An Hour of Who a Day: 04/11/14

April 11: Fury from the Deep Episodes 3 & 4

Alas, episode 3 isn't much better. It's yet more Robson-versus-the-rest-of-the-staff arguing, and while Robson seems to be getting increasingly unhinged, it's somewhat difficult to care as he hardly started out as a sympathetic character.

But we've reached another milestone! Fury from the Deep Episode 3 is the 200th episode of Doctor Who. It's just a shame it's not more interesting. Part of the problem, one suspects, is that giant masses of foam with seaweed tendrils thrashing about is an awfully visual conceit, and so the effectiveness of these sequences (such as the extended one in the Harrises' apartment) are reduced fairly significantly. Certainly the little clips we do have are pretty effective. But on audio all we get are sounds and screams and Frazer Hines's narration of the events (at least, on the BBC release we get narration).

It's not a total loss, though; the scenes set in the TARDIS to analyze the seaweed are rather nice (and rather unprecedented in this era: we haven't returned to the TARDIS mid-story since The Savages at the end of season 3), with Victoria showing off some science skills and an interesting use of an old book demonstrating that this thing has been around for a while -- there's a bit of flavor of "ancient evil" that will become a staple of mid-70s Who and parts of Sylvester McCoy's era. And we seem to be getting some character development, as Victoria bemoans the fact that they always land somewhere in trouble: "I don't really like being scared out of my wits every second." And here we note that this is the second story to be produced by Peter Bryant instead of Innes Lloyd, whose producership was marked by abrupt and unexpected companion departures; Victoria at least gets to establish that she's not having fun any more.

Episode 4, it must be said, is something of an improvement, as the weed creature makes a couple suitably exciting attacks down in the impeller shaft, swallowing Van Lutyens up completely and threatening to do the same to the Doctor and Jamie. And one can't help but notice that Robson's pretty much gone for this episode, and when he does show up he's too busy being possessed by the Weed Creature (who apparently got him in episode 3) to be tediously obstinate this time around. In his place we have Megan Jones, who's been sent by the board (of Eurogas, presumably) to find out what's going on and why the amount of gas being pumped up from the North Sea has dropped so low that "the southern region receiving stations are working on emergency supplies." She at least seems much more reasonable than Robson, even if she's not yet completely convinced by Harris's stories of Weed Creatures and such. At least she's not yelling all the time.

And we get a couple more "why can't we go anywhere nice?" scenes from Victoria -- she seems to be less and less happy with her current lifestyle. Little wonder, since here she's knocked out by Mr Oak and Mr Quill and left in the pipeline room. There's a tender scene with Jamie as he discovers her lying on the steps and is worried about her safety: "No, you can't be dead. Victoria, if anything happened to you, I'd never forgive myself." It's quickly brushed aside as Victoria regains consciousness, but it's still there. Still, no time to deal with that now, as they see that the pipes are now full of seething Weed Creature. "It's begun... the battle of the giants," the Doctor says, somewhat oddly -- what makes the Weed Creature a "giant"? It doesn't seem any worse at the moment than the Great Intelligence did in the last serial. Unless we're shooting for that "ancient evil" thing again, with the implication that the older something is the more dangerous it is. Which might be what the script is getting at, but if so it's become rather muddled in the finished product.