Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3116 in DVD
• Brand: BBC
• Released on: 2008-01-14
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 412 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Bringing together the trio of adventures featuring Doctor Who’s most famous underwater foes, the Beneath The Surface boxset has Sea Devils, Silurians, and adventures from both the Jon Pertwee and Peter Davison eras.

It’s perhaps logical to get past the weakest of the three adventures in this set first, and that honour falls to the Peter Davison story, Warriors of the Deep. It’s not too bad though, even if it does display some of the silliness and budget constraints that helped define 1980s Doctor Who. It’s still fun, however, and worth a spin.

The two Pertwee adventures are terrific, though, and the real highlights of the set. The Silurians finds Jon Pertwee relatively new to the role, and blessed with an adventure that boasts excitement, adventure and a very good script. But our favourite is nonetheless the second story, The Sea Devils, which also brings Roger Delgado’s take on The Master into the mix. It’s a tense, involving adventure, and one of the finest of the Jon Pertwee area. That’s not something to be said lightly, either.

As is the norm with Doctor Who special edition DVDs, the set is then backed up with some terrific archive extras, along with commentary tracks and documentaries that all but justify the asking price alone. That you get two strong adventures and one reasonable one into the mix as well makes this one of the best classic Doctor Who boxsets released to date. Highly recommended. --Simon Brew

DVD Description
All three "Silurians"/"Sea Devils" stories in one quality box set. Two classic stories starring Jon Pertwee as the third Doctor, plus a third story starring Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor.

Extras include three Commentaries, Isolated Music, Photo Galleries, Subtitles, Subtitle Production Notes and Radio Times billings. Plus trailers, "Making Of" Documentaries, Special Effects, Music, Location, and Restoration featurettes.

Synopsis
The BENEATH THE SURFACE COLLECTION brings together three feature-length DOCTOR WHO adventures. Includes 'The Sulurians', 'The Sea Devils' and 'Warriors Of the Deep'.

Customer Reviews

A Remarkable Achievement
The Silurians is a decent if rather tedious story, The Sea Devils is wonderful, but Warriors of the Deep is truly a remarkable achievement. It is remarkable because both the Silurian's and The Sea Devil's costumes look *far* worse than in either of the other programmes made over a decade earlier. Really, it's impossible not to laugh. At one point, we are also treated to a 'monster' that looks like a pantomime horse covered in green tinsel. This is particularly disappointing given that Warriors features Ingrid Pitt and Ian McCulloch, and was directed by Survivors stalwart, Pennant Roberts. What on earth were they thinking? It's not even bad in a good way. The Sea Devils is almost worth the price of the set alone, but I would expect someone to pay *me* to watch Warriors of the Deep!

All Hail The Pert Man!
Jon Pertwee's first season was his best, the stories were about 6-7 episodes long with a great intriguing story lines, I haven't seen the other two stories so my comment is for The Silurians story, it's worth the price alone, restored picture by the Doctor Who Restoration team completes the package, I recommend this along with Inferno & Spearheads From Space, both available on DVD, all hail the pert man, Jon Pertwee.

What a mistaka to Myrka!
I am going to begin with the middle story in this sequence as it's definitely my favourite story of the three included here.
The Sea Devils is a classic slice of Jon Pertwee `Who'. It includes a lengthy sword fight between The Doctor and The Master, a jet-ski chase, well-realised aliens, hypnotism, mysterious disappearances and a climactic gun battle; these elements more than make-up for any deficiencies in the story. There are few deficiencies but two that spring to mind are the frankly bizarre `spacey' sounds used in the incidental music and the under-use of a great `monster'.
The story opens with The Master finally incarcerated in a maximum security prison on Earth. At the same time, boats are mysteriously sinking and strange burn marks are found in their hulls. Meanwhile, The Doctor goes to visit his old foe and finds him seemingly repentant - a great scene is that of The Master in his cell watching an episode of 70s `mice on the moon' programme `The Clangers'. Although the prisoner seems completely subdued, the governor of the prison is extremely shifty and it appears that The Master is not quite as docile as he seems...
This is one of the series' last attempts at a six-parter and in many ways this has to be a good thing. As much action and intrigue as there undoubtedly is, the story inevitably feels padded-out and there are times when I found myself willing it on. The eponymous creatures are well-realised and the shots of them emerging from the sea are a triumph equal to that of The Daleks arriving in Central London in their mid-60s heyday. DVD extras for this story include the usual PDF Radio Times listings and continuities plus `Hello Sailor' - a cast and crew making-of documentary plus a prototype video diary from one of the sailors who was used as an extra and a preview of `The Time meddler', the next scheduled release from 2Entertain.

The Silurians is chronologically the first in this thematically linked set and rates for me as more of a solid if uninspiring entry into the series. This goes one better than The Sea Devils with a whopping 7 episodes and clearly sags in the middle as a result. Notable for being the only story to have `Doctor Who and...' in the title, due to a mistake made by the people doing the title cards, this was the second story in Jon Pertwee's first series, shown between January and March 1970. The story starts with inexplicable power losses at an underground research centre, which UNIT and its new scientific adviser are called in to investigate. It gets even more entertaining when what appears to be a dinosaur is seen in the underground tunnels. Then we learn that the work at the research centre has awakened an ancient race of intelligent reptiles who ruled the Earth millions of years ago. They went into hibernation when it appeared that an asteroid was going to collide with the Earth. As it happened, the asteroid took up a new job as the Moon rather than destroying the planet, and in the absence of the reptiles, humans evolved and took over. Now the reptiles are awake, and they want to take their planet back from those `nasty apes'. There are some effectively dark and gloomy scenes in the creatures' underground lair and even the dinosaur is okay - it certainly looks better than the one in the much later `Invasion of the dinosaurs'! DVD extras include `What Lies Benath', a slightly tongue-in-cheek documentary about the way in which this story was influenced by the politics of the time, `Going Underground', a look at the difficulties of shooting a TV show underground and a more techy piece about the way in which this story went from black and white to colour.

Finally we come to Warriors of the Deep...in truth a much maligned Fifth Doctor story that brings together both The Silurians and The Sea-devils. Memorable (unfortunately) for unarguably the series' lamest attempt at a monster - The Myrka - ostensibly a fearsome sea creature that electrocutes its enemies but in reality that pantomime horse from Rentaghost with some green paint and seaweed laid on! Only the infamous `Taran Wood Beast' rivals this monstrosity for sheer crapness - and I'm speaking as a die-hard fan!
More overtly political than many of the shows' stories, this is set in the late-21st Century and features two warring `blocs' under the sea. Featuring Hammer Horror stalwart Ingrid Pitt as Doctor Solow and `The Onedin Lines'' Tom Adams as Vorshak, The TARDIS crew (The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough) arrive on the base and The Doctor recognises a `Silurian battle cruiser' approaching. Inevitably The Doctor becomes the meat in a human/reptile sandwich (again) and eventually has to sacrifice his principles in order to save the day.
Overall the story is okay but several glaring continuity errors and rushed production (forced by Margaret Thatcher's calling of a parliamentary election - so The Myrka is her fault, hah I knew it wasn't just the milk snatching we hated her for!) leave a disappointing end product. By this time, Peter Davison had already announced he was leaving the show and the weariness with which he delivers his final line is perhaps a clear indication of the end of another era in the show's history.
DVD extras include 'The Depths'- All the usual suspects recall making the story, 'They Came From Beneath The Sea', a short feature about making the monsters, Oh dear! and 'Science in Action', a clip from a BBC Schools programme in which visual effects designer Matt Irvine talks about the techniques and materials used.