down upon (but pacifism becomes about being more outraged at the 'warmongering' voices wanting to stop them, than the aggressors themselves).

Ironically it is the worst possible way to preserve life.

TiberiusDidNothingWrong wrote:I always saw it that the Doctor was certainly intelligent enough to realise its flaws, but had 'hardwired' the principle (amongst others) at some earlier date, to the extent that he chose to be willfully blind to its flaws with little or no malleability.

I don't know how 'pacifism' can be reconciled with the whole canon, or even purely the 5th Doctor's tenure, as an absolute ingrained ethic, so I guess an easier explanation for this particular philosophy is as a glitch over the process of his consciousness: to the same effect, but without consistency as he as an entity changes.

Well, if we're talking in-fiction, there is a strong part of me that believes that it was the Fifth, rather than Sixth Doctor who was the real "regeneration gone wrong", which actually would make sense given what we saw in Castrovalva with the Master sabotaging his post regenerative healing.

Maybe it indeed did leave him a bit neurologically undeveloped with an inability to read situations properly or relinquish certain difficult, rigid arbitrary rules or inhibitions he had that were part of his way of coping with chaos, and that his autistic indecisiveness and continual backtracking at the end was a reflection of him having an absence of "executive thinking" in this incarnation.

I'm not sure however how it got hardwired into the program that he was meant to be a pacifist. Certainly if all that existed of Doctor Who was the 1960's era, then I don't think that impression would've ever existed since neither Hartnell nor Troughton's Doctors were remotely pacifist.

It became perhaps emphasised more during Pertwee's time with Malcolm Hulke's stories and Barry Letts' more Buddhist take on the world, and it even carried over into Tom Baker's first season with Genesis of the Daleks (which was a bit of a Letts/Dicks' holdover, as Hinchcliffe thought the Daleks were passe and refused to use them again).

But even then it tended to be circumstantial. Even in The Sea Devils and Genesis he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to blow them up, and in Mind of Evil he unusually has no qualms about leaving the Master for dead.

And for the rest of the Tom Baker era, any pacifist traits are an exception to the rule. Until we get to Keeper of Traken and Logopolis, almost no enemy of the Fourth Doctor ever survives his episodes, and certainly any idea that the Doctor was a pacifist should've died completely in Brain of Morbius and The Invasion of Time.

I guess with Davison the problem is the show became an era much more informed by fan opinion, and particularly by fans who grew up on Pertwee and had a much more saintly memory of him (plus if they were going to keep bringing back the Master, they had to explain why the Doctor still tolerated him, and so his pacifist scruples became the reason).

There might also have been a sense that as American TV/Movie heroes in the 80's were becoming so macho and gun-toting, it became thought necessary to contrast against that and emphasize more what made the Doctor distinct from them (the problem is in Warriors, he actually makes the Stallone and Schwarzenegger meat-head type heroes actually look *less* sociopathic).

I believe infact Saward got told in fan letters that his gun-toting Doctor in Earthshock was out of character and to avoid ever writing him that way again. Hence why it's one of the only times in Davison's era it happens. But in that the makers didn't understand or forgot the circumstantial reasons why Pertwee had been the pacifist peace-seeker in certain scenarios where it made sense to be, and as such with Warriors we saw him doing that in a scenario where it made no sense.

I mean if the Doctor is as smart as he's meant to be AND committed to preserving all life AND he's supposed to have had years to think about what he could've done right to make peace with the Sea Devils, then he could've easily resolved Warriors of the Deep without anyone having to die. All he had to do was use the threat of the gas as a deterrent to force the Sea Devils to either leave or come in unarmed from the start.

But then the story depends on being so desperate to appear downbeat it has to reduce the Doctor to a pathetic shadow of himself.

But I think both Colin and Cartmel saw this wasn't working and so insisted on their ideas of getting the Doctor back to his more thuggish, proactive, ambiguous, Machiavellian Hartnellian or Trougthon-esque roots. But of course in the case of Colin it came off a bit glitched, and fans just weren't really ready for it.

And of course then with New Who, we got the show informed by the fan generation that grew up on Davison, and modelled the Doctor accordingly (though usually had to resort to magic pixie dust to ensure he *did* get his 'another way' happy ending).