The Underwater Menace is the half-missing fifth serial of the fourth season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 14 January to 4 February 1967.
In this serial, the Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Ben and Polly (Michael Craze and Anneke Wills), and their new friend Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) arrive in the underwater city of Atlantis, where an eccentric scientist called Zaroff (Joseph Fürst) plots to destroy the Earth by draining its ocean supply.
[1] The Second Doctor and his companions, Polly, Ben and Jamie, are captured when they arrive on a deserted volcanic island by the survivors of Atlantis.
Ramo survives and goes to warn the Doctor, which gives Jamie, Sean, and Jacko the chance to rescue Polly.
With Zaroff out of sight, the Doctor finds Thous bleeding but alive and takes him to the temple of Amdo for safety.
The Doctor and Ben cause a radiation leak to put their plan in action while Sean and Jacko warn the Atlanteans to get to higher level.
They trick Zaroff and lock him out of his laboratory just in time but he won't give up which results in his death by drowning.
A further complication arose because Frazer Hines was brought on as a regular member of the cast barely a month before the serial was due to start production, and his character, Jamie, had to be worked into the script.
The missing frames are still held by the National Archives of Australia, and, once re-incorporated, made the episode complete for the first time since the master tape was wiped in July 1969.
[9] ^† Episode is missing Doctor Who: The Television Companion's David Howe and Stephen Walker were unimpressed by the story, stating that despite reasonable dialogue, effective sets and effects it was otherwise "very difficult to find anything good to say about this story, which is undoubtedly the weakest of the second Doctor's era, if not of the sixties as a whole".
[12] Starburst's Paul Mount said the serial was "tacky, cheap and unsubtle" but partially redeemed by "a sterling performance from Patrick Troughton, rising way above often lamentable material".
[13] CultBox's Ian McArdell received the story more positively praising Troughton's "wonderfully charismatic" performance and Joseph Furst's "genuinely scary" Zaroff.
He did note however that the Fish People's costumes were "frankly bizarre" and "their floating ballet sequence from Episode 3, though ambitious, fails to achieve".
"[16] Den of Geek's Andrew Blair selected The Underwater Menace as one of the ten Doctor Who stories that would make great musicals.