I think that most "missing" Doctor Who stories have at least one episode that survives but Fury From the Deep does not have a single one intact. The bonus features here have about 5 minutes of broadcast footage that has come down to us. And so the entire story has been animated with no option to insert a remaining episode into the mix.
Jamie noted at the end of The Dark Path that the TARDIS was landing in the sea and, as this story opens, the ship comes straight down from the sky and lands on the surface of what we later learn to be the North Sea. One inflatable raft ride later and our TARDIS trio are on the shore where they encounter large mounds of foam and proceed to play in it as if it were snow. This scene should probably have been accompanied by a "Do Not Try This At Home!" warning as big mounds of foam on the beach either portend a nasty beastie, as it does here, or are the result of some chemicals fresh from having killed off a bunch of fish and you don't want the stuff on your skin. A large pipe emerges from the sea and leads to an industrial-looking complex up the cliff. There's a box on top of the pipe which draws the Doctor's attention. Although screwed down tight, our hero busts out this hoolie which looks a lot like a straw but turns out to be the beloved sonic screwdriver!
Troughton wields a very simple doodad in contrast to the nearly omnipotent intergalactic Swiss Army knife of the current iteration of the show.
The TARDIS trio each hear a rather ominous noise emanating from the enormous pipe. Something like a heartbeat. And then, one by one, our heroes are laid low by darts laden with a sedagive. Er, sedative. When they awaken, they are confronted by one Mr. Robson. The animated version of the character looks suspiciously like Paulie Gualtieri from The Sopranos. Robson is the ill-tempered, ornery, and just plain mean guy in charge of the gas refinery that the Doctor, Victoria, and Jamie have stumbled upon. He suffers no fools and expects immediate compliance with his orders.
His mood is especially foul with what appear to be equipment failures hindering gas flow and contact with the rigs out at sea having become sporadic with some of them. Something is clearly amiss here. We get a hint when a piece of seaweed falls from a file of a scientist named Harris and it stings his wife.
The story takes a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with this intelligent seaweed possessing human beings and mixes it with a base under siege premise to good effect. The use of the heartbeat to represent an unknown danger lurking off somewhere unseen was very effective.
In one scene, which still exists on film, thankfully, two men, Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill, who are possessed by the evil seaweed, go pay Harris' wife, Maggie, a visit in order to convince her to join the cause, shall we say. Mr. Quill, the taller, thinner of the two, opens his mouth and goes all bug-eyed as poisonous gas comes out of his pie hole. (Hard not to think of Donald Sutherland's body-snatched Matthew Bennell here.) His shorter, semi-portly co-worker does the same. Some synth notes are played atop a rapid metronome of a beat and Maggie screams while closeups of the possessed engineers' mouths fade into one another bringing back visions of lamprey mouths that I've seen on the internet and it's just all very disconcerting, if not downright scary.
Victor Maddern, who played Robson, must have had a cathartic experience making this story because he's just a great, big asshole who yells and insults any and everyone. It was so nice to see him get his just desserts and be taken over by the seaweed.
The final showdown was really neat. The creature is largely hidden in foam but its weedy tentacles reach out menacingly. As we learned in the short story "Screamager", Victoria's got quite a set of pipes. Almost in bit of post-modern self-reflexivity, her scream proves to be kryptonite to the seaweed creature and so the Doctor records it and has people wielding giant earbuds send out Victoria's signature wail amplified appropriately to repel the invading marine algae.
Victoria does A LOT of screaming here and it got very annoying, especially as it's sustained to demonstrate its effect on the villain. It's too bad because she proves herself to be a bit of a rogue with some fine lock picking skills in another scene.
As I've learned from more than one Wilderness Years author, Victoria is ready to go. She is visibly upset in various scenes and tells her friends that it is no fun anymore. In the end, she stays with the Harrises. Considering that companion departures in the classic series are generally known for being rather stoic affairs - a simple handshake and a goodbye, Victoria and Jamie share a rather touching moment and seeing her wave to her now former companions was bittersweet. It was a lengthy farewell too instead of a simple goodbye and good luck before taking off hastily in the TARDIS kind of affair.
Fury From the Deep is a fine Doctor Who story. It was genuinely spooky. I was left to wonder if the evil seaweed would take over the crews of the refinery and rigs one by one or if there was going to be a frontal assault for quite some time. The music was otherworldly and very effective. The sonic screwdriver is not yet simply the sonic and cannot do basically everything so that writers don't have to.
The Doctor is very Doctory and things seem to be falling from his grip until the very end when he finally gets a handle on the situation. Jamie is a man of action, even if it isn't always needed and he stumbles for a laugh. And Victoria is very much the Screamager here.
Random things:
In the animated version, the main controller guy at the refinery seems to be confined to a Davros-like mobility device but, from a few seconds of surviving footage, it appears he was able to walk in the original program. The animation team continues the use of the visual gag of having a wanted poster with a picture of the Delgado Master on it in the background as at least one other story did. I am thinking of The Faceless Ones.
The animation was widescreen and not 4:3 and it seems like they drew the sets a bit larger than they were in 1968. Rooms at the refinery were big - the control room, the impeller room, and the one with the section of pipe that was glass - they were all outsized and lent a cinematic quality to scenes that took place in them.
A really fun story. It has a nice mix of horror, suspense, and action. Good, memorable visuals and a great, moody soundtrack.
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