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

Day 208: Fury From the Deep, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Crikey, once Victoria has decided that she's had enough, she's really not going to let it go, is she? Having decided yesterday that she's sick of constantly being in trouble, she really labours the point here today, bringing it up on more than one occasion with both the Doctor and Jamie. In some ways, it's almost like she's completely lost faith in what they're doing - when Jamie reassures her that the Doctor will come up with something to save the day (after all, that's what he does in every story!) Victoria whines that she's not so certain, and then panics when the Doctor admits that he hasn't quite worked out what's going on yet.

My biggest issue with all this, though, is more the way that Victoria has been treated in the long-term. I've mentioned a couple of times how her character seems to swing back and forth between loving life in time and space and being less than certain the this life is for her. Wouldn't this feel so much better if she'd always been so unsure of things. I'll readily admit that I'd be complaining endlessly in these diary entries if she simply whinged on like this every week, but it would make her complete giving up here work just that little bit better.

However, I did suddenly wonder today if there might be an outside influence to her sudden departure. I'll need to hear the next two episodes before I can make a definitive statement, but I wonder if it's possible to add another footnote to my Great Intelligence timeline that makes her actions here seem to be a little less… sudden. We know that there's a small piece of the Intelligence in her mind left over from their trip to Tibet earlier in the season, and we know that she'll later be drawn back to the country, plagued by visions of her late father (I know this means treating the fan-made spin off Downtime as canon, but I've been doing so all along, and I've seen that more times than I've seen some official Doctor Who stories!).

Is it possible that the Great Intelligence, having survived the end of The Web of Fear and retreated back into space is calling on Victoria here, trying to separate her from the Doctor and Jamie so that she can become a pawn in his larger game? Although no date is given on screen for this story, fandom tends to assume sometime in the mid-1970s (indeed, this world tallies with some of the technology seen in the UNIT stories), which would be fitting - the Intelligence could draw Victoria into leaving the relative safety of the TARDIS and staying behind on Earth, ready to carry out his bidding during the 1980s and 90s. It's a stretch, I'll admit, but I think it could just about work. As I say, I'll need to hear the last third of the story before I can officially adopt this sequence of events in my mind, but I like it for now, at least!

If there's anything good to come from Victoria's sudden lack of ease with the lifestyle she's been leading of late, it's that we get a chance to see Jamie reaffirmed as perfect for life with the Doctor. The way that the Doctor teases him into heading down into the stats with him is fantastic ('you wouldn't let me go down by myself, would you?', he asks, somewhat sadly. 'Well,' Jamie replies, having to think for a moment, before reluctantly giving in: 'no…'), and there's then something brilliant about the pair exploring in the darkness with gas masks on. Right back when Frazer Hines joined in The Highlanders, I mused that it was strange to have a companion be so interlinked with a Doctor (Tegan comes close, though), but when you see this pair in action, almost two years on from all that… it's perfectly clear why they stuck together.

The other great thing about the pair exploring down in the system of the rigs - it survives! Well, sort of. Today, I popped in the Lost in Time DVD so that I could watch the surviving clips from this story - sometimes they work as a handy visual shorthand to keep in mind while listening. Among the assortment of clips was one of the Doctor and Jamie being scared by the seaweed creature, and it has to be said - it looks great. In some ways, I could simply write off the creature as playing to another stereotype of the Troughton era (the thing lives in the BBC's foam machine for goodness sake!) and add it to my list of things that feel tired in this story, but actually, it's bloody creepy.

There's another shot amongst the surviving clips of Van Lutyens being attacked and - for want of a better word - consumed by the weed creature, and it's actually terrifying. For what amounts to a lump of seaweed thrashing about in some foam, it's surprisingly effective. It also provides a chance to see Mr Oak and Mr Quill's attack of Maggie from the other day: another one of those scenes that's actually very un-nerving. It's so unusual, and the way the shot cuts back and forth from mouth to mouth, as the men stare wildly and stretch their jaws to breaking point…

I really do think that, watched in isolation, Fury From the Deep could absolutely deserve the high reputation that it's often given. I think had it survived for us to see then it would be far and away one of the greatest tales we'd had. Sadly, going by the soundtrack and the tele snaps (even with these few surviving bits and bobs) it still just isn't quite giving me enough…