Audio Review: Doctor Who – Fury From The Deep

WITHOUT a doubt, sometimes the best way to appreciate certain Doctor Who stories is as an audio experience, where your imagination has free rein to picture events unfolding in your head, away from the budgetary restrictions of a 1960s television studio.

In the case of Fury From The Deep, which has been lost from TV archives for decades, your options are actually limited to the narrated TV soundtrack (also available from AudioGo) or the novelisation of the story by original writer Victor Pemberton, read by David Troughton, the son of late second Doctor actor Patrick.

The original Target Book release of this version was heralded as a “bumper edition”, which basically meant it exceeded the average 125 page length of most of the range, regardless of how long the televised story had been, as Pemberton exercised his creative juices to expand and develop the events and characters seen on screen. That is evident again here, with an attention to detail often lacking in the more abbreviated releases.

The TARDIS crew of the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive near a North Sea gas refinery off the east coast of England, sometime in the near future, only to find themselves immediately accused of sabotage.

A mysterious force lurking in the dark, uncharted depths of the North Sea has already resulted in the disappearance of several rig crews, and strange pressure build-ups have been detected in the refinery’s pipelines. Something is out there, heralded by a steady, rhythmic throb, something alien, something deadly…

Whereas the TV show was forced to represent the power of a parasitic seaweed creature using vast amounts of foam, Pemberton’s novel doesn’t have any such restrictions, and as such is able to better capture the otherworldliness of the menace, admirably combined with the characteristic throbbing from the broadcast version.

One of the stand-out triumphs from the entire Target line, and another hit for AudioGo!