Synopsis:
The Doctor warns his friends not to touch the piece of seaweed they have found on the floor of the Harris' living quarters, pointing out that Victoria has said that it can move. He sends Harris back to the compound to arrange for Maggie to be transferred to its medical bay, then carefully collects up the seaweed - intending to take it to the TARDIS to examine it properly there.
As they leave, they fail to notice fronds of seaweed sprouting from the comatose Maggie's sleeve.
Van Lutyens informs Robson and the Chief Engineer that he is sure there is some living organism at the base of the impeller shaft, and it is this which is causing the blockages. Robson dismisses the idea and sticks to his own belief that it is a mechanical fault - even though they have all heard the heartbeat sound.
The TARDIS has drifted to shore. The seaweed sample has been taken into the Doctor's laboratory where Victoria is running some tests on a small piece of it - the rest being placed in a glass tank. They have discovered that it emits a toxic gas, and under the microscope see movement.
Harris learns from Price that their doctor still hasn't returned from D Rig, and communications are still down. Harris begins organising his wife's transfer to the medical bay, telling Van Lutyens and Robson that she has been poisoned by some form of gas. The latter is more concerned that Harris has lost their prisoners, whom he still believes to be saboteurs.
The impeller starts up again - only to stop moments later. Robson is becoming increasingly agitated by events and continues to ignore the Dutchman's advice to shut off the gas flow and conduct a thorough inspection. He accuses Harris and Van Lutyens of deliberately trying to damage his reputation.
He goes off to rest in his cabin for half an hour, and Van Lutyens lays out his plan for what they ought to do next - including locking down the compound and evacuating the rigs.
The Chief reluctantly agrees to approach Robson with their plan, hoping he will listen if they all present a united case.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor has found an old book which has an illustration of a ship being attacked by tentacles rising from the sea. It dates back to the 18th Century. Showing it to Victoria, she confirms that this resembles what she saw in the oxygen storeroom.
The main mass of seaweed they brought has been fed natural gas, and they suddenly discover that it has grown in size and is emitting toxic fumes. It threatens to climb out of its tank. Victoria screams and it retreats before the Doctor seals it in. He deduces that the creatures feed on natural gas, converting it to a toxic form.
Robson refuses to listen to Van Lutyens, Harris and the Chief, and they see that he is becoming increasingly unhinged. Van Lutyens approaches Price and asks him to contact his superiors in The Hague. He will ask them to put pressure on Robson's own superiors in London for action to be taken.
Mr Oak creeps along the corridor and locks Robson in his room, before operating the ventilation controls. Robson cries out for help as he smells the room begin to fill with gas.
Luckily Harris is nearby and he frees his boss - and spots seaweed tentacles and foam emerging from the vent just before he slams shut the door. Robson runs off.
The Doctor and his companions return to the Harris home and find it once again full of gas. The Doctor and Victoria go to the bedroom and find it full of foam, with a seaweed tentacle lashing around in its midst. Victoria screams and it retreats. They notice that the bed is empty, and assume that Maggie has been taken to the medical bay already.
They then hear a shout from Jamie, who had gone to the kitchen to check for the gas source. He has been forced to climb up onto a table as the room is filling up with foam. Another tentacle is reaching for him. The Doctor and Victoria mount an external set of stairs to the roof and open the kitchen skylight. They are able to pull Jamie to safety.
Harris takes Van Lutyens to Robson's room, but there is no trace now of gas or the creature responsible for it. The Dutchman still accepts his story, however.
He orders Harris to take charge and suggests Robson be found before he harms himself or causes any damage.
Harris notifies the Chief and Price that he is taking control, and instructs the latter to contact Megan Jones in London, British director of ESGO.
As they head back to the compound, Victoria expresses her disquiet about their lifestyle to the Doctor - how they are seemingly always being put in danger.
Harris announces that Jones will be here in a few hours, but worries how he is going to justify taking over. Robson was placed in charge here at Jones' insistence and she regards him highly.
The Doctor arrives and informs them of his findings regarding the seaweed creature. It is a parasite, which latches onto other organisms - including people - and produces the toxic gas as a means of defence.
Harris is then shocked to learn that his wife wasn't brought to the medical bay after all - and the Doctor tells him she wasn't at their home.
She is on the beach with Robson, her hands and face now covered in weed-like fronds. She confirms with him that he knows what he must do, before calmly walking out into the sea.
Robson watches silently from the shoreline, until she disappears beneath the waves...
Written by Victor Pemberton
Recorded: Saturday 9th March 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 30th March 1968
Ratings: 7.7 million / AI 56
VFX: Peter Day
Designer: Peter Kindred
Director: Hugh David
In the third of his scripts Victor Pemberton outlined the fact that seaweed was feeding on natural gas, which it then converted to a toxic form. Maggie was said to be transforming into a weed creature at the conclusion. Her infection was described as a "frond-like weed formation growing down her exposed arm", and later "a small formation of hair-like weed on her neck and face".
When the Doctor examined the weed sample in the TARDIS - "its tendrils hanging menacingly over the side of the edge of the tank, covered in foam" - he pressed a button and "the lights dimmed to near darkness as a flap on the wall reveals a projector screen. He presses another button and the microscope slide appears on the screen".
In his radio drama The Slide, the scientist Gomez (Roger Delgado) had examined some of the sentient mud in similar fashion using the local school's aquarium.
Derrick Sherwin rewrote a number of sequences including the rescue of Jamie from the kitchen, Robson's near breakdown in the impeller room, and Van Lutyens urging Harris to take charge.
This episode included more filming than the previous week.
On Tuesday 5th February the sequence was filmed at Botany Bay of Maggie (June Murphy) walking out into the sea, watched by Robson (Victor Maddern) which would form the cliff-hanger to the episode. Murphy, wearing latex seaweed make-up, did not realise that the shallows were so extensive and so had to go quite a way out into the freezing waters. She eventually had to go down on her knees and duck down under the water to fully submerge. She was then unable to hear the crew calling the end of the action, and someone had to wade out and fetch her.
Later that week filming moved to Ealing and the scene with the foam retreating from Victoria's scream at the Harris home was recorded - the film being reversed to show it withdrawing.
Use of the BBC foam machine in the TV studio would be difficult to manage (and dangerous, as the foam was water-based) so any scene involving it was mounted at Ealing where conditions could be better controlled. This included the sequence where Jamie is threatened by the foam in the Harris' kitchen, and his rescue by the Doctor and Victoria through the skylight. Putting ceilings on sets was a problem in studio as well, due to the need to light sets from overhead rigs and get microphones into position.
During the period of rehearsals for this instalment, additional filming took place at Ealing on Monday 4th - Wednesday 6th March for scenes which would go towards the climax to the final episode.
Doctor Who's 200th episode went into studio on the evening of Saturday 9th March. The session began with a re-enactment of the ending to the previous instalment, but then the episode proceeded with recording out of order. All of the scenes in the Harris' living quarters were recorded first.
The weed emerging from the vent in Robson's cabin as seen by Harris had been filmed earlier at Ealing along with the similar shot seen at the cliff-hanger to part one.
A new set this week was the TARDIS laboratory, seen for the first time. This was simply a small set with a television monitor on which the microscope slide could be shown - actually the same footage which had represented the fungus in The Web of Fear - plus a fish tank in which the latex weed prop could be held. Sherwin had reworked this scene just before recording.
Shortly after completing this episode Patrick Troughton accompanied Frazer Hines and Debbie Watling to a pub and told them about his wish to leave the series. However, he needed the regular income due to having two families to support, plus a large tax bill to pay. He already knew that Watling was leaving, and learned that Hines was also looking to go soon. Troughton then decided that he would stay in the role for one more year, by which time he would be financially stable. With his contract up for renewal that week, he asked for some better conditions such as an extra week for filming, to avoid giving up days off, and hopefully a reduction in the number of episodes each year. These were some of the things he had previously discussed with director Barry Letts during the making of The Enemy of the World.
In the end he would be granted an extra week's holiday, and be excused location filming on two of the stories planned for Season 6.
Another famous scene from the story, noted for its creepiness, is when Maggie Harris calmly walks out into the sea as Robson watches from the beach. It's certainly a striking image and the viewers of the day would have assumed that Maggie might be committing suicide. You'll recall last time that the script had been amended to ensure that the audience knew that she wasn't killed by the toxic gas - for fear they would assume she was some sort of zombie in this episode.
Considering that they cut one short scene where you saw the seaweed fronds on someone's arm later in the story, I'm surprised that the Australian censors did not eliminate this sequence, or at least trim it down a bit.
The suggestion in the dialogue is that the creature isn't actually the seaweed itself - Victoria talks of microscopic things wriggling on its surface - and the Doctor claims he hasn't worked out the relationship between the creature and the weed yet. This implies that the real threat comprises millions of tiny organisms which simply use the seaweed as a host and manipulate it.
It is unusual at this time to feature a TARDIS scene in the middle of a story. Some recent stories such as The Ice Warriors and The Web of Fear didn't have a TARDIS interior scene at all, whilst the console room only featured at the beginning of The Abominable Snowmen, or at the conclusion of The Enemy of the World. In the first Yeti story, the Doctor does return to the TARDIS mid-story to fetch some equipment, but there wasn't an interior scene accompanying this. Usually, if the TARDIS interior is going to appear, it is only at the start of the opening instalment, designed to introduce viewers to the new storyline and deliver the regulars to their latest destination.
The reason for this is generally the desire not to have to erect the TARDIS console room set for an episode, freeing up studio space for that week's sets.
This week we are actually being treated to a brand new room in the TARDIS - the Doctor's laboratory. The only time we had seen anything similar was in The Web Planet, when an alcove off the main console room seemed to be used as a work area for the Doctor.
As mentioned previously, one of the main rewrites Sherwin carried out on Pemberton's story was to pave the way for Victoria's departure. In the opening episode she was unhappy at having to go and wait in the crew cabin whilst the Doctor and Jamie went off investigating - leading to her coming under attack by the weed creature.
In this instalment she begins to voice her desire for a quieter life:
Victoria: "Doctor, why is it that we always land up in trouble?"
Doctor: "Well Victoria, it's the spice of life, my dear".
Victoria: "Oh well, I'm not so sure. I don't really like being scared out of my wits every second".
Doctor: "Is something wrong?"
Victoria: "Well I just wish that once... Oh, never mind".
- The ratings continue their gradual slide - but the appreciation figure actually improves.
- In interviews Frazer Hines would always claim that his reason for leaving was due to pressure from his agent to return to higher profile - and more lucrative - movie work. He had appeared in films as a child actor - including Hammer's X... The Unknown (1956) and A King In New York (1957), starring Charlie Chaplin.
- Watling, on the other hand, hoped to do more theatre work - though her agent stated that they were working on a film role for her.
- The animated Episode 3 includes a little visual in-joke. In the Doctor's laboratory is a test tube labelled RR-200 - "RR" being the production code for Fury From The Deep and this being the 200th episode.
