Fury From The Deep (animated) - Review

Monday sees the release on DVD / Blu-ray of the lost Troughton story Fury From The Deep, in animated form.
It comes in both colour and B&W versions, and it was the B&W version, on Disc 1, which I opted to watch last night. This was partly for aesthetic reasons, as the story was made in B&W, and intended to be seen in B&W, but for practical reasons as well - as Disc 1 is also where you find all the surviving material from the story. The colour version is on Disc 2, whose extras relate to the animation only. Disc 3 sees the making-of documentary, archive interviews with writer and VFX personnel, and the radio drama The Slide, which was this story's ancestor. More on these shortly.
Fury From The Deep is a story which I have long hoped would be animated, as it is one of the story's I know least. For some reason, the audio soundtrack was always either unavailable on Amazon, or listed at an extortionate price, so I never bought it. I tried to watch a reconstruction on YouTube, but certain sections of some episodes were missing.
I have got the complete set of telesnaps, and have read detailed synopses, so it wasn't a complete unknown.
A couple of criticisms of the animation have to be made. I find it odd that people can take such great care over facial likenesses, and yet pay little attention to limbs. Most of the characters in this animation have bizarrely long arms. Character movement isn't terribly well done either. For some reason the Doctor likes to spend a lot of time with his arms crossed, or on his hips - something Troughton rarely did. The likeness of Frazer Hines is rather poor, and Van Lutyens reminds you constantly of the Frankenstein Monster, as played by Boris Karloff, with his flat head and elongated arms.
One likeness which is very good is Robson's, as anyone familiar with Victor Maddern's work will recognise.
We also have the return of the Delgado-Master 'Wanted' poster, which first featured as a background joke in the The Faceless Ones animation. Unfortunately here it is in a rather prominent position in the Impeller Room, and there's a scene at the end of Part Two with two characters talking, with the poster annoyingly distracting in between them.
If you want an animation which reflects closely what you would have seen on TV at the time, then you are okay up to the cliffhanger of Part Five. Huge liberties are then taken with the seaweed creatures in Part Six. Part Five, on screen, ended with the Doctor and Jamie confronting Robson, who is alone in a mass of foam. Here, he is surrounded by other characters who have been taken over, and he is covered in writhing seaweed tentacles, which sprout from his body. It looks great - but has nothing to do with the broadcast programme. When the helicopter escapes from the sea fort, massive seaweed tentacles try to capture it - tentacles 100 feet long. On screen, the Doctor simply flew around the fort trying to get the hang of the controls. One of the possessed in the cliffhanger is Van Lutyens, who never featured after Part Four in the broadcast version. He's there at the very end of the story as well in the animation.
Overall, it is actually well done for the most part. I'll give the colour version a go on my next viewing. This was Debbie Watling's final story, and Victoria's departure has only really been set up here. At least they provide a lengthy coda, after the weed has been defeated, to give her a proper send-off.
As mentioned, Disc 1 contains the surviving material. This is in three forms - censor clips, film trims, and behind the scenes material from the Ealing filming for the conclusion (which is in colour). The whole sequence of the defeat of the weed is recreated using these elements.
Disc 2 is the colour version, as mentioned, with featurettes on the animation's creation. I haven't got round to watching these yet, so can't comment.
Disc 3 has a very good documentary, filmed on location at Botany Bay, near Margate, where the beach scenes were originally filmed. There is also a trip out to Red Sands Sea Fort by Michael E Briant (PA on this, and future director of several classic Doctor Who stories), Frazer Hines, and the helicopter pilot "Mad" Mike Smith. Unfortunately Hines is unable to manage the ladder up to the fort, but the older Mike, who walks with a stick, does make it. Back on dry land we get Margot Hayhoe (AFM), and actors Jane Murphy (Maggie Harris) and her husband Brian Cullingford (Perkins). The latter pair met on the show. Documentaries are so much better these days than the old "talking heads" ones. Hopefully the Blu-ray box-sets will see new documentaries in this more visually interesting style.
There are archive interviews with the late Victor Pemberton (the writer), whose memory of the rewrites either escapes him, or he just didn't want to admit defeat, and with Peter Day, the VFX man on this production.
Last, but by no means least, we get all 7 episodes of the 1966 BBC radio drama The Slide, which was written by Pemberton. This was originally proposed for Doctor Who in 1964, but rejected. It stars two future Time Lords - Maurice Denham and Roger Delgado. The plot has some links with Fury From The Deep, with a malevolent substance bubbling up from the depths, with the power to take over people's minds, and the efforts of the scientist heroes hampered by an obnoxious authority figure.
This was repeated only a few weeks ago on BBC Radio 4X, but I'm glad it's here on this release as when I tried to record it earlier the endings to most of the episodes were cut off. Radio 4X have form in this area.
As things stand, we now have no future releases confirmed. I'm hoping that the next Complete Season Box-set will be announced very soon. We all need something  to look forward to.