The Threat from Beneath (comic story)

 was a Third Doctor TV Action comic strip story later reprinted as a Fourth Doctor comic strip story in the 1977 Doctor Who Winter Special.

In its original printing, it was the so-called "big story" of TVA #112. That meant it got pride of place on the issue's cover, and that it was the longest story in the issue. It was one of the few Doctor Who stories to depict a nuclear explosion on Earth. Moreover, it may be the only story where the Doctor orders a nuclear weapon to detonate in Earth's atmosphere.

Summary
The Daleks destroy some of Earth's satellites tasked with scanning for extraterrestrial life some time in the Cold War. As the Dalek Saucer Commander predicts, the humans react by squabbling amongst themselves; the Soviets think it's the Americans who've taken out the satellites, while the Americans believe the reverse. As both sides look for a terrestrial explanation, the Dalek saucer slips into an Earth ocean, and settles, unseen, on the floor.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is called for an urgent meeting at Whitehall. He is led to a secret facility deep beneath the city streets, where he examines the data on the exploded satellites. Admiral Dunsford claims that the Soviets have nuclear-armed satellites. The Doctor, however, pushes this theory aside brusquely. The data, he insists, supports only the theory that the satellites weren't just destroyed –they were atomised. That, says the Doctor, means that Britain and the world are threatened by extraterrestrials.

Later, the Doctor —and the rest of the people who had gathered in Whitehall —receive new intelligence. An object came down somewhere off the Pacific coast of South America. The Doctor advances the theory that it must have been a controlled spacecraft of some kind, else its impact would have created a tidal wave. This, however, the admiral and his cronies cannot accept. The Doctor fails to convince Britain's top military leaders of his theories. He leaves Whitehall, convinced it's up to him alone to stop the world's superpowers from destroying each other.

He's wrong, however. Even as he prepares the TARDIS for travel, the Admiralty have taken heed of him. They've sent orders to one of their submarines in the Pacific, the HMS Pandora, to look for "green-eyed Martians" beneath the sea. The Doctor finds them first, however. The TARDIS lands in a quiet area of the Dalek saucer, allowing him to sneak up on the Dalek control room. There, he sees that the Daleks have noticed the approach of the Pandora and are taking action against it. But they don't destroy it. Instead, they turn its crew into a form of Roboman. They command the crew to report "negative findings" to the Admiralty.

The Doctor, by now, is crawling around in the power conduits of the Dalek saucer. He creates a distraction by starting a small electrical fire with a disproportionate amount of smoke, thanks the chemical composition of the Dalek wiring insulation. He drops down to the Dalek communication panel, where he tries to communicate with the Pandora. At first he seems unsuccessful, but he's able to give the Pandora new orders on the proper Dalek control frequency: they are to send a Polaris missile at a 90-degree angle, then run like hell before it comes down. The Daleks find the Doctor in the smoke, and try to fire at him, but their aim is impaired. The Doctor runs for the TARDIS, hoping he'll get there before the missile comes down. It hits the Dalek saucer rather precisely. The Dalek threat ends under a huge mushroom cloud over the South Pacific.

When the Doctor returns to the Admiralty, Dunsford is in a self-congratulatory mood. The Royal Navy have saved the day. The only problem, the Doctor points out, is that he knows the Admiralty didn't send the order to activate Polaris. So if not they, who was in control of one of Britain's nuclear weapons?

Characters

 * Third Doctor/Fourth Doctor
 * Dalek Saucer Commander
 * Daleks
 * General Sanders
 * Admiral Dunsford

Continuity

 * The nuclear explosion depicted in the story was not the first TV Action would illustrate. It also wasn't the first they'd show in a story that involved Daleks and submarines. Earlier, they'd blown up Sydney with sub-based nuclear weapons in *Sub Zero.  This time, it's the Doctor who's actually got his finger on the button.

Timeline

 * This story takes place after TVA: The Glen of Sleeping
 * This story takes place before TVA: Back to the Sun