Fury From The Deep

The TARDIS makes an unusual landing at sea, bringing the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria ashore at a natural gas refinery on the coast. The refinery is fed by several rigs out at sea, but recently contact has been lost at one and a strange heartbeat-like sound can be heard reverberating through the pipes. The TARDIS crew are initially mistaken for industrial spies and saboteurs, and even protesting hippies before their help is accepted by some of the base's authorities, but by then it is obvious that something is going terribly wrong, and a mass of attacking seaweed is at the heart of it.

Fury From The Deep is one of those stories which doesn't exist to be seen aside from a few surviving clips and the audio score recorded off-air at broadcast time, and as such it makes its way to the top of the list when people speak of which episode they wish to see returned the most. Once upon a time that was Tomb of the Cybermen from earlier in the same season, but once that came back it's usually Fury or Marco Polo, whichever way the winds of nostalgia are blowing at the time. We only have the word of people who saw it at the time for how good it was, although the audio and the bits we can get to see lend a lot of credibility to that claim. One clip which stands out as an example of a truly horrific moment is a scene where two men under the control of the weed creature attack a woman in her home by emitting toxic gas from their mouths. Their eyes bulge out, they emit a hissing noise and she chokes in agony and falls to the floor... the clip was removed from some broadcast copies to appease the censors which is why it is still around to be seen today. Of course, the fact that it can possess and control people at a distance makes it easy for the weed it infiltrate the base and slowly take over and remove the people who would otherwise complicate its plans.

Intelligent seaweed, though. Hmmm. Attacking plants have always been a good sci-fi go-to and we have had it before with some limp vines back in Keys of Marinus, so the real challenge would be how to realize an entire mass of it attacking. The Lost in Time DVD set has a few moments of film trims and a couple of clips which capture the seaweed monster's moments, and cleverly it was covered in foam for the most part as it rampaged across the studio or pulled an unfortunate extra off a ladder to his doom. Good call there; without the foam to hide its edges I have a feeling the seaweed monster might not have been so impressive. Still, unless there is another miraculous find out there (and do not think for one second I don't want that) the seaweed monster will be left to imagination mostly, which is how I first envisioned it when reading the super-sized Target novel adaptation by original author Victor Pemberton. Having the original script writer put out the story was a bit of a bonus, and around the time this was in print the originals were coming out of the woodwork; I'd have to go back and re-read it to be sure but I remember being impressed with the quality of the writing and the narrative prose when a lot of the other scripts were just churned out through the Terrance Dicks novelization machine with little extra added.

I think, though, that the real reason for Fury being such a mourned loss in the archive all comes from a couple of events in the script, one being the first appearance of the sonic screwdriver. These days the sonic screwdriver is brandished on a regular basis like a magic wand (because in literary terms that's exactly what it is) but when it first appeared on screen it was not with any flourish, it was merely something the Doctor was going to use to undo some bolts. "All done with soundwaves," he said cheerfully. Leading up to this, though, there have been a few instances in the expanded universe where upstart authors have all dropped reference to the device ahead of its actual reveal which I as a fan think is just silly.. all this jockeying to try and retcon the device's appearance and get the biggest fan wank for one's buck.

Fury has one more big moment of fame, and that's Victoria's departure. As the story unfolds she finds herself getting worn out by the constant running for her life, the endless attacks by alien menaces, and all the death which surrounds the Doctor, and this time she has finally had enough. She's in near hysterics a couple times just at the thought of all she has been through - it's surprising that she has lasted this long. She doesn't resent the Doctor or Jamie for what she has seen or what has happened to her but she's on the edge of a nervous breakdown by the time she says she wants to stay behind. And it's not just dropped on the audience; her decision to stay comes about halfway through the final episode and the Doctor leaves her to consider her options. Jamie tries to make her stay. There have been hints in the expanded universe novels and audios about her eventual departure, mostly in moments of introspection, and unlike with the sonic screwdriver I don't get too annoyed by that; it's character building, in the end, and the whole point of additional material (aside from making a buck off a franchise) is to expand on what we already know, and going a bit further into Victoria's psyche makes her eventual departure make a lot more sense - after all, she did not join the TARDIS crew to go adventuring, she did it because otherwise she would have been stranded on Skaro in the ruins of the Dalek Empire. She and Jamie were never lovers but Jamie's emotional response is pure heartbreak, and his anger at the Doctor's casual acceptance of her departure actually prompts the Doctor's own indignant response and a rare emotional outburst.

The TARDIS sets off with one less occupant, but things will not be quiet for long.

NEXT EPISODE: THE WHEEL IN SPACE