Fury from the Deep

Episode 1

Oh, good; a six-part story with no surviving episodes. In the circumstances, I decide to warm Hannah up with a joke before we start.

Hannah: (sighing) Go on, then.
Me: What's Sylvester Stallone's favourite cheese?
Hannah: I don't know.
Me: Rocky IV.
Hannah: I see.
Me: Just trying to lighten the mood.
Hannah: Nothing can help.
Me: What if I told you that this is the last entirely-missing story? There are only three more incomplete stories after this, and they each have at least one surviving episode.
Hannah: Hmmm. Depends. There might be a ten-part story that only has one surviving episode in it. Which turns out to be awful.
Me: Okay, what if I told you that the majority of the next season exists in full? After we're done with this story and the next one, there are only seven missing episodes left to worry about.
Hannah: Just put it on and get it over with.

Luckily she's almost immediately distracted by the writing credit.

Hannah: That surname looked familiar. In fact, that whole name. "Victor Pemberton".
Me: Yes, he appeared in--
Hannah: No, I mean, what's Victoria's surname?
Me: Waterfield.
Hannah: What other Pembertons are there?
Me: You might be remembering him from his acting role in The Moonbase.
Hannah: No.
Me: Are you thinking of Steve Pemberton from The League of Gentlemen?
Hannah: No.
Me: I'm running out of famous Pembertons.
Hannah: No, it's not necessarily Pemberton. Something similar.

The TARDIS materialises in mid-air and descends onto the surface of the North Sea. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria row to the nearby shore.

Hannah: Oh, the TARDIS has a dinghy?
Me: The TARDIS has practically everything.
Hannah: He landed the TARDIS in the water?
Me: On the water. It dropped out of the sky and landed on the surface.
Hannah: But how? It's not supposed to do that; it's supposed to materialise in place. It doesn't usually fly unless they want it to. Also, what's holding it up? Unless that's the saltiest sea in history.
Me: It can hover.
Hannah: Well, that's the first time it has. It's fallen down a mountain before, so why didn't it hover then?

Her attention is soon drawn to their choice of outdoor clothing.

Hannah: I like the Doctor's bobble-hat. I don't like Jamie's scarf, though, it looks like a ratty old cat-tail. And Victoria's wearing a short skirt yet again. She obviously got over her 19th-century primness very quickly, seeing as she's been staying in short skirts ever since.

It's not long before a playful foam fight breaks out on the beach.

Hannah: Eww. That's disgusting. The foam is all the dirty skanky nasty stuff; it's full of algae and viruses and all kinds of pollutants.

Then they notice a pipeline running into the sea.

Hannah: Yay, a sewage pipe. Go play with it.

A metal box is fixed securely to the gas pipe, and Hannah is surprised to see the Doctor finally come across something he can't open. Luckily, he's got a new toy; he reaches into his pocket and produces a sonic screwdriver, producing sound waves to unwind the screws from the box. Hannah grabs my knee in excitement.

Hannah: You kept that quiet. Well done. It's literally a screwdriver!
Me: Yes, it doesn't have thirty thousand settings yet.
Hannah: I didn't think it came in until a little bit later. I swear in the shops we've seen "Third Doctor's Screwdriver", "Fourth Doctor's Screwdriver" and so on, but I don't think I've ever seen one for the first or second Doctor.
Me: Well, obviously Hartnell never had one, but this screwdriver prop is actually the pen torch that William Hartnell sometimes used.
Hannah: Have I just been wrong, then? Has it only ever been the first Doctor that didn't have one? Have there always been replicas available to buy for everyone else?
Me: Not everyone else, no.
Hannah: Why? Are there other Doctors that never use one?
Me: I'll tell you one day.
Hannah: Fine. But at least that's something to cross off the list of things I was waiting for.

The Doctor and his friends are captured and taken to the gas refinery, where they are accused of sabotage. The stubborn Chief Robson takes a dim view of their interference, but his second-in-command Harris is a much more amiable sort of chap.

Hannah: Everything's quite calm and understandable so far. They could easily have been mistaken for saboteurs, but these people aren't treating them harshly apart from having knocked them unconscious for a bit, and they've apologised for it. In fact it probably would have been fair to be a little bit more harsh; they do look exactly like saboteurs.
Me: Do they?
Hannah: If they turn up in a restricted area that nobody else can get into, and they're fiddling with part of the pipeline, that's exactly what they would look like. Why else would anybody be interested in looking at a pipeline?
Me: I'm not convinced that a gang of saboteurs would dress in miniskirts and bobble hats.
Hannah: I'm glad there hasn't been any shouting and pointing; it makes a nice change. Well, we can't see anything, so I suppose there could have been pointing, but everyone is unusually calm for once.

After being locked up (albeit in an unusually calm manner) our heroes escape and explore the base, but Victoria ends up getting trapped in a room as seaweed pours in through a vent and threatens to engulf her.

Hannah: That's a long scream.

Episode 2

Hannah: I like this furious foam.
Me: Have you worked out who Victor Pemberton reminds you of yet?
Hannah: Yes. The female cyclist.
Me: Which one?
Hannah: Victoria Pendleton.
Me: Oh, for heaven's sake.

Victoria is rescued from near-drowning under the foam.

Hannah: She's up to her neck in porridge. She's gotten over her hysteria pretty quickly, though.
Me: You might have already noticed a preoccupation with the BBC foam machine throughout the Patrick Troughton era.
Hannah: Why? Did he express a liking for it?
Me: No, it just seems to be the production team's favourite toy. This is definitely the foamiest story, but there's another upcoming one that's also very foamy.
Hannah: They probably bought one and then realised they had to use it a lot to justify the cost.

Harris' wife Maggie has been stung by the seaweed at their living quarters. While Hannah is remarking on Maggie's hideous wallpaper, a mass of foam is bubbling and multiplying on the patio.

Hannah: There's a lovely fountain near West Quay Retail Park, but it's never turned on anymore because kids were always pouring washing-up liquid in there and ruining it. When I first came to Southampton it was lovely.

Harris leaves her and goes to find medical attention, hoping that this mysterious Doctor might be able to help.

Hannah: He always introduces himself as "the Doctor" and everyone assumes he's a medical doctor. He really needs to stop introducing himself like that.

While Jamie and Victoria are being told how the gas system works, the Doctor tells Robson about a strange movement he heard coming from inside the pipe on the beach.

Hannah: Earlier they were locked up, then they broke out, got into trouble, and now they're being given a tour of the place.

Before the Doctor can break into a spirited rendition of "I Heard it Through the Pipeline", Harris turns up and begs for his help. Meanwhile, back at Chez Harris, a couple of engineers - Mr Oak and Mr Quill - have turned up on Maggie's doorstep like a sinister Laurel and Hardy.

Hannah: I don't trust them, he's got a sing-song voice. Very odd.
Me: Then you'll be glad to hear that the other one never talks. They're like the Penn and Teller of the gas refinery.

Thanks to Australian censors, we get to see a thoroughly disturbing piece of surviving footage: Oak and Quill move towards Maggie with their hissing mouths wide open, choking her unconscious with their toxic emissions.

Hannah: That's horrible! Not nice at all. Terrifying mouth make-up, too. Are they human and turning into something else, or are they something else trying to be human?

The episode ends with the base crew realising that there's something "down there, in the darkness, in the pipeline, waiting."

Hannah: It's not a proper cliffhanger, it's just someone saying some words.

But at least the creepiness isn't lost on her.

Hannah: It's very dark and tense.
Me: What do you think is in the pipeline?
Hannah: Sentient seaweed. Or something that's using the sentient seaweed. Or it's all just a misunderstanding and there's a regular blockage, like some eroded pipe debris, and the two weirdos that killed the woman upstairs are just weirdos who kill people. I don't know.

Episode 3

Me: Believe it or not, this is our 200th episode.
Hannah: I can't believe we've managed to get here. It's all so different from how it started; everything's changed so slowly that I haven't really noticed the transition as much while we've been watching it, but if I went back and watched the first one again it would be like getting kicked in the kidneys.

Hannah has already worked out that the seaweed is being repelled by Victoria's screaming.

Hannah: If it doesn't like high-pitched noises, is the Doctor going to use the sonic screwdriver to fight the seaweed later?

Our heroes sneak off back to the TARDIS to analyse a seaweed specimen.

Hannah: It's in the middle of the ocean! They had to get back in the dinghy and row all the way back out there to analyse it? They should have moved the TARDIS while they were there.
Me: They can't control where it goes, remember? They would have just ended up somewhere else, like a space station full of Cybermen.
Hannah: It's been on the back of a wagon before.
Me: I don't think you could tow a police box across the sea with a rubber dinghy.
Hannah: Why not? The Doctor could set it to weightless or something and have it bobbing along like a balloon.

Astonishingly, it turns out that the seaweed is "just as alive as you and me."

Hannah: Well... yes! It's alive! Plants are alive! What they're trying to say is that it's a sea monster.

Robson is furious that Harris has let his "prisoners" wander off.

Hannah: I love how these three are the most unrestricted prisoners ever; they've just been left alone and allowed to go off and do science experiments because their "guard" is busy worrying about his wife.

The Doctor consults a book of legends and superstitions, and finds a page with the parasitic seaweed creature on it.

Me: Did you ever watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Hannah: It happens in Grimm as well; they look up every monster in a book of Grimms' Fairy Tales. Do they look things up in Charmed?
Me: You don't honestly think I've ever seen an episode of Charmed, do you?

Robson has well and truly lost his temper by this point.

Hannah: I think he's gone far enough to be removed from office on the grounds of insanity or something.
Me: He's not insane, he's just a bit of an arse.

Victoria has been observing ("whining" may be a more appropriate word for it) that the TARDIS keeps landing them in dangerous situations.

Hannah: I feel a departure coming up. She doesn't want to stick it out.

The last scene takes place on the beach ("That's very pretty"), and the episode ends with another hauntingly low-key cliffhanger when Maggie goes all Reggie Perrin and walks quietly out into the sea.

Me: That would have been such a good scene if it still existed.

Episode 4

Victoria is still longing to be somewhere peaceful and happy.

Hannah: She's got a point, you know. I know it wouldn't make good television, but there must be some planets out there where they'd get invited for tea and get on with the aliens.
Me: Not at this rate. This is the fifth story in a row where they've landed on Earth.
Hannah: Is this the first time a companion's had a proper old think about leaving, and doesn't want to be there anymore?
Me: What makes you think she's definitely leaving?
Hannah: She doesn't want to keep on travelling, she wants to stop; it's obvious they're building up to her departure. I suppose Ian and Barbara discussed it a lot, but they were just waiting for an opportunity to get back to their own time, or as close as they could get. Everyone else just carried on going, until they either suddenly decided to leave or the Doctor decided for them.
Me: Yes, this is the first time they've tried to set it up in advance.
Hannah: She's talking about it an awful lot. It kind of suits her character; she's intelligent, so she knows that it's dangerous to keep doing these things and that she's out of her depth. She can enjoy it to a certain extent, but being whipped around the universe, constantly in danger, and having all these adventures in a row without a breather... she's right to question it.

Megan Jones, chief executive of the board, has arrived to start setting the refinery to rights.

Me: That's Margaret John, the saucy potty-mouthed elderly neighbour from Gavin & Stacey. She also plays the grandmother in the David Tennant episode "The Idiot's Lantern".
Hannah: I don't remember that one.
Me: She loses her face.
Hannah: Oh, yeah. I don't like that episode much because it's to do with face horror.
Me: Unfortunately they didn't take the opportunity to say "I find your lack of face disturbing."
Hannah: Anything else?
Me: She also appeared in two episodes of Game of Thrones, apparently.
Hannah: Oh, she's the old woman who looks after Bran in the tower!
Me: There's a character called Bran?
Hannah: Yes.
Me: As in...
Hannah: Yes.
Me: Alright.
Hannah: Anyway, it's good that she's turned up; we can finally get some authority back in the base now that Robson's gone crazy.

By now, Victoria's unhappiness with her lifestyle is getting more than a little repetitive.

Hannah: It's interesting that Victoria is complaining about her unfortunate string of adventures, and it's nice that they're addressing it, but now she's mentioning it so much that it's getting really annoying.

Episode 5

Hannah: Have they even considered the possibility that the weed is just misunderstood and it's trying to communicate?
Me: No. Seaweed is horrible, it's one of the reasons I've always hated going to the beach. It's disgusting enough when it's just lying there on the shore, never mind trying to possess everyone and saturate the British Isles.

Having decided that some of the service engineers must be under the influence of the weed, the Doctor and his colleagues don't bother doing anything about it and continue discussing the matter right in front of Mr Oak and Mr Quill.

Hannah: So they've just established that there's at least one person in the base who's under the control of the creature, and now they're talking freely about everything they know, working out a plan without establishing who could possibly have been turned. And the two people who have been turned just happen to be in the room with them, standing there and listening to everything! It's not very intelligent, is it?

While Jones gives the Doctor the benefit of the doubt, and he retorts that it's nice to be trusted ("Condescending bum-hole"), Harris is lamenting that the Doctor was unable to help his wife.

Hannah: His wife's still missing, right?
Me: Well, she walked into the sea, so I'm not sure whether "missing" is quite the right word.
Hannah: She might have survived.
Me: Maybe.
Hannah: She might have grown gills or something.

At one point Hannah asks me to clarify a plot point for her, and I'm forced to admit that some of the finer details are washing over me (so to speak). Watching a reconstruction is a very bittersweet experience.

Me: To be honest, I'm not really paying as much attention to the dialogue as usual; I keep trying to imagine what these episodes would have looked like.
Hannah: Oh, reconstructions have just become part of my life. This is what the episode looked like as far as I'm concerned.
Me: This is our...
Hannah: Trillionth reconstruction? Yes.
Me: Close; it's our eighty-fifth.
Hannah: It's even worse when there are hardly any photos of a certain actor, so we have to see the same images every time they speak. Look, that guy's always got his eyes closed.
Me: You're a fine one to talk.
Hannah: Oh, a clip! That means someone is about to die.

The Doctor confirms his suspicion that someone amongst them is "under the control of the weed."

Hannah: Someone's been smoking a fat doobie.

When the weed starts expanding and bursting out of the pipeline into the room, Hannah seizes on this apparent subtext with obvious delight.

Hannah: It's a pipe full of weed; this story is clearly about drugs. And all that foam is like smoke.

Robson, now under the effect of the weed, takes an unconscious Victoria to a cliff-top.

Hannah: Is he going to throw her off a cliff? She'll certainly stop complaining after that.
Me: Ah, but will you?
Hannah: I never stop complaining.
Me: You used to like her, you know.
Hannah: So many opportunities, and all she can do is complain.
Me: She has had a rough time of it lately, to be fair.

He carries her into a waiting helicopter and takes her to the control rig. After pursuing them in another helicopter, the episode ends with the Doctor and Jamie confronting Robson in a foam-filled cabin.

Hannah: It's not much of a cliffhanger, considering they're expecting to find him down there. He's just standing there waist-deep in foam, like he's in a Jacuzzi.

Episode 6

Me: How are you finding this adventure so far?
Hannah: It's alright.

Robson recoils at Victoria's scream, so the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria make their escape.

Hannah: I'm very annoyed that screaming is the weapon. I can't stand people screaming and high-pitched noises.

Our heroes hijack Robson's helicopter, but the Doctor seems to be having some trouble with the controls.

Hannah: Oh, good. The Doctor's going to crash some more vehicles.
Me: It can't be that difficult. He can fly a TARDIS.
Hannah: Barely.

Back at the base, the Doctor has realised that the weed is vulnerable to the sound vibrations in Victoria's scream. It's only taken him five episodes.

Hannah: The grand finale is just going to be Victoria screaming into a tube.
Me: It could be worse; in the original script, the monster was defeated by Jamie playing the bagpipes.
Hannah: That would have been fine, but it wouldn't have as much meaning behind it. Victoria is upset about being scared all the time, and her being scared is what saves them. That needed to be in there, because it gives it a little bit more depth; it wouldn't have been as good a story otherwise.

Thankfully, we get to see some short but impressive extracts from the final battle against the creature.

Hannah: The monster looks like something you'd pull out of the plughole in the shower if you hadn't done it for a couple of weeks.
Me: Speak for yourself.

The seaweed creature is finally defeated by getting Victoria to scream into a tape recorder and amplifying the sound wave ("It's like her last hurrah"), but we're still halfway through the episode.

Hannah: This isn't the end, so what happens?

Then the Harrises have everyone round for dinner.

Hannah: They're just sitting around having a chin-wag? Usually the Doctor just buggers off to the TARDIS before all the clearing up is finished.
Me: They've defeated the monster with half an episode to go, so it's gone all domestic for a change. I thought you might appreciate it.
Hannah: It's weird.
Me: It's nice, though. I always enjoy a serene epilogue to the main plot, where everything's a bit more relaxed and they can enjoy a well-earned rest.
Hannah: It's jarring! I'm constantly wondering when is the monster going to pop its head up again.
Me: It's less abrupt this way, you get to unwind and--
Hannah: No, we're not unwinding in the slightest, because it's not the end and I don't know how much episode is left so I'm constantly waiting for the monster to appear again and kill someone before they can defeat it. That's what usually happens when the narrative finishes much too soon; you always know there's going to be a round two.

Victoria wants to stay behind, and the Harrises are happy to have her ("Well, that's helpful and convenient"). Victoria reassures Jamie that she'll be happy here, and that the Harrises are very nice people.

Hannah: Yes, but you're imposing on them.

The next morning, Victoria says goodbye to the Doctor and Jamie. Unfortunately, with no existing footage, we have to make do with a static image of the back of her legs in that short skirt. Not that I'm complaining.

Hannah: Well. What a shot.
Me: Yes, it's something to remember her by.

Despite having thrust his companion upon them, the Doctor believes that she'll be alright with Harrises...

Hannah: Unless they turn out to be cannibals.

...but Jamie is inconsolable.

Hannah: Oh, Jamie...

An emotional Victoria watches as the TARDIS rises above the water into mid-air and dematerialises.

Hannah: Oh, that's sad. But you saw it coming for so long, because of the way they approached it. It's more believable this way; I mean, it's a bit annoying that she's been going on about it so much, but it was obviously playing on her mind a lot. It makes it feel different; less abrupt and not so much of a wrench, but it still feels sad that she's made that decision. And the Doctor has been very logical about it, asking if she's sure and giving her an extra day to make up her mind, as opposed to when he kicked Susan out and told her to naff off and make her own life.
Me: Are you going to miss Victoria?
Hannah: Yes, I miss all the companions a bit. I feel like she wasn't happy at any point, so I fully understand why she's decided not to come with them, but I think perhaps she should have stayed a little longer; I'm sure there were plenty of things still to come that she could have been excited and interested about, so it's a shame.
Me: By the way, this is a story in which no one dies.
Hannah: That's disappointing. Why did no one die?
Me: The monster's victims are possessed, not killed, and it turns out that the ones who appear to die - like Maggie - are just being held captive at the control rig after they've taken a bracing stroll through the North Sea. Why is that disappointing?
Hannah: Because it is! I expect people to die in Doctor Who.
Me: You're so bloodthirsty
Hannah: The show is bloodthirsty, usually. It's odd when you've got a story that appears to put everyone's lives in extreme danger and then nothing happens.

The Score

Hannah: It's really hard to judge this one, because there's almost no footage of anything at all. I like the idea of accidentally hoovering up a monster in your pipes, and it takes over people without anyone noticing, slowly trying to take control of the base but being a bit clumsy at it. There are so many failed attempts at trying to take over the rest of the base that it's slightly laughable; pumping it half-full of foam doesn't feel that intimidating. The monsters themselves look quite scary from what we can see - moving plants are always good - but there wasn't enough of them. We didn't see very much.
Me: That's probably for the best.
Hannah: Most of its presence was just foam, and the threatening atmosphere it creates. It was alright, but we didn't actually find out why it wants to dominate the world. Realistically you wouldn't expect to get an explanation, but I always like it when you can understand the monster's point of view. So... there's no proper explanation, a lack of threat at some points, the fact that nobody dies even though they've had their body chemistry changed, and the big weapon was Victoria screaming; I find all these things a bit irritating. And it was maybe slightly too long.

7/10

Me: This is the only Patrick Troughton story where the title doesn't begin with "The".
Hannah: Why?
Me: Why not?
Hannah: I find that annoying. Either do them all the same, or have a mixture. Don't just have one that's different. You either have Spaghetti Hoops or Alphabetti Spaghetti, you can't have a bowl of hoops and one letter. It's just wrong.
Me: What about a bowl of hoops and the letter O?
Hannah: Depends how similar they are.