Fury From The Deep (1968) Review

How can you have a pair like this and make them nothing but filler?!

Fury From The Deep is a Steven Moffat horror story years ahead of its time. The only thing missing was a cheesy nursery rhyme.

PLOT

The TARDIS lands in a gas control rig which is being slowly infiltrated by sentient seaweed. To make matters worse, the rig is controlled by the most stubborn commander so far and Victoria discovers the TARDIS secretly made its' crew participants of this galaxy's Temporal Base Under Siege Games™.

CHARACTERS

Patrick Troughton is relatively underused here. His only real role is to tell exposition and doesn't much care about anything else.

I loved both Jamie and Victoria in this story. It's entirely natural of Victoria to feel fed up over the endless alien menaces(seriously? They haven't had ONE vacation trip?), though I'm actually surprised she didn't ask Jamie to stay, considering how close they are. And speaking of him, the scene where the two discussed Victoria's decision was the best Jamie moment thus far. Jamie McCrimmon: Brilliant.

I enjoyed Mr. Robson a lot, as he portrayed an obsessive perfectionist manager not capable of handling a serious situation very well. Waaaaay better than General Cutler in The Tenth Planet. I mentally snort every time I think of that guy. Robson was also really good when he was possessed. It was quiet and subtle, a big difference from his normal behaviour.

I liked the loyalty exhibited by Mr. Harris. He's one of the nicest guys the crew has ever run into. He doesn't have much for brains, but his heart is in the right place.

I didn't see the point of the Captain Janeway-wannabe, but she portrayed confidence and intelligence very well and worked as a counterpoint to Harris.

NOTES

*Yay, let's play in the foam!! Nowadays, Clara would be the one splashing foam and the Doctor would pick some up, smell it and be perplexed for no immediately obvious reasons...

*A big applause to the introduction of the sonic screwdriver! I'd actually forgotten this was going to be introduced in this story. Hearing Troughton say the familiar words got me in mega-fan mode.

*What happened to Mr. Oak?

*Did the TARDIS really fly back up into the air or was the footage reversed by the recon team? If it did fly, why?

*Since when has the Doctor wanted to pilot a helicopter?

*Where did the sentient seaweed come from?

*Why does the Doctor refer to the seaweed as mere matter when it's obviously sentient? And doesn't he sound like the First Doctor when he calls the war between humanity and seaweed "the battle of the giants"?

*The Doctor spends several episodes trying to find the seaweed's nervous centre, finally goes to it in a helicopter and then escapes and says it was in the control rig this whole time?

*I loved the music whenever Oak and Quill showed up.

*Did they remind anyone else of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd?

*One time, I and my friend reminded ourselves of them, cause we were interviewing random people as a pair(moving around and whispering: "that guy has potential(to talk to us)". And when we did get one who was walking, we were both on different sides like creepy stalkers, lolz.

*I know it's been a while since the last review, but the real world has kept me very busy as of late. Fortunately, my next week is entirely free.

*Isn't the secretary guy the same as the old guy from The Macra Terror?

*Also, the engineer is definitely Smythe's assistant from The War Games(canNOT wait to review that one!)

BEST LINE

"It's down there, in the darkness, in the pipeline, waiting..." I can hear Matt Smith in my head, saying those lines.

CONCLUSION

Very atmospheric, but lacks in content and is overlong. Nice effects, though. Victoria's departure was also one of the best, so kudos.