By Jessica Holmes

I am poorly, I am tired, and to add insult to injury, I had to review this dreary serial. I’m going to chug some cough syrup, and then we’ll take a look at the latter half of the latest Doctor Who serial, Fury From The Deep.

EPISODE FOUR

As the seaweed of doom continues to take down gas rigs, Victoria starts fretting. She’s starting to get sick of constantly getting dragged into dangerous situations. This is going to come up a lot over the latter half of the serial, and to be honest the scenes get a bit repetitive. It’s basically the same thing over and over: Victoria says she’s scared all the time, Jamie asks if she’s happy, she says she doesn’t know. It never goes any deeper or takes a different angle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, Harris continues to search for his wife, and finds Robson alone on the beach. When asked where Maggie is, Robson cryptically assures Harris that he’ll find her soon. If you were expecting anything interesting to happen after the walking-into-the-sea incident, you will be sorely disappointed. Maggie Harris doesn’t show up again for the rest of the serial except for a very brief appearance at the end. Her involvement in the story dissolves like so much seafoam.

Speaking of characters disappearing from the story, Van Lutyens also makes an abrupt exit after going down into the impeller shaft to check for a blockage. Something pulls him into the foam, and he vanishes, never to be seen again. We’re later told that he isn’t dead, but his part in the story is cut short.

However, the moment he leaves, someone else shows up, because this story has found itself short one Outside Authority Figure. The new Outside Authority Figure is Robson’s boss, Megan Jones (Margaret John). I do rather like her, she’s quite no-nonsense but willing to listen to people. That said, Harris’ story of aggressive parasitic seaweed is a bit hard to swallow, so she authorises him to send out some helicopters to survey the rigs to verify his story.

While she’s discussing matters with Harris, the Doctor and Jamie are down in the impeller shaft looking for Van Lutyens, leaving Victoria alone with Oak and Quill. It may surprise you to know that she promptly gets kidnapped. I know. I’m shocked. Jamie finds her soon enough, and he fusses over her in a way that I find quite sweet.

The helicopter pilots sent by Jones to survey the rigs report back that the unresponsive sites are covered in seaweed. Harris’ proposed solution is to evacuate the remaining rigs and then reduce the whole complex to rubble.

As if summoned by the talk of potential harm to his precious rigs, Robson shows up to yell at everyone for even thinking about it, then storms off again just as abruptly. Having seen his odd behaviour for herself, Jones is now willing to entertain the Doctor’s theory that he’s being controlled somehow. He doesn’t believe that the weed itself is intelligent; rather it’s a plant simply doing what plants do: growing. However, it does have the ability to parasitise sentient beings who will then work in the best interests of the weed. It’s not explained very well, but I think this is what is happening. There is a kind of fungus that does a similar thing to ants.

Another rig falls to the weed, and now it’s the base’s turn to fall. There’s foam coming up the pipeline, and the weed is trying to break through. As the Doctor says, the battle of the giants has begun.

Wait.

What in the world is that even supposed to mean?

EPISODE FIVE

Luckily for Robson and his life’s work, the Doctor doesn’t believe that simply blowing up the rigs will be sufficient to destroy the weed. However, he does have another thought. Remembering how earlier Victoria came under attack in the oxygen stores by a man in a gas mask (to be honest I had forgotten that detail but in fairness to me I’m sick), the Doctor theorises that pure oxygen is toxic to the weed. They have a way to stop it!

Or rather, they did have a way to stop it. Having overheard the Doctor quite loudly explain his theory, Oak and Quill nip the oxygen problem in the bud by stealing all the canisters. Well, we can’t make it too easy for the Doctor. It’s only the fifth episode.

With Robson in his quarters under surveillance (for now) and Van Lutyens nowhere to be found, the Doctor realises that there must be some other agent of the weed present on the base. Fearing discovery, Oak and Quill immediately make a break for it. Jamie catches Quill, however. He feels quite pleased with himself, but the Doctor isn’t sure it’s the old McCrimmon punch that did the trick. Before he gets a chance to elaborate, the Chief Engineer calls everyone back to the impeller room. The weed is trying to break out.

Speaking of breaking out, Robson is no longer in his quarters, having subdued his guard with the power of his bad breath. Everyone’s too transfixed by the weed to notice him sneaking in the back of the impeller room and absconding with Victoria when nobody’s looking. Poor Victoria. Someone needs to get her some self defence lessons.

Robson boards a helicopter with Victoria, and eventually the Doctor realises his ward is missing. It doesn’t take him long to work out that she’s with Robson, and thanks to the base’s surveillance it’s not hard to find Robson’s helicopter and hail him on the radio. Victoria is once again a bargaining chip. If the Doctor offers himself up to the weed, Robson will let her go.

Taking another helicopter, the Doctor and Jamie head out to the rig complex, where they find one of the towers covered in a particularly large amount of foam. This is the nerve centre of the weed. Within the tower is even more foam and a rather sudded-up Robson.

I’m sorry, is that meant to be scary? It just looks like he’s been messing around in a bubble bath. Move over, Daleks. Doctor Who has a new recurring enemy: Fairy Liquid!

EPISODE SIX

As is typical for Doctor Who, the baddie of the month wants the Doctor’s assistance in its evil plan for matter to conquer mind. The Doctor protests that such a thing is against the laws of nature, but I can think of a few kinds of other ‘vegetable matter’ that have some very interesting effects on the mind.

Luckily for everyone present (except poor me, and my eardrums) Victoria has got an impressively loud set of vocal cords. The piercing sound of her screams is sufficient to incapacitate Robson, giving them the opportunity to escape.

Unfortunately, the Doctor can’t seem to flag down the pilot of the helicopter he arrived in, so rather than waiting a couple of minutes he settles for the next best thing: taking Robson’s chopper for a whirl.

The Doctor does not know how to fly a helicopter, but try telling him that.

Did you know that helicopters can do a loop-de-loop?

I do now.

This is quite a drawn out sequence. Clearly it cost the BBC quite a bit to hire the helicopter and stunt pilot and they were damned if they were going to leave a single second of footage on the cutting room floor.

By some stroke of fortune he makes it back to the base and lands the helicopter safely. However, the base is running out of time, and there’s still no way to defeat the weed. Or is there?

On their way back to Harris and Jones, the trio pass the medical centre, where they learn that Quill has made a full recovery from his weed problem. But what killed it off? Victoria, of course. Specifically, the fact that she screams at a specific frequency that is apparently deadly to the weed.

If they can harness the sound of Victoria’s screams, they can use her as a sort of sonic weapon. Well, her propensity for wailing like a banshee had to come in useful eventually. I’m sure she used to be good for more than just screaming and getting captured, but there you go. That’s Victoria in a nutshell: the one who screams a lot.

I do find it quite a pity. She had so much potential but lately she has been written as little more than the archetypal damsel in distress. It’s a waste of a perfectly good character, and I find it disappointingly regressive. It is possible, I believe, for a female character to be gentle and feminine without her primary role in the story being to give the men something to rescue from danger.

Daft as it is, the Doctor’s plan works, Victoria’s amplified screams echoing down the pipeline and destroying the weed at the source. With the nerve centre destroyed, everyone who was controlled by the weed returns to normal. Maggie’s fine, Robson’s fine, and even though he remains offscreen, Van Lutyens is tickety-boo too.

All’s well that ends well. Or is it? In an unusual turn of events, the Doctor sticks around for the denoument, joining everyone for a meal at the Harris’ house. It’s not him who is reluctant to leave, however; it’s Victoria. Tired of being thrust from one dangerous situation into another, Victoria has finally had enough, and she wants to stay in one place. The Harrises are happy to have her to stay for as long as she likes, but of course staying in one place isn’t really the Doctor’s style. He did promise her father that he’d keep Victoria safe, and now he has an opportunity to actually follow through on that promise. Jamie is concerned for her being alone in a time that isn’t her own, but it’s not like there’s anyone left for her back in the 1860s.

The Doctor and Jamie bid farewell the following morning, and I will say this for the episode: it offers a satisfying companion departure, which is not a given for Doctor Who. Remember when Dodo literally just vanished offscreen mid-serial and went home without as much as a toodle-oo?

The Doctor’s a little sad to see her go, but poor Jamie really struggles with Victoria’s decision to leave. I always did suspect that he might have had a soft spot for sweet Victoria.

Final Thoughts

I suppose it is quite interesting that immediately after facing an enemy of pure consciousness, the Doctor’s next fight is against an enemy with no consciousness of its own except that which it steals from others. Unfortunately, the weed feels nowhere near as menacing as the GI. It does have its moments from time to time (like with Oak and Quill), but much of the time the story asks the audience to try being scared of…foam.

Other than a mildly interesting villain concept and a surprisingly well-done companion departure, this story is the television equivalent of a lettuce sandwich. It’s flavourless, unsatisfying, and so dull. It is yet another base under siege, and not a very good one.

And what is there left to say about the base under siege plot that has not been said already? It’s formulaic, repetitive, has a tendency to go round in circles, and it’s repetitive. At the risk of repetition…I’ll leave it there.

2.5 out of 5 stars for Fury From The Deep.

By Jessica Holmes

There’s nothing…wrong with this latest serial of Doctor Who, per se. The acting’s pretty standard, nothing terribly stupid or offensive has happened, but it’s committed just about the worst sin a piece of media can do. It’s DULL.

But I’ll try to wring a moderately diverting review out of it anyway.

Let’s take a look at Doctor Who: Fury From The Deep, a serial by Victor Pemberton.

EPISODE ONE

The TARDIS arrives (yet again) in England, and it’s not long before the crew find themselves in the custody of the staff of a gas refinery. The boss around here is a man called Robson (Victor Maddern), and his blood pressure is constantly so high I think his head might actually explode.

His second in command, a nice bloke called Frank Harris (Roy Spencer), is apologetic for Robson’s terseness. The refinery controls a number of offshore natural gas rigs, and they’ve just lost contact with one of them. What’s more, there’s a funny noise coming from inside the gas pipe, but Robson won’t let them turn off the gas flow to check inside.

The base briefly regains contact with the rig, who assure them that all is well, but there’s something about their reassurances that doesn’t feel right.

Harris tries to raise his concerns about the pipeline to Robson, but finds that his research files seem to have gone walkabout. Thinking that he left them at home, he asks his wife, Maggie (June Murphy), to check in his office. She finds a bit more than she bargained for. The folder is there all right, but so is a stash of weed.

Seaweed, that is.

The seaweed pricks her hand, so she throws it away. However, there is more to this seaweed than it seems at first glance. It’s starting to glow, and she’s starting to feel quite peculiar…

Meanwhile, Robson throws the travellers into a prison cell, from which they promptly escape. Jamie exits through a ventilation grille with some difficulty, and Victoria takes the more pragmatic option of picking the lock with her hairpin.

I see London, I see France…

And guess which of them the Doctor is reluctant to take with him as he goes to the impeller room (where they pump the gas) to investigate the pipe problem?

I’m just saying, Victoria would be perfectly capable of looking at pipes. She’s from the industrial revolution. They were obsessed with gas and pipes and the like. Just look at the hats everyone was wearing.

Robson’s general bullishness hasn’t gone unnoticed, earning him a bit of a telling off from an overseer, the Dutch Van Lutyens (John Abineri). From his perspective, the problem with the gas is rather Robson-shaped.

Having been left behind while the boys go and look at some tubes, Victoria ends up in the right place at the right time to spot a shady figure opening some gas canisters in a storage room. Unfortunately for her, she then gets locked inside, and seafoam begins to pour in through the vent.

So now not only was she excluded from the investigation of the impeller room, she has been relegated to damsel in distress.

Again.

EPISODE TWO

Luckily for Victoria, the men come to her rescue in the nick of time, finding the room flooded with poisonous gas. She babbles something about seeing a creature in the foam, but there’s no sign of it now.

The other resident damsel, Maggie Harris, takes a turn for the worse, so her husband puts her to bed and goes to find her a doctor. I will say they are actually very sweet together, it’s clear they adore one another.

While he’s gone, a pair of maintenance workers arrive at the house, Mr Oak and Mr Quill (John Gill and Bill Burridge), who remind me of Abbott and Costello but rather less funny. Maggie allows them inside, not noticing their uncanny behaviour or the seaweed growing from their skin.

Other than the seaweed, they’re perfectly normal looking human beings. And that’s why it is quite impressive to me that they are perhaps the most viscerally unnerving characters ever to appear in Doctor Who.

Prosthetics and death rays are all well and good, but this is something else. With their mouths open wider than seems physically possible, eyes unblinking and bulging, the pair are absolutely grotesque as they begin to emit noxious gas, choking her into unconsciousness. It made my skin crawl. They’re straddling the line between human and inhuman, and there’s something about that that is scarier than any alien monster.

Even if I didn’t care much for the rest of the story, this one scene is excellent.

Harris arrives back with the Doctor and company in tow, discovering Maggie passed out on the floor and the house swimming in gas. There is no sign of the maintenance workers. They let the gas out through the window, and Harris explains to the Doctor about the seaweed incident. The Doctor theorises that whoever put the seaweed in the file meant for Harris to touch it and suffer the ill effects. And it looks like they’ve tried again, as Victoria finds some seaweed lying in the middle of the floor. Warning everyone not to touch it, the Doctor collects it for further testing.

Meanwhile, Robson continues to be stubborn about refusing to stop the gas flow, to the ever increasing frustration of Van Lutyens.

Taking matters into his own hands, Van Lutyens comes up with his own theory of where the blockage in the pipes must be, and asks the Chief Engineer (Hubert Rees) to go with him to sort it. However, though Robson is not an easy bloke to like, he is regarded as being genuinely good at his job, and the Chief Engineer is reluctant to take any action without getting Robson’s approval.

So that’s what they go to get, and Robson continues to be frustratingly stubborn, even though by this point the impeller has broken down and they’ve lost contact with another rig. And yet, the thudding from inside the pipes seems to be getting louder…

EPISODE THREE

Before departing the Harris’ house, the Doctor tells Harris that he should get his wife to the medical centre for supervision. She’ll probably be all right, but just in case.

The Doctor runs various tests on the seaweed, finding that it appears to feed on natural gas and excrete a toxic gas. And it’s very much alive. Well, yes. It’s a living organism. What you mean is that it is conscious and also mobile.

They find an illustration in an old book of a sea monster that bears a strong resemblance to the creature Victoria saw in the vent. Hoping to find out more, they venture back to the Harris’ quarters, breaking in when it appears that there is nobody home. To their shock, they find the house full to the brim of seafoam and tendrils, from which they have a difficult escape through the skylight.

Harris reports back to Robson, who has remembered that the Doctor and company are meant to be prisoners, and isn’t very happy that Harris has let them out of his sight. The impeller starts up again and almost immediately breaks down, putting an end to their argument, and sparking a bit of a tantrum from Robson. Increasingly concerned about Robson’s erratic behaviour, Van Lutyens urges Harris to take over.

They decide to confront Robson together, and he does not take it well. He has a right little strop and storms off to his room, where Mr Oak locks him inside. The room starts to flood with gas, and Robson bursts out just as Harris comes to check on him, yelling something about a creature as he runs off. Harris spots a seaweed-ish creature in the vent, but it’s gone by the time he tries to show Van Lutyens.

The Doctor reports his findings about the seaweed to Harris, who is very concerned to think that his wife might have been exposed to some unknown parasitic organism. He’s even more disturbed when he learns that despite having arranged for a medic to bring his wife to the medical centre, nobody has come to collect her yet. She’s still at home. The home which is now completely consumed in seafoam.

So where is Maggie?

She’s gone to the seaside, as one does when one feels under the weather. And who should be with her but Robson? Something has come over them both, and they don’t seem to be in their right minds. After all, wouldn’t you be at least a little concerned if you saw a woman walk into the sea?

Final Thoughts

So, we’re halfway through Fury From The Deep, and so far my reaction is a resounding ‘eh’. Like I said, there’s not really anything wrong with it. I like the characters well enough, they’re decent, I’m even picking up a little bit of a Lovecraft influence which is usually fun. And yet it’s just not doing anything for me. Why?

Perhaps ‘seaweed’ just doesn’t really work as a villain. Maybe it’s that the slowly building plot of something being wrong with the gas pipeline is just TOO slow to build. Perhaps it is that the conflict between Robson and Van Lutyens is just going around in circles until the third episode, where the status quo finally changes.

There’s not that much to look at thematically. The theme of ‘the leader is too arrogant for his own good and will doom everyone else because of that’ turns up in half the stories in Doctor Who, so there’s not much new territory being explored in that regard. We might be heading towards some environmental message, but no hint of it has popped up so far. That’s just speculation on my part. Ultimately, I just don’t find the story very interesting.

Let’s hope that things start to pick up from here.

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