50 Years of Doctor Who: 198 Fury from the Deep: Episode One

EPISODE: Fury from the Deep: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 198
STORY NUMBER: 042
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 16 March 1968
WRITER: Victor Pemberton
DIRECTOR: Hugh David
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 8.2 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume 5 (1967-1969)
TELESNAPS: Fury from the Deep: Episode One

"Something seems to have got inside the pipe line. We've all heard it. This sound. At first I thought it was something to do with the pumps but it isn't. It's a peculiar sound. A sort of regular thumping, pulsating, like a heart beat......"

The Tardis materialises at sea causing it's crew to row a dingy to shore. Seeing the cliffs they realise they are back on Earth and in England. The Doctor is curious about the foam he finds on the beach. Finding a pipeline marked Euro Sea Gas the Doctor locates a black box which he opens using his brand new Sonic Screwdriver. He puts a stethoscope to the pipe and hears a pumping sound just before they are shot with tranquilliser darts. They wake in the control room and are interrogated by Robson & Harris who suspect them of sabotage. They have lost contact with one of their gas drilling rigs. Harris' Wife, Maggie, is prevented from leaving the base by a guard under Robson's orders. The Doctor tells Harris he heard something in the pipe. The missing rig briefly makes contact. Harris wants to turn off the gas flow and investigate but Robson won't let him: the gas has never been turned off while he's been in charge. Harris' notes are stolen from his bag by a white gloved man. Believing he's left them at home he goes back to find them. The Doctor, Jamie & Victoria have been locked in a bunk room and are trying to escape. When they do the Doctor asks Victoria to stay behind but she wanders off exploring. Harris meets Maggie and asks her to fetch the file. She finds it on his desk but is stung by a piece of seaweed within which she throws onto the veranda outside. Robson argues with Van Lutyens, the technical advisor from the Dutch government. Robson is contacted by Chief Baxter at the control rig: he can hear something in the pipes. Maggie is reacting badly to the weed sting. Victoria hides in the Oxygen store room but a white gloved gas masked saboteur is opening the gas cylinders. He locks Victoria in and opens the ventilation system where something lies in wait. While Jamie & The Doctor explore white foam and seaweed pour into the store and Victoria's screams echo round the base.

Welcome to "the one with the foam and the seaweed". This initial episode is OK but what I mainly take from it is lots of people arguing with Robson. Those who've seen a few base under siege stories will recognise the "Leader who doesn't get on with the Doctor" type and indeed his character's name isn't that far from Hobson, another base chief we saw in The Moonbase, which happened to feature this story's writer, Victor Pemberton, in an acting role.

There's a nice piece of dialogue here illustrating Robson's character that also mentions Megan Jones, the company head, prefiguring her appearance in a few episodes time:

ROBSON: You're here to offer me your expert advice, not to spread alarm amongst my crews.
VAN LUTYENS: How dare you say that to me?
ROBSON: I didn't ask you to come here. It was Megan Jones and those fools on the board. I said it wouldn't work and it never has.
VAN LUTYENS: Only because you are too proud to accept advice.
ROBSON: Let's get one thing straight, my friend. When I need your advice I'll ask for it.

Fury from the Deep is the last story which has no complete episode existing, but there's quite a bit of material that survives in various ways. From this episode a brief clip of the opening showing the Tardis materialising at sea exists which I first saw on one of Blue Peter's many Doctor Who articles. Said clip is actually taken from episode 10 of the War Games which reuses the footage from the episode. This is the first time the Tardis doesn't materialise on dry land, although it did land on it's side in the Ice Warriors.

The War Games 100 also reuses another unusual Tardis landing from the previous story, The Web of Fear, when it materialises in space in episode 1 and is covered in the web.

Famously this episode sees the first appearance of the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver. Here it's just a penlight torch which will evolve over subsequent appearances into a more familiar form. For once it is actually unscrewing something here!

I can remember a full page pinup of Troughton using it to open the pipeline box in an early episode of Doctor Who Weekly too. This would seem to come from a series of publicity photos taken of the three regulars on location atBotany Bay in Kent which is used as the location for all the beach scenes in this story.

Other memories I have of Fury from the Deep involve reading the oversized book when I was younger and enjoying it a lot. I bought the CD the day it came out and listened to it on the train to Stoke where my friend Naomi was living at the time (co-incidentally her surname is Harris like the couple in the story) and that will provide another memory later in the story that strongly sticks in my mind! Naomi will provide us with a top Doctor Who story when we get to Robots of Death!

John Garvin briefly appears in this episode as Carney, on Rig D. He'd previously appeared in Out of This World, the forerunner to Out of the Unknown, as Jim Thurgood in The Dark Star and the previous year had appeared in Adam Adamant Lives! as a Passer-by in The Tunnel of Death.

The same Adam Adamant episode also features Peter Ducrow, playing one of the guards here, who has a more regular role in Adam Adamant appearing as Adam's nemesis The Face in A Vintage Year for Scoundrels, A Slight Case of Reincarnation, Black Echo, Face in a Mirror, The Tunnel of Death, The Resurrectionists and A Sinister Sort of Service. He had previously appeared in A for Andromeda as Doctor Hunter in The Murderer & The Face of the Tiger.

As with most "Base under siege" stories there's a large control room set here, which is surrounded by lots of smaller room with pumping equipment in. To furnish them the BBC props department has got loads of my favourite control panels in!

Here's what I spotted this episode!

The first one isn't 100% obvious but I think it could be this panel from Dalek Masterplan 5: Counterplot: