Beginning an extended road trip into classic (and perhaps nu) Who Capitology with something of an experiment. The recent find (at least from December 2011) of episode 2 of The Underwater Menace (along with episode 3 of Galaxy Four) presents us here at THT Omniversal with an intriguing idea. The Tour already had caps for the story of a rather substandard quality, so with episode 3 of The Underwater Menace already extant we are trying something unusual, replacing the caps for episodes 2 and 3 of the story whilst keeping the others intact, giving the overall cap count for the story a modest bump.
As for the story itself, seeing as it was only Troughton’s third story, and Jamie was shoehorned into the story virtually on the fly, you can imagine what a soggy (literally!) mess the story would be. And it is. Newly found episode 2 isn’t so bad, but episode 3 suffers from a problem familiar to four-part stories, it’s merely a runaround with so many reversals of fortune as to be tiresome, although a ‘market’ scene with a beatnik Troughton is a hoot after a sort.
Special mention MUST be made of Joseph Fürst’s turn as Professor Zaroff. Subtle is not exactly the word to use for how OTT he was, ending with the closing line of episode 3 “Nothing in the world can stop me NOW!” delivered with so much relish as to impoverish a dozen hot dog wagons. Nothing? Nutters, actually.
Still peeks into the slender recesses of the Troughton era are hard to come by, though if recent rumors are to be believed (since proved to be a hoax) then there might eventually be more chances to come. We live in hope. As for now, much improved caps for episodes 2 and 3 of The Underwater Menace are now online.
Classic Capitology continues next week, who knows where we go…
