GG3 - The Underwater Menace 3

Episode Three of The Underwater Menace could be the campest 24 minutes of Doctor Who ever. There's this strange, bizarre (and bizarrely long) sequence where the fish people are floating around on visible wires through the water, apparently taking several, laid back minutes to pass on word of the wildcat strike that they're about to pull off. It's like watching The Web Planet in slow motion.

Before that, there's an equally long, cacophonous scene set in a marketplace, featuring The Doctor in disguise as some sort of hippy and shaking a tambourine. Also, of note, nothing at all happens for at least two minutes. And it's all brilliantly overscored by some horrific incidental music from Dudley Simpson, who was clearly taking his new Moog synthesizer out for a spin.

Then there's Peter Stephens as Lolem, who must be seen and heard to be believed...

You know it's bad when it's taken me this long to mention Professor Zaroff, the poster boy of camp. Keen to raise its game, though, is the script, offering such softballs to Zaroff like "Let me stand next to you so I might feel the aura of your goodness", and (wait for it), "Nothing in the world can stop me now!"

Somehow, this episode was spared from destruction when so many of its contemporaries were mercilessly wiped from existence. Oy...

On to Episode Four (of four, thankfully)...