YMMV / Doctor Who S21 E1 "Warriors of the Deep"

• Fan Nickname: Due to the story's shambolic production and execution, some fans have dubbed it "Warriors on the Cheap".
• Fight Scene Failure: The fight with the Myrka. Solow is approached in a blindingly-lit corridor by a ridiculous green pantomime horse monster that leaves visible wet paint smears as it goes, flails her arms about, inexplicably decides to high-kick it in the chest and then gets killed by some bad CSO. The footage was used on Room 101 when Michael Grade was being asked why he cancelled the show.
• Narm:
  • The legendary scene in which the Doctor falls into the water and Tegan rushes to help, only for Turlough to declare that it's no use because "HE'S DROWNED!" The whole scene is silly enough on its own for the delivery, and for the fact that the Doctor has been underwater for about two or three seconds at the time Turlough says this.
  • While Classic Who was never known for its huge special effects budget, the Myrka was a notorious Special Effects Failure even for the era. It's meant to be a genetically modified dinosaur made into a war monster. What it clearly is is a cheap pantomime horse costume painted green. The paint hasn't even dried! The monster was so Narmful it literally nearly killed the franchise — footage of the Myrka was shown to BBC executives when convincing them to axe the show.
• Older Than They Think: And some people thought that "Aliens of London" was the first time that Doctor Who had a fart joke in it...
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Michael Grade's decision to axe the series was allegedly inspired by the effect works (or rather lack thereof) in this story. The story goes that what especially earned Grade's ire was the Myrka, a pantomime horse that hadn't even dried properly when the scene was shot (the operators commented that the smell was so overpowering it was like sniffing glue).
  • The Silurians and Sea Devils manage to get off lightly in comparison to the Myrka, but that's not saying a whole lot; the former's costumes in particular are clearly far less mobile than the originals, resulting in the actors playing them having to lumber around like zombies.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The idea of a serial that served as a throwback to base under siege tales from the late sixties that brought back two classic monsters and served as a Cold War allegory could have worked. It's just the execution that failed.

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