201 Fury from the Deep: Episode Four

EPISODE: Fury from the Deep: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 201
STORY NUMBER: 042
TRANSMITTED: 06 April 1968
WRITER: Victor Pemberton
DIRECTOR: Hugh David
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: Fury from the Deep
TELESNAPS: Fury from the Deep: Episode Four

Control is struggling to raise two more rigs. Victoria can't sleep, she's starting to be bothered about all the trouble the Tardis crew keep finding themselves in. Harris, searching for his wife, finds Robson on the beach. Van Lutyens goes to inspect the impeller but is grabbed by the seaweed. The Doctor and Jamie descend to help him. Megan Jones, the gas company head, and her aide Perkins arrive. She doesn't believe Harris' stories about the weed. Mr Oak & Mr Quill have assumed responsibility for the lift to the impeller, trapping Jamie & The Doctor. All they can find of Van Lutyens is his torch. They escape via a ladder. A helicopter visits the rigs and finds them covered in foam and weed. Harris wants to blow them up but a distraught Robson arrives keen to protect his life's work. He leaves as the Doctor arrives who says he believes Van Lutyens is dead and Robson is controlled by the weed. Jamie searches out Victoria and finds her in the pipeline room. She identifies those who took her there: Oak & Quill. The control rig calls the base: They are being overrun by foam and weed which is then found in the observation pipe in the base.

And the weed closes in..... Quite a bit of this episode survives thanks to our scissor happy friends the Australian censors who hacked a bit out of almost all the episodes. A lot of The Doctor, Jamie & Van Lutyens in the impeller shaft can be seen, it's all on Doctor Who - Lost In Time and it looks pretty grim stuff. Any chance someone can find a copy so we can see what the rest of the episode looks like? What we do also have here is some nice foreshadowing of the sixth episode as Victoria twice passes comment on the dangers of her life in the Tardis. Recently companions have disappeared without warning: here there's some foreshadowing. If they'd have had Ben & Polly finding out that it was the day they left London in Faceless Ones 1 or 2 that would have made their departure in episode 6 of that story less a surprise.

Joining the cast this week is Margaret John as Megan Jones, who was previously mentioned in part 1. : It's her only Doctor who part but she's famous now for appearing as Doris in Gavin & Stacey. I know nothing about the actor playing her assistant, Brian Cullingford, but will note that that's the second assistant called Perkins we've seen recently (The Highlanders). Meanwhile I'm alerted that Bill Burridge, who plays Mr Quill, has a couple of other non credited Who roles: The Dæmons episodes 3-5 as a villager/coven member and Frontier in Space episode 2 as a Draconian.