Fury From the Deep: Sonic’s first adventure …

Doctor Who’s handy sonic screwdriver, that is!

It’s hard to believe the Doctor’s favorite accessory goes all the way back to 1968’s “Fury From the Deep” (the science fiction series itself first premiered nearly five years earlier, in 1963).

Perhaps made most popular by Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor before getting destroyed during Peter Davison’s run as the Fifth, and making a comeback with Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh until it became an even bigger part of Doctor Who after the 2005 relaunch, the sonic screwdriver doesn’t look like much in the Second Doctor serial “Fury From the Deep,” made available to watch in full for the first time this year at last …

And while this is the sonic screwdriver’s first adventure, for another of the Doctor’s companions it actually is the last …

If you weren’t able to catch “Fury From the Deep” on BBC America March 21, and don’t have access to the AMC+ streaming service, a DVD and Blu-ray release of this animated restoration is also available.

This sixth serial of the fifth season of Doctor Who was first broadcast in six weekly parts from March to April 1968. No full episodes of this story exist within the BBC archives, and only snippets of footage and still images are still around to represent the story. However, off-air recordings of the soundtrack do exist, making the animation of a complete serial possible once again.

Missing from the BBC Archives, this animated version of the 1968 classic sees the TARDIS land on the surface of the sea, just off the coast of England. The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton, The Omen), along with his companions, Jamie (Frazer Hines, Two Days in the Smoke) and Victoria (Deborah Watling, The Invisible Man) use a rubber dinghy to get ashore, where they are shot with tranquilizer darts and taken prisoner by security guards as they have arrived in the restricted area of a gas refinery.

At the refinery base, run by a man named Robson (Victor Maddern, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), the Doctor learns that there have been a number of unexplained problems with the pressure in the feed pipes from the offshore drilling rigs. It is later revealed that one of the rigs has sucked up a parasitic form of seaweed, which is capable of releasing poisonous gas or a strange kind of foam that allows it to take control of the minds of those it touches.

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All of time and space …