Doctor Who: Fury From The Deep (TV Soundtrack)

THE PROGRAMME: Season Five of Doctor Who, from which Fury from the Deep hails, is sometimes thought of as a 'monster season'. Certainly it has its fair share of marauding aliens - Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti and Ice Warriors all lumbered across the TV screens in the winter of 1967/68. Whilst Fury from the Deep, the penultimate story of the run, brought its own green nasty into the Doctor's life, it also shared the theme of possession with its sister stories. Viewers had seen the human protagonists of other recent stories controlled by Daleks and the Great Intelligence; now living seaweed was to blame for the loss of self-will. In writing Fury from the Deep, Victor Pemberton utilised basic elements from his 1966 serial The Slide, in which parasitic mud had besieged a new town. The Doctor Who serial was originally commissioned as 'The Colony of Devils', with the title being changed later in order to make it less controversial for a family audience. The story's location sequences were filmed at Palm Bay, Margate, in February 1968. A helicopter was employed, both as part of the on-screen action and also as a device to lower the TARDIS towards the sea at the beginning of Episode One... making it appear that the craft was descending onto its landing surface, rather than 'materialising' as usual. Sequences aboard the Control Rig at the story's climax were filmed at Red Sands sea forts in the Thames Estuary. Further filming then took place at Ealing Studios, with subsequent studio recording being undertaken at the BBC's Lime Grove and Television Centre studios during February and March. Fury from the Deep saw the historic debut of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, a useful tool which would make regular appearances in the series for the next 14 years (before being destroyed in 1982's The Visitation). As the Doctor's companion Victoria, Deborah Watling had been with the programme since The Evil of the Daleks at the end of the previous season. She now elected to make her exit, and the scripts were duly adjusted to write out her character. Whilst the Doctor and Jamie would mourn her departure, their very next adventure - The Wheel in Space - would see both an introduction to a new travelling companion, and an encounter with some dangerous old adversaries...