Settings: Euro Sea Gas Refinery (Fury from the Deep)

Another fifth-season story, another base under siege and, indeed, the fifth story in a row to be set on Earth. As with The Faceless Ones, it takes something that was “modern” but not cutting-edge at the time and builds everything around that. And, as with that one, the resulting setting comes across as rather mundane and perhaps more so to modern eyes than it did then.

The last serial to be missing entirely in its original form, it has been fully animated, which may have rehabilitated it in the eyes of some fans. Even so, it’s generally regarded as middling today, not one of the greats, perhaps best known for featuring both a companion departure and the debut of the sonic screwdriver. But let’s see what we can do with the exciting world of the British gas supply industry…

Where & When

The story is set in and around a refinery somewhere on the east coast of England and in the accompanying gas field in the North Sea. Although there are several indications that it’s the near future, no specific date is given. However, a later straight-to-video fan production gave the date of this story as 1975, and this is widely accepted as accurate today.

Settings: London Underground (The Web of Fear)

We’re back to a base-under-siege format with The Web of Fear, albeit the base is a real-world place in the middle of London. The story is at least as well-known for introducing Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart as it is for its main plot, and this may contribute to its very high favourability with older fans. Even those who started on the modern show, however, still tend to regard this as above-average. From a gaming perspective, there is also something fitting about a story that features a lot of wandering about in subterranean tunnels…

Where & When

The story is near-contemporary, although exactly how near is ambiguous; Travers implies that it’s the mid 1970s, while every other indication places it no more than a year into the future, in early 1969. It takes place in London, almost entirely within the tunnels and stations of the Underground train system.