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Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils by Ella Road and Chris Chibnall (TV review).

It feels like a slow countdown to the next regeneration but this story is the one from last for the Jodi Whittaker incarnation of the Doctor. Bringing in the Sea Devils is something that is long overdue. Considering the Silurians were land-dwellers and the Sea Devils had the oceans, you do have to wonder why there were no sentient denizens of the air from that era.

OK, into this story, noting that Chris Chibnall has finally got a co-writer in Ella Road and the Doctor is kept in the centre of the story throughout, so something must have happened in the plotting.

The Doctor (actress Jodi Whittaker) is taking Yaz (actress Mandip Gill) and Dan Lewis (actor John Bishop) for a seaside holiday in modern times but is side-stepped by a magnetic force to 1807 and a Chinese village and an encounter with Sea Devils. They discover that they are seeking the keystone as part of the missing treasure of the lost ship captained by Ji-Hun (actor Arthur Lee).

Dan joins up with Ying Ki (actor Marlowe Chan-Reeves) who needs to retrieve an artefact stolen by Madame Ching (actress Crystal Yu) from her galleon and they swim out. Alas they get captured but eventually become her crew.

Not knowing where Dan has gone, the Doctor and Yaz travel back in time to 1533 to see what happened to Ji-Hun’s ship and finds he was in collusion with the leader Sea Devil but are forced to flee forward back to 1807. They also discover that the Sea Devils have refitted that galleon for flight and use it in pursuit seeking the keystone. They again escape to Madame Ching’s galleon and there everything is mostly spoiler.

What else can I say. The Sea Devils do look superb and a match to the originals. The science is more questionable. The Earth frequently has a change in its poles, so any damage would actually be minimal. Compasses would still point the same way simply because they are attracted to whatever is at the ‘north pole’. It’s only us that names the poles.

The hint of a possible romance between the Doctor and Yaz is covered this time and misses the point that her regenerations don’t last forever or she would out-live Yaz as being powerful motivations not to do it. Shame the show is aimed at a family audience or the Doctor, being an alien, could also admit she might still have a willie. I mean, who knows what is going on under her clothes. Speaking of which, they are all dressed in period costume although Dan has been lumbered by Yaz in a pantomime pirate costume. It’s rather quaint but in the past, the mixture of Doctor to male/female companions, especially in the Davison era, was to ensure no hanky-panky went on aboard the TARDIS, now its Dan who acts as gooseberry.

Back to the plot. The use of a giant sea creature is probably the most superfluous and doesn’t really move the plot along and is probably the biggest weakness. How the lead Sea Devil can be imprisoned as a giant statue and not the right size is odd. A missed opportunity to make a connection to the Weeping Angels.

There is still a matter of whatever disaster happens in anything pre-1960s with the arrival of the Hartnell regeneration on Earth, that unless it creates alternative realities, then its bound to be resolved, if not by the Time Lord by others, to ensure future reality continues. That is something that really needs to be addressed in the series at some point.

Objectively, as a reviewer I’m supposed to be putting my critical eye over the story. It really is a lot better than recent stories, simply because the Doctor is now back in the centre of the action and given a lot more to do which makes it all for the better. I think I cringed a lot less with this story.

GF Willmetts

17 April 2022

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

2 thoughts on “Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils by Ella Road and Chris Chibnall (TV review).

  • You make some good points about not promoting Doctor/human Companion relations.

    I felt the Sea Devils were much improved over the oroginals, though I rather missed the samurai-inspired elements from Warriors of the Deep! Surely, if there were flying sentient reptiles they’d be less likely to escape notice than the aquatic Sea Devils and hibernating Silurians? Perhaps they may yet appear in some future story, having hidden from the Moon threat in some as yet undiscovered refuge(s). I certainly didn’t miss the Myrka – the whatever the water creature was was a great improvement.

    Story? Usual bus-sized plot holes but the largely hectic pace pulled us along.

    Reply
    • Hello Julian
      Presumably if there was a sentient flying veersionm they would have slept through the ice age as well. Like the other two, they could quite easily have overslept.

      Geoff

      Reply

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