 This story, the first of Season Twenty One, features the long-awaited return of the Silurians and the Sea Devils, both of which had not been seen since the Third Doctor’s era in the early 1970’s.
The return of the Silurians and the Sea Devils was part of Producer John Nathan-Turner and Script Editor Eric Saward’s plan that this season be thought as a new ‘monster’ season.
After the abandonment the Dalek story "The Return", Season Twenty had been left without a ‘monster’ story - all the other stories featured individual opponents rather than actual monsters. Producer John Nathan-Turner therefore wanted Season Twenty One to feature monsters prominently.
"Warriors of the Deep" was written by Johnny Byrne, who had previously written "Arc of Infinity" - the first story for Season Twenty. Johnny Byrne was keen to write a story featuring the Sea Devils, who had last been seen in the 1972 Third Doctor story "The Sea Devils", but John Nathan-Turner also wanted this story to include the Sea Devils’ land-based cousins, the Silurians - who had last been seen in the 1970 Third Doctor story "Doctor Who and the Silurians".
Johnny Byrne was heavily influenced in the development of the story by an episode of the science-fiction series Space: 1999 called "Guardian of Piri", written by Christopher Penfold, that he had script edited.
Unfortunately it was found that the scripts, submitted by Johnny Byrne, were overlong and far too costly to implement and so Eric Saward ended up heavily rewriting this story, particularly removing an entire subplot about the Seabase Probe and its four-person crew, who are attacked by the Myrka. Eric Saward also changed Solow’s gender from male to female and decided to kill off Preston and Vorshak, who survived in Jonny Byrne’s original version.
A number of continuity gaffes surrounding Icthar (who is presumably intended to be the unnamed Silurian Scientist from "Doctor Who and the Silurians"), noting that Icthar would have no knowledge of the TARDIS or The Doctor being a ‘Time Lord from Gallifrey’. However, the decision made by Silurian creator Malcolm Hulke to rename the Silurians ‘Eocenes’ (as noted in "The Sea Devils") was ignored, as was the fact that the term ‘Sea Devil’ was actually coined by a human in their debut story.
This story marked the first time that John Nathan-Turner hired a director who had worked on Doctor Who under an earlier producer. This was Pennant Roberts, who had last directed the un-transmitted Season Seventeen story "Shada". John Nathan-Turner and Pennant Roberts had come into contact when it had been decided to use clips from "Shada", so that the Fourth Doctor was represented in the Twentieth Anniversary special "The Five Doctors".
Recording of "Warriors of the Deep" was due to commence, at Ealing Television Film Studios, on the 14th June 1983 but, in May 1983, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided to call a snap election to take advantage of her popularity in the wake of the Falklands War. Recording space within the BBC therefore had to be swiftly reallocated to accommodate the election coverage, affecting programming throughout the whole of the BBC.
This meant that production on this story had to be brought forward by a week. Because the Ealing Television Film Studios was not available on the necessary dates Pennant Roberts secured the use of tank facilities at Shepperton Studios. Facilities at the Underwater Diving School in Southampton were also used.
Unfortunately, the loss of the week before the first studio had dire ramifications for several aspects of the production.
With the Silurians and the Sea Devils having been the redesigned, principally by Judy Pepperdine, the outfits were found to have extremely poor ventilation, exacerbated by a heat-wave at the time. The Sea Devils, with their large webbed feet, also could not move around properly, and it was found that their helmets were too heavy, making the heads tilt to one side, obscuring the actors’ vision. The Silurian costumes also buckled around the neck, and this resulted in the mask being improperly fitted to the body on some occasions.
Even though production was completed on time, signs of a hurried production are evident. Many scenes had little or no rehearsal, and many scenes received only one take.
The biggest casualty, however, was the design of the Myrka, which suffered from a lack of development time. Unfortunately, Effects Designer Mat Irvine was delayed on a production in Scotland which ran badly behind schedule. This, combined with the change in recording dates for "Warriors of the Deep", meant that Mat Irvine had only about a third of his usual preparation time. Despite warnings that the Myrka costume was likely to be of inferior quality John Nathan-Turner opted to take his chances with whatever Mat Irvine could produce. It has since been revealed that it was a gamble John Nathan-Turner later regretted.
The Myrka had been conceived in the manner of a pantomime horse. It had two operators - John Asquith and William Perrie - who played Dobbin in the BBC children’s programme Rentaghost. Because they weren’t given enough time to rehearse the bulky, haphazard monster appeared staggeringly false on screen.
Worse still the Myrka costume had only been completed a few hours before it was scheduled to be used, and so smelled strongly of paint and adhesive, which one puppeteer said made him feel like he was sniffing glue. The paint on the costume had also not fully dried by the time filming started, and tended to rub off on the sets and other costumes, as can be spotted in several scenes.
This story was recorded on 1-inch Type C videotape, the first Doctor Who story to do so. Type C videotape replaced 2-inch Quadruplex videotape on Doctor Who and many other shows.
It was during the production of this story that both Peter Davison and Janet Fielding announced their decision to leave later in the year.
This was the last story to have its visual effects designed by Doctor Who’s most well-known effects designer, Mat Irvine.
Stuntman Gareth Milne (who had played the ill George Cranleigh in the 1982 story "Black Orchid" who fell to his death at the end of that story) doubles - very convincingly - for Peter Davison, when The Doctor falls into a tank of water, at the end of the first episode, and in the underwater swimming sequence at the beginning of the second episode.
Ian McCulloch, well known for his role as Greg in Terry Nation’s BBC series Survivors, appears in this story playing the part of Nilson.
Horror film star Ingrid Pitt (who played the part of Solow) previous played Queen Galleia in the 1972 Third Doctor story "The Time Monster".
Tom Adams, who played Vorshak, also appeared in The Onedin Line and James Coombes, who played Paroli, appeared in Howards Way and Robin of Sherwood.
Turlough it seems now wants to stay with The Doctor a little bit longer to learn, and can already perform certain TARDIS tasks.
It is revealed that the Silurians and the Sea Devils know themselves by these titles despite the former being inaccurate and the latter is no more than a nickname. In this story the Silurians Scibus and Tarpok are led by Icthar - the sole survivor of the noble Silurian Triad, who ruled the Silurians. He knows The Doctor despite being from a different group of Silurians from those seen in "Doctor Who and the Silurians", which features no named Silurians and no Triad of rulers. The Silurians in this story also look and sound different.
The Silurians third eye now flashes when they speak and it seems that its destructive power has been lost, although they never really have an occasion to use their built in weaponry. Even at the end, a Silurian is seen reaching for a Sea Devil’s gun in a weakened state. Their electronically filtered voices also hint at some degree of cybernetic enhancement.
The reason for the lights on the Silurian heads flashing as they spoke was because the mouths of the costumes could not move, and there was otherwise no way of knowing which Silurian was speaking.
The Sea Devils now wear laser-proof armour, and carry large cutting devices as their new guns no longer produce heat. Hexachromite gas is deadly to both Silurians and Sea Devils. Unfortunately, the revelation that Hexachromite gas is lethal to marine and reptile life makes the ending of this story very obvious.
The line ‘Twice we offered the hand of friendship’, spoken by Icthar, does not accurately describe the events of "The Sea Devils". As The Doctor knows of the Myrka and Silurian battle cruisers, having seen neither on screen, and knows Icthar by name, though he ‘thought him dead’, it seems clear that the Third Doctor or the Fourth Doctor had an unscreened second adventure with the Silurians.
This unscreened second adventure with the Silurians became the Virgin Books’ The Missing Adventures novel "The Scales of Injustice". This novel attempted to reconcile some of the in-continuities evident in this story including having the Third Doctor meeting the Myrka for the first time.
"Warriors of the Deep" is the last Doctor Who story to feature the Fifth Doctor wearing his original costume, since the beginning of Season Nineteen. The Doctor discards his costume in the second episode, when he disguises himself as a Sea Base 4 guard. He is seen wearing the guard’s uniform for the remainder of this story. In the next story, "The Awakening", The Doctor sports a second version of his cricketer’s outfit costume, which he wears throughout the rest of his tenure. He finally discards this costume in the first episode of "The Twin Dilemma", the last story of this season and the first story for the Sixth Doctor.
Despite being introduced in "The King's Demons", as a new companion, Kamelion again is not referenced or seen in this story.
This story contains a number of errors. Namely: In episode one, Icthar’s (human) eyes are visible, blinking through the costume. In episode three, the Silurians are clearly wearing T-shirts under their neck sections. Tegan decides to put on a bra between episodes one and two. Dr Solow’s karate chop seems a bit optimistic. Why does The Doctor want to go to the base’s control centre, when he does not know anything is wrong and could just as easily have left? In his haste to explore The Doctor leaves the TARDIS unlocked.
As had been the case for the past two years the stories in this season, starting with this story, were broadcast twice weekly, but this time the episodes were shifted to Thursday and Friday nights instead of Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
This story was beset with numerous political considerations (Margaret Thatcher had called an election when production began, and the reference to two superpowers in the story would be seen as a reference to the Cold War).There were a number of continuity problems concerning the Silurians and Sea devils in the original script. Editing removed many, but some remained in production. The story is generally acknowledged as one of the most badly produced Doctor Who stories.
In the third episode there is a comical scene where Solow attempts to fight the Myrka by dealing it a karate kick. She is electrocuted as a result. It was this footage, amongst others, that was later to be presented by BBC executives who wanted to axe Doctor Who. This included former BBC One controller Michael Grade, during his appearance on Room 101, using as an example of why he found Doctor Who pathetic and so took it off the air in 1989.
Writer Johnny Byrne has stated that several elements of this story were not in his original script. He has also stated that the base looked nothing as he envisioned it ‘ I was very specific in my description of the base - rusting, leaking virtually forgotten by all except those on board - the atmosphere and look was something like Alien with the Myrka essentially a lurking deadly presence waiting to reveal itself’. Unfortunately it was decided that the sets should be brightly lit so having the effect of downplaying the elements of intrigue, horror and suspense originally envisaged in this story.
This story was Johnny Byrne’s final televised Doctor Who story. He was asked to write a Sixth Doctor and Peri story. Entitled "The Guardians of Prophecy" (or "The Place of Serenity"), which was planned to be a sequel to his first Doctor Who story, "The Keeper of Traken", seeing The Doctor battle an evil immortal who threatened the Union of planets to which Traken once belonged with an army of Melkurs. This storyline was submitted to the production office but nothing proceeded beyond that stage. Johnny Byrne would go on to work on the drama programme One To One, amongst other projects, and later be re-associated with Doctor Who when he was asked to be the scriptwriter for the Daltenreys group’s abortive attempt to produce a Doctor Who feature film.
This story was novelised by Terrance Dicks and published by Target Books in 1984. Terrence Dicks gives a long recap of The Doctor’s past with the Silurians and confirms that Ichtar is indeed the survivor of their first encounter.
Both the Silurians and Sea Devils later returned in Virgin Books’ The New Adventures novel "Blood Heat" and the Big Finish Production’s audio story "Bloodtide". The Silurians also returned in the 2010 Eleventh Doctor story "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood".
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The Firsts:
The first story of Season Twenty One.
The first appearance of the Silurians for 14 years - since the 1970 Third Doctor story "Doctor Who and the Silurians".
The first appearance of the Sea Devils for 12 years - since the 1972 Third Doctor story "The Sea Devils".
The first Doctor Who story to be recorded on 1-inch Type C videotape.
The first time that John Nathan-Turner hired a director who had worked on Doctor Who under an earlier producer.
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