Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 207: Fury From the Deep, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It would appear that Debbie Watling has handed in her four-weeks notice between the last episode and this one, as Victoria's tone has suddenly shifted from being one of hating the thought of living in a place like this, to hating the throughout of continuing her travels with the Doctor. 'Why are we always in trouble?' she asks, and when the Doctor suggests that it's all part of the fun, she huffs that she's tired of being scared out of her wits.

Also interesting to note is the way that, having been set on the path of departing the TARDIS, Victoria is suddenly being given more to do as a companion than she has been for a long time. Over the last 30-odd episodes, she's swung wildly from being a bit useless and feeble to being a vital member of the team. Now, she seems to have turned into Liz Shaw, assisting the Doctor in his experiments on the seaweed, and even explaining them to Jamie.

Later on, she's responsible for picking a lock with a hair-pin (I'll assume the Doctor doesn't use his newly-created Sonic because it's still in the early stages of development. We've only seen it used to actually take out screws, and it would take an age to remove the door in that way. Maybe it needs some refinement before he can actually use it against locks?), while her friends watch on. It's like - out of nowhere - she's becoming indispensable again.

Elsewhere, the story is doing its best to be as creepy as possible. There's a brilliant moment, having seen off the weed from one attack, when we're reminded that there are hundreds of vents it could attack from, and now that it's inside the shafts, it has direct access to every one. I complained yesterday that this story seems to be something of a 'Best of Season Five' collection, but at least this feels like a slightly different threat - we're used to having proper, obvious monsters attacking, as opposed to a mass of something infecting the system.

Perhaps the most effective moment of the episode, though (and, truth be told, the story so far) is the cliffhanger, in which Maggie stares out across the sea, telling Robson that he will obey, and then walking, slowly, until she vanishes under the waves. It's incredibly un-nerving, and not something that you could imagine the modern series showing, for fear of kids playing copy-cat on a family trip to the beach. It's one of those moments that I've often in the past described as not really being Doctor Who, but things like this are starting to become quite routine for the series - the sudden, striking image. Long after I've forgotten everything else in this episode (and let's be honest, at least half of it has already started to fade from memory, half an hour on), this cliffhanger is going to linger. The tele snaps make it look fab, and it's rocketing up my list of 'things I'd love to see. Rest assured, the score of today's episode is raised simply by these final few minutes.

There's not really a great deal else to say on Fury From the Deep for now. Those odd few moments aside, it's still just feeling a bit 'run of the mill', and that's a shame, as it's not that there's anything wrong with this story - it's just that it's come at the wrong time. Had we seen this story at the end of Season Four, I'm sure I'd be singing its praises now, but having to follow on from so many other stories in the same mould, it's struggling to leave any real impression on me.

6/10