Synopsis:
Called by Jamie to the pipeline room, everyone sees weed and foam filling the transparent pipe section. The Doctor warns that the battle of the giants has begun...
Price then reports that they have now lost contact with all of the rigs. The Doctor suggests that they will have been taken over by now, and Harris once again urges that they be destroyed.
The Doctor cautions that this would simply spread the weed over a wider area, whereas at present they know where it is concentrated. He surmises that the weed must first have been drawn up by one of the rigs. When Harris points out that anything blocking a pipe would have been dealt with by engineers, they realise who the first people infected must have been. Engineers know the entire technical layout of the operation, and so would have made ideal agents for the weed in establishing itself.
Now Robson appears to have been infected - and he has even greater knowledge of the complex. A search must be made for him.
Harris questions why Victoria should have been attacked in the oxygen store by someone wearing a gas mask. She is merely a visitor here. The Doctor deduces that oxygen may be toxic to the weed, and so can be used as a weapon.
Unfortunately they are unaware that their discussion has been overheard by Oak and Quill, who slip out and make straight for the oxygen store.
Price reports that Robson has been seen going into his cabin, so Megan Jones decides to go with Harris to speak with him. Perkins accompanies them, and he suggests that the military be called in to do as Harris had suggested - but Jones is now trusting the Doctor as he has been right up to now about everything.
Robson appears confused - first claiming no-one can help him then asking for help. Jones believes him to be acting as though hypnotised, and isn't rational.
They leave him to rest.
As the Doctor ponders what to do next, Victoria speaks with Jamie - wishing they could get back to the TARDIS and away from here.
Harris returns with Jones and Perkins, and the Doctor tells them he hasn't devised a scheme yet, but he suspects that the weed's next move will be to attack this control centre. It will want to take over the gas distribution network. They must locate its nerve centre and destroy it.
Oxygen may still be a weapon, so Jones orders a guard placed on the store.
Robson wakes as he hears the heartbeat sound emanating from the ventilation duct on his wall. The weed communicates with him mentally, telling him what he must do next...
A guard has been placed at his door, but he knocks him out with toxic gas from his mouth. The weed is beginning to cover his arms.
It is discovered that they have been too late in protecting the oxygen store as it has already been sabotaged. Jamie spots Oak and Quill, recalling how they had abandoned their post when he and the Doctor had been trapped in the impeller shaft.
He gives chase as they hurry away and manages to catch up with Quill. The two struggle and Quill attempts to use his toxic breath as Victoria screams. Quill drops to the floor clutching his head. Jamie thinks this to be the result of one of his punches but the Doctor is not so sure.
The Chief Engineer suddenly calls them back to the control room where a monitor shows the weed and foam once again filling the pipeline, this time threatening to break out as it expands - just like it did in the TARDIS laboratory.
As Price reports that Robson has fled his room, they see the transparent pipe section crack open. Foam pours into the pipeline room, and a tentacle of weed seizes a technician and drags him away.
In the confusion the Doctor and Jamie suddenly realise that Victoria is missing. With toxic gas filling the air, the control room doors begin to close automatically. They manage to get out into the corridor before the doors lock shut behind them.
They split up to search for their companion - unaware that she has been abducted by Robson. Unconscious, she is being carried to an ESGO vehicle. Robson drives her away to the nearby airfield where one of the company helicopters sits.
With the pipeline and impeller rooms secured to stop the spread of the weed and its gas, Harris is able to unlock the control room doors. He tells the Doctor about Robson being spotted taking Victoria away, and that the helicopter has now taken off.
The Doctor contacts Robson by radio, only to be told that he has taken the girl as a hostage. If the Doctor wants her back, then has to give himself up to the weed.
The Doctor and Jamie will go after her, and Jones agrees when the Doctor points out that Robson is about to lead them straight to the weed's nerve centre.
They hurry to the airfield and take off in a second helicopter manned by a company pilot. They are told that Robson has now landed on the control rig.
When they get closer they see that this rig is covered in foam. Unable to land due to Robson's craft, the pilot hovers and they descend to the deck using a rope ladder. The helicopter then moves off to a safe distance.
They begin searching the rig and soon hear the familiar heartbeat sound - followed by shouts from Victoria. They are led to the control cabin, which is full of foam.
Standing in its midst, his body covered in weed, is Robson.
"Come in Doctor", he states. "We've been waiting for you"...
Data:Written by Victor Pemberton
Recorded: Saturday 23rd March 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 13th April 1968
Ratings: 5.9 million / AI 56
VFX: Peter Day
Designer: Peter Kindred
Director: Hugh David
Critique:As mentioned last time, story editor Derrick Sherwin upset Pemberton by deleting a major sequence which would have bridged episodes four and five of the serial. Realising that the weed creatures now had control over the pumping equipment, they could use it to pump their toxic gas into a nearby venue in which a conference of ESGO and government figures was taking place - convened to find a means of halting the threat. The Doctor and his companions racing to stop the attack constituted the cliff-hanger.
This episode would have begun with them discovering that they were unfortunately too late, and all but one person was dead. This proved to be Swan, as Quill was then named. He was almost completely transformed into a seaweed creature. The fight between Jamie and he then took place here - with Victoria's screams killing the infected man.
The weed elected to attack the refinery because the crew had turned off the gas supply.
Originally, Robson was to have taken Victoria to the rig by boat, with only the Doctor and Jamie following by helicopter. Once out at sea, all of the rigs were covered in foam - apart from the central control rig. On landing, they discovered that all of the crew were now weed creatures.
Regarding the fight between Jamie and Swan, the original script stated that Jamie had knocked his opponent out with a "McCrimond (sic) punch", giving vent to his creag an tuirc battle cry as he did so. On collapsing, the seaweed fronds retracted from Swan's arms. Jamie had also called Swan a Sassenach as he chased him - a Scots word for a southerner, usually reserved as a mild insult for the English, though technically a Lowland Scot is also a Sassenach.
This was another episode which featured a great deal of location filming, involving helicopters and the Red Sands Fort location which was standing in for the offshore rig complex.
The Natural Gas Development Board had offered limited access to a real gas rig, though not any refinery sites. Unhappy at the restrictions, Hugh David considered alternatives and first thought of a Napoleonic sea fort, of which there are several along the south coast of England. (One of these would appear later in The Sea Devils, directed by the PA on this story). David settled on the Red Sands complex, which had been base of operations for a pirate radio station (see Trivia below) and temporary home to one of his cast.
Rather than use a model shot, David wanted to see the actual fort covered in foam as seen from a helicopter.
Peter Day elected to go out to the fort to set up the BBC foam machine, though a major problem had been identified. The machine needed a water supply, and it couldn't simply be taken directly from the sea as the platform was too high and the hose wasn't long enough. A supply of water had to be transported over by fishing boat before the machine could be used. (I'm assuming salt water wouldn't have been very good for it anyway).
Due to stormy weather conditions, Day ended up having to sleep overnight on the fort. Very little of the footage involving the fort was used in the end, with all the close-ups filmed on dry land.
Other location filming took place at Denham Airfield on Monday 5th February. This included Victor Maddern carrying Debbie Watling out of an ESGO compound entrance and into one of their vehicles - a Mini Moke (a small open-topped jeep-like car). He was then seen to carry her to the smaller of the helicopters which had been hired, which had ESGO decals stencilled to its sides.
All cockpit shots of actors in flight were taken on terra firma.
Also filmed that day was the action of the Doctor and Jamie descending into a bank of foam by rope ladder. Wooden boards were employed to hold a large mass of foam in place around the stationary helicopter. As you can see from one of the images below, a dummy was used in the cockpit for some long shots.
The final days of filming for this episode were at Ealing, from Wednesday 7th to Friday 9th February. This was for scenes of the weed breaking out of the pipe and flooding the pipeline room, which would be cut into a montage sequence.
Thursday 8th is when Maddern filmed his climactic sequence, standing chest deep in foam, in the control rig cabin.
Frazer Hines was taken out of rehearsals to carry out some filming at Ealing for The Wheel in Space with Wendy Padbury, who had been cast as new companion Zoe - their first work together on the series.
On 19th March Derrick Sherwin carried out more rewrites, including the Doctor working out how the weed possessed people.
Recording on 23rd March saw additional studio time awarded so that Hugh David could remount some scenes from Episode 4 which he had been dissatisfied with. These involved the use of sets which appeared in both episodes, such as the main control room and adjoining corridor. Recording ran from 8.30 - 9.45pm.
Opening titles ran over a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger to the previous instalment.
For the scenes of Robson in his cabin, the director opted to shoot Maddern through a ventilation grille - providing a POV shot from the weed's perspective.
Some extra scenes were included to bring the episode up to time, including a discussion between Harris and Jones about checking staff fingerprints after it was discovered that the oxygen supplies had been sabotaged.
Camera breaks were mainly to allow cast movements from set to set, such as when Oak and Quill go from the control room to the corridor. Another break allowed for the fight between Jamie and Quill to be set up.
We have a couple of very brief clips from this episode, thanks to those Australian censors. Both involve the infected Robson - the shot of him attacking the guard on his door, and a glimpse of him in the helicopter cockpit with Victoria.
Apparently these were simply due to the sight of the latex fronds on his wrists, or emerging from his collar. It's very odd that these were found offensive, but not a woman walking into the sea (as though killing herself), people being dragged away by the tentacles of an unseen monster, or the final images of this instalment.
And for some reason the censor seemed not to mind close-ups of the weed on the arms of Oak and Quill in Episode 2, or on Maggie in Episode 3.
Yet another iconic image from this story is that sight of Robson standing in a sea of foam at the cliff-hanger. It's a really creepy sequence. No doubt quite a few kids (and the more sensitive adult viewers) had a few nightmares about it.
This is one of the reasons why this story remains so highly regarded - the frightening imagery and the gradual mood building. Bear in mind we haven't really encountered the monster properly yet, and it's already Episode 5. So far the foam has been the disquieting visual image, with the odd tentacle being waved. This instalment finally sees the weed begin to make itself felt.
(Of course, another reason it's so highly regarded is due to its status of being absent from the archives - one of those "lost classics").
One thing which will prove to be a disappointment is the handling of Mr Oak and Mr Quill, for we aren't going to see the sinister pair again. Quill has been overpowered, and Oak has simply run off.
In the draft script, Swan was seen to die after his fight with Jamie, after Victoria screamed.
This rather poor handling of the characters is no doubt down to the changes made by Sherwin, which Pemberton was so unhappy with.
A plotting point also irks somewhat - the business with the oxygen store. Everyone has just spoken about how oxygen might prove to be a weapon against the weed, and yet it takes ages before they decide it might be a good idea to place a guard on the store...
The Doctor also seems very slow in connecting the dots between the weed retreating and loud noise.
And it's taken an age to work out that the weed might be based out on the rigs. They began losing contact with them back in the first episode.
Trivia:- The ratings drop to below 6 million, but there is a reason. This was Easter weekend, when a lot of people might be out visiting or attending events. This will prove to be the lowest rated episode of the serial. The appreciation figure remains the same as the previous two weeks, however.
- Debbie Watling was interviewed during rehearsals this week for teen magazine Disc and Music Echo, and this was published on the day of recording.
- In an interview for Steve Cambden's book The Doctor's Effects, Peter Day told a more dramatic story about the filming on the fort. He claimed that the foam machine had to be abandoned due to three weeks solid of stormy weather, and was in a rusted state when finally retrieved by a trawler. He also claimed that the director never got the shot he wanted in the end, but we can see from a telesnap (above) that this was not the case.
- Visitors to the Museum of London: Docklands can view a rather nice model of a Maunsell Sea Fort - the collective name for these maritime WWII defence structures. They take that name from their designer, Guy Maunsell, and were constructed in both the Thames and Mersey estuaries. There were two main types - "Army" and "Navy". The Red Sands Fort is of the Army design, as is the model below. It also has seven platforms, with connecting walkways. Five of the structures had 40mm Bofors guns mounted on them, and their primary purpose was defence against German aircraft. (And yes, I took these photographs purely because of the Doctor Who connection).
- Red Sands Fort featured in another classic 1960's TV series - Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan. The episode was "Not So Jolly Roger", and it was broadcast in April 1966. The series filmed on the fort at the same time Brian Cullingford was helping to run pirate radio station Radio 390. The basic plot was that enemy agents were using a pirate radio station as a front for their espionage activities. Incidentally, another station manager for Radio 390 was a real ex-spy.
- Mike Raven also spent time running the station, during the period Cullingford was there. He's best known for a couple of horror movie roles, including a very low budget one featuring Louise Jameson. He's the surrogate Christopher Lee in Hammer's Lust for a Vampire, in which he suffered the indignity of being dubbed by Valentine Dyall, and a close-up of Lee's eyes (as Dracula) was used instead of his own. Nothing to do with Doctor Who, I just like Hammer Horror as well.
- Another appearance for the fort is in the 1975 music film Slade in Flame. The band are on the fort to promote their music when it is fired upon by rivals - something which happened in real life. Rivalry between pirate stations would lead to murder, which is when the government finally stepped in to shut them down.
- More up to date, the fort is seen as an MI6 base in Artemis Fowl (2020), and even features - in the background only - in one of the Hunger Games films (Hunger Games: Catching Fire).
- There is a feature on it on the DVD / Blu-ray release of Fury from the Deep.
