Legend of the Sea Devils

[Craig @craig Emperor]

In a swashbuckling adventure set in the 19th century, the Doctor, Yaz and Dan come face to fin with one of the Doctor’s oldest adversaries, the Sea Devils. Why has legendary (and real-life) Chinese pirate queen Madam Ching come searching for a lost treasure? What terrifying forces lurk beneath the oceans?

This is written by Chibnall and Ella Road. Road is a British screenwriter, playwright and actor. She is best known for her stage-play The Phlebotomist, a work of science-fiction exploring questions around genetic ethics. In 2019 The Phlebotomist received an Olivier Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre

It’s directd by Haolu Wang, a Chinese writer-director based in the UK. Her work supposedly explores the psychological and emotional landscapes of humans in crisis, often blurring the line between reality and imagination.

So all that sounds promising.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

OK, on the one hand, I really liked it. It was a swashbuckling adventure, that looked really great, and all the actors worked. On the other hand, (and I tend to think of this as a Chibnall issue) why does everyone, but mainly the Doctor, have to be constantly explaining what has either happened, or is about to happen? The last time I saw the Sea Devils was with the Pertwee Doctor, and he didn’t have to tell me what had happened…it just happened!

In terms of the love life of the companions (and the implications for the final special), the scene with Yaz was fine (although I don’t know how she is going to cope with the loss of the Doctor) but it was optimistic that Dan made contact with Diane again.

Was it strangely silly that the Sea Devils had developed technology to have flying 18th century ships? Well probably, but it did look cool!

But you have to watch the teaser for the final Jodie special at the end of the episode, with the return of…???

[toinfinityandbepond @toinfinityandbepond]

Is Chibbers really going to pull the old “Regenerate your gays” trope?

[retiring who fan @obkenob]

Was looking forward to this one, and in fairness, found the suggested discussion re relationship ie “I fancy you to” and Dear Doctor becomes gay, quite convincing , nice  acting . Nothing against gay, I have gay friends.  And largely as far as I can tell, the vast majority of gays are kind and thoughtful , and very nice people. However  WTF has this to do with this sort of fantasy fiction.  Yet another   BBC lecture for us,  Look gays are normal, Look gays are every where.  And therefor must be included.  In everthing?….I am fed up to the back teeth , with listening to and watching this totally abnormal obsession with sexuality, in pretty much every episode, that’s been shown since Jodie came on board. Fed up > REtired FAn. Ken.

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Is it me or is this another case of Chibbers almost giving us a good episode then missing the mark.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Has everyone deserted the site? Where is @jimthefish ? Where is @bluesqueakpip ?

 

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Apologies, fellow veteran. Just haven’t got around to watching it yet (like much of the rest of the population if the viewing figures are to be believed). Such is the ennui of the Chibs era. Plan to watch later today/early tomoz and will post my thoughts soonest.

Have seen the Next Time trailer though and have to say that the big ‘reveal’ has left me feeling rather ‘meh’. Neither were particular favourites of mine (and this was very much my era) but this is probably a convo to be continued in Spoilers…

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

OK, so I’ve finally got around to watching it and, um, let’s just say I didn’t love it. Flux might have had its problems but I ultimately found it a pretty enjoyable step up from the rest of Chibs’s run but we were here right back to the bad old days of s11. It felt like all of Chib’s worst foibles were on display. The supporting characters were beyond two-dimensional and the fact that they were real, historical figures was somehow supposed to make up for that. The narrative pacing was halting and illogical and as with the worst of Chibs’s oeuvre felt more like a sequence of Big, Cool Things Happening with the bare minimum of connective tissue to join them together. And Jodie was back to bordering on non-Doctorly behaviour in a) rather nonchalantly leaving Dan to his own devices and b) being rather sanguine about letting Ying Wai sacrifice himself at the end. And Dan was criminally wasted, reduced to such blundering ineffectuality that for a moment I thought that Graham was back.

But there were compensations. As ever, it looked gorgeous and the Sea Devils looked great. (With these, the Sontarans and the Cybermen his era has done really well in modern reimagining of BG monsters, tho the less said about the Daleks the better). And the Thasmin stuff was nicely handled. (Side note, I don’t see how this is any more ‘lecturing’ or ‘political’ than the Rose, Amy or River relationships with the Doctor. And I like the relaxed and enlightened attitude to sexuality with which it portrays the Doc. My only problem is that once again we got a character telling us (rather than showing us) how great and exceptional Yaz is. I haven’t really seen much evidence of Yaz’s specialness at all. To me, she’s always been the ‘at least she’s not quite as boring as Graham or Ryan’ one. Bill had more ‘hero’ moments in one series than Yaz has had in three.

As for the Next Time trailer, it looks kinda promising. I hope it ties up the whole Timeless Child thing in a neat bow though. The faces that Chibs seems to be bringing back are interesting and if we’re seeing these in the trailer, I wonder if he’s got others up his sleeve. But personally, neither has been a particular favourite of mine and there are a great many other BG figures I’d rather see before them.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@jimthefish Yeah, I can see where you are coming from, and it was a slight episode. But, for me, it was still a fun (albeit) slight episode. Regarding the Doctor telling Yaz how great she was, this was someone trying to break bad news to someone she cared for. Should she have said that on a sliding scale of truly great figures from human history that she had met that Yaz was way down the list? Of course not. The Doctor was trying to break the news to Yaz with some consideration.

My main criticism off the show was that it was so slight, even if fun. In the original series  it was the type of episode that Troughton or Pertwee would have done between one week and the next. But in the Chibnall years (the long, long, slow years), it was all we were offered after a 6 month wait.

So…November until the finale, and then a full year (!!) until RTD re-invents it.

Before I sign off, a shout-out to the brilliant emperor @craig, for keeping the site going as enthusiasm has declined.

But I know there are people out there who are still waiting for the opportunity to see the episode (yes, I too, remember living in  Australia), and it will be great to hear from all of you.

 

[nerys @nerys]

I’m with @jimthefish. For me this was an underwhelming episode. It carried the “flash and action, but thin on substance” story style that has plagued much of Chris Chibnall’s run on Doctor Who.

And the CGI? Don’t get me started. I felt like we were back in the Tennant era, which had its share of dodgy special effects.

This was a disappointing relapse after what I felt was a marvelous return to form with “Eve of the Daleks” (which hubby and I plan to rewatch tonight).

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Hmmm that was the word I was looking for when I posted my initial response to the episode “underwhelming” Chibbers seems to have epitomised that feeling in the main.

 

[nerys @nerys]

I should add that not all of the CGI and special effects looked awful. The Sea Devils and the huge sea serpent all looked great. But it was the background scene images, specifically especially those showing the ship in the harbor, that looked so amateurish they took me out of the moment. My husband was walking by and laughed at one. Not a good sign.

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

I think the main problem with these specials there seems to be no link between them. The New year special appeared to be a fairly good start , but The Legend of the Sea Devils has been a bit of a “meh” episode themeticly. At least with Tennants  final year of specials there was the Timelord Victorious theme. Chibbers had a perfect theme he could have carried through from the end of Flux with what I am calling the Spirit of Time telling the Doctor her time was ending and he could have explored this which in part it looked like he was doing. To be honest I think it would have been better if the baton had been passed back to RTD for Jodies final/regeneration episode because in part I  have a feeling that Chibbers has in part been purposely steering the Who franchise to its demise.

[nerys @nerys]

@devilishrobby To be honest I think it would have been better if the baton had been passed back to RTD for Jodies final/regeneration episode because in part I have a feeling that Chibbers has in part been purposely steering the Who franchise to its demise.

Interesting, I never contemplated that it could be deliberate. I’ve always felt he just wasn’t up to the task … and perhaps no one would have been, following in Steven Moffat’s footsteps. Chibnall had this one Big Idea (the Timeless Child) and built an entire season around it, with the aim of rewriting the Doctor’s origin story. While I commend him for at least having the idea, the execution of it (especially having the Master tell the Doctor about it, rather than showing us) robbed it of its emotional intensity. There was no payback for the audience in that revelation.

The Flux was another Big Idea, but at least it offered us a more customary story arc, not one that tried to rewrite Doctor Who history. The sad thing is that last season seemed to be building up rather nicely … only to fall flat in the finale.

Then we got the delightful “Eve of the Daleks” New Year’s Eve special, and I felt hope that at least Jodie’s departure was being handled with care. That episode made me care what happened to the characters. It was tightly written with wit and all the elements I’ve come to expect from Doctor Who. (I wonder if having the episode set in one location made a difference.) Even the fact that it fell back to using the old, reliable Daleks did not detract. They were just menacing enough to create suspense … yet they were funny.

And then we got this episode, which had little offer in the way of convincing character development. Yes, we got the Doctor’s “sorry, Yasmin” speech, but somehow it just didn’t carry the emotional weight I have felt between the Doctor and other companions whose emotions got the better of them.

Reading the synopsis by @craig up top, you’d think “Legend of the Sea Devils” couldn’t miss. Yet it did.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@devilishrobby, @nerys, An interesting thought, but I can’t really cast Chibnall as quite that Machiavellian.  As I watched the shows slowly (ever so slowly) turn up months apart I felt that there might have been a more promising three years of stories if COVID had not reared its ugly head. So, on the one hand, Chibnall was unlucky. But on the other hand, I always felt that his ideas were undercooked. His first season seemed to only have the idea of not using traditional monsters. That’s really not much of a unifying theme to set his tenure apart (and he realised he had to abandon that anyway. Rather, we had a soap opera theme of “the fam”, which, if I am honest, I hated. Then there was “the timeless child”. But he really did not make much of it. It seemed to be more hints that a carefully constructed narrative arc (compare it to how Moffat used Amy’s story in his first season). And when the Timeless Child trope did not really go anywhere, he cooks up the Flux. And frankly, that didn’t really go anywhere. And with his last year he has no theme, just Daleks and Sea Devils. Ultimately, I think I would compare the Chibnall years to the John Nathan Turner years. They had both become a sad parody of the glory days of Who. Now we have to wait till November 2023 to see if the show can recapture some of the wonder with the return of RTD.

 

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave     That is such a long time to wait!  I almost feel a sense of panic when I think of it. I wish they could speed it up, I am not getting any younger. Why does it take soooooo long?

Oops, even I hear the whine.

I can seriously say, thank the Tardis for all the episodes of old and new Who that are neatly stored on DVDs and my computer because they will have to keep me happy while I wait. Did I mention I hate waiting?

I am currently waiting to watch Legend of the Sea Devils and I will comment then,

Stay safe.

[nerys @nerys]

@blenkinsopthebrave Very well put. I agree with your analysis of Chibnall’s run. Given the problems Covid created, why not go small, with small casts playing intimate stories set in singular locations? Instead, we got these grand ideas, often with lots of CGI and seemingly wide-ranging locations (many of which were sets), but little in the way of making me care what happened. Lots of telling me, but little showing me why I should care. Your comparison of this with how Moffat wrote Amy’s story in Matt Smith’s first season is revealing. I never stopped caring about what happened with Amy and the Doctor. But sadly, I stopped caring, for the most part, about this Doctor and her “fam” (yeah, not really a fan, either).

That’s not true for all of Chibnall’s episodes. “Eve of the Daleks” is one outstanding exception. Why couldn’t they all have been like that? I don’t think Covid gets all the blame here.

@winston I don’t have the hardware, but I do have the option of Crave.TV in my on-demand streaming service, which has all of the post-gap Doctor Who episodes. Now, if only I can find the time to view them!

[janetteB @janetteb]

@blenkinsopthebrave  I think that sums up the problems quite well. I wanted to like this Doctor and the companions but they never really were fully there as characters. Graeme became annoying, and the Doctor always seemed too dependent upon the companions to really fly on his/her own. There was as @nerys points out, too much “telling”, not enough showing. Even my favourite episodes from series 11 and 12 were mediocre to good. Via Diadati for instance, which is perhaps my favourite and the one set in Norway which I really enjoyed up until the end with the frog and the dubious explanation. (It might just be because it is set in Norway that I like that one so much.)

There were some good episodes in series 11. I liked the set up of the Timeless child story line though I have not watched the final of that, mostly because I was rather upset by the destruction of Gallifrey. I felt that trampled on the lore established my Moffat who restored Gallifrey with RTD’s blessing.  I doubt that Chibnell asked RTD and Moffat how they felt about him destroying Gallifrey again. I don’t mind if the stories are not fantastic, I don’t mind if the showrunner introduces new concepts like the Timeless child, provided it is well done, but I do object to the showrunner ignoring what had previously been written and destroying potential for future showruners. (which is why Moffat persuaded RTD to let Jenni live.) I might be wrong but I thought that Gallifrey was still about albiet not in a healthy state at the end of the universe.

Whew. that was a bit of a rant. Sorry..

I agree that it would have been nice for RTD to have written some stories for Whitaker and Yaz. (or even better a Moffat penned story because I feel that both actors deserved better scripts.)

Cheers

Janette

[nerys @nerys]

@janetteb There were some good episodes in series 11. I liked the set up of the Timeless child story line though I have not watched the final of that, mostly because I was rather upset by the destruction of Gallifrey. I felt that trampled on the lore established my Moffat who restored Gallifrey with RTD’s blessing.

There’s still some part of me that wonders (hopes) that maybe the Master was gaslighting the Doctor over that. Was it ever established that this actually happened? I think it was … but that shows you how poor my memory of these past few seasons is. Nothing stands out in my mind enough to make me remember it. That happened plenty of times during the RTD and Moffat eras, but it’s more the details I lose. I remember the broad strokes. With Chibnall’s era, I barely remember that.

The Chibnall episodes I like most are those set in historical periods, like “Rosa” and “Demons of the Punjab” (which was an especially good Yaz episode from Season 11), and then “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror” from Season 12.

Season 13 seemed to be building up nicely, right on up through the “Village of the Angels” episode. Yes, it was a sort of “greatest hits” package, but I still felt forward momentum, like we were headed toward a true climax. And then the last two episodes dispelled that notion. We got smoke and mirrors, not a satisfying resolution to the mystery I thought was unfolding.

Chibnall has showed enough moments of possibility that I kept hoping, only to be disappointed in the long run. I wish I didn’t feel that way … but I do. So I look forward to RTD’s return!

[Whisht @whisht]

Hi all,
Bad me – I wrote this and dithered and then a new Doctor was announced.
That’ll learn me! 😀

… anyway, this is what I wrote a few days ago that has nothing to do with the great new casting…

Lots of new people since last i was here which is really great.
Sorry I’ve been missing for a while.
I’ll probably do a bit of name checking but its great to hear new voices/ opinions.
(and forgive me for posting dumb music on another thread)
;¬)

[deep breath]
{wish this episode was as good}

I really didn’t like this episode.
ah well.
I can only repeat @blenkinsopthebrave ‘s dislike of Chibnall’s habit of characters explaining things.
Though I personally find it useful as I don’t follow *why* the character has done something or somethig has happened in his episodes.

@jimthefish ‘s comments I also agree with in terms of flimsy support characters, non-Doctorly behaviour/ethics (she fights with a sword?? not a spoon??!??) and how with the character of Yaz we’ve been told she’s amazingyet unlike Bill we’ve not seen her BE amazing(at least not enough).

I couldn’t figure out why the Sea Devil was doing what it was… just … ‘because’? Just “we want to take over/ we hate land lubbers”? oh well, ok.

Pirate – her motivation was more than just beinga pirate (yay!) but at the end, she was softened into … what? Surrogate mum*? and no mention of her kids as being released with help of this treasure?

Maybe the idle sifting of baubles and gold was the whole “the real treasure is people” but… ah well.
*that lad quickly forgave her it seems.

My last gripe was that what I think was meant to be a rolling ‘as if on water’ camera actually felt I was in the middle of an earthquake. It juddered it didn’t roll.

18 months is a long time to wait, but I’m not sure I’d bother watching another series of this.

{sigh}

ah well, over to the Music Thread…

[winston @winston]

I finally got to watch this episode and I have to admit that  I fell asleep watching an episode for the first time, ever. I just lost interest and dozed off for a few minutes. I did wake up and watch what I missed but other than a few scenes it was hum drum.

The interaction between Dan and Yaz  was amusing and the sea monster was cool and there was some swashbuckling and funny banter mixed up with a bunch of stuff. I am hoping that a second viewing while I am wide awake will help but right now all I can say about it is “Meh”.

The most exciting part was the preview of the next episode.

Stay sane

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Oh dear, no sooner have we got a good pair of companions than we make them look like idiots – Dan for dressing like a pantomime pirate and Yaz for encouraging him. This is a let-down after Eve of the Daleks.

And it’s Legend of the Black Spot again I’m afraid. Dr Who really should learn not to do 19th-century pirate stories. The pirate ship looks as unconvincing as the chatty Sea Devil.

So Dan just casually wanders off with some random dude obsessed with revenge (though I’ve seen more emotion from a Dalek) to swim out and board a pirate ship. And the Doctor and Yaz wander off in the opposite direction. Is it just me or is the writing getting a bit loose? And the purpose of the Doctor’s excursion is to find information on some treasure to bargain with Madame Ching the Pirate Queen for – what? This is getting completely unscrewed.

How Madam Ching managed to sail her ship single-handed while tying Dan and Revenge Dude up and dangling them from a convenient yardarm is – not explained.

And it seems Yaz has caught the Doctor’s annoying habit of explaining at length what we can perfectly well see for ourselves, because they’re both at it now. But I had to cheer at “No ship, Sherlock.”

The Doctor and Yaz and anyone else they swept along with them seemed to be able to jump from ship to ship with casual abandon.

There was an awful lot of jargon (as always with this Doctor), and much of the technicalities appeared to be ad hoc and didn’t make a lot of sense. The Sea Devils were pretty naff monsters. Also spectacularly useless in a sword fight. And Dan killing four Sea Devils in a row – that surprised me. The Doctor would surely have nagged him for that.

The – relationship – between Yaz and the Doctor was quite well handled, I thought.

I thought the actress who played Madame Ching was good, she deserved better lines.

Overall, the script could have used a lot of tightening up – too many loose ends and improbabilities. As a standalone episode there should have been time to fix some of that before shooting.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

The above were my impressions scribbled down watching the ep. Reading through the comments it seems I was roughly in line with the general consensus. I didn’t hate the ep, it didn’t annoy me like, say, Kill the Moon or… well, actually, KTM is the only Moff ep that I actively disliked, possibly because I was invested in the characters. With this crew my expectations are lower. So maybe this ep rates around In The Forest of the Night level.

That said, the cast were all fine, I thought Yaz and the Doctor acted their relationship stuff well, when they weren’t being sabotaged by explain-the-plot-itis. Which was contagious because Madam Ching and the Sea Devil had spasms of explaining the bleeding obvious too. The actors – Dan and Madam Ching, even Revenge Dude – were sympathetic characters I could have got to like if the script had been a little less disjointed.

And while I’m whingeing, the Doctor could have done with a bit less of obvious made-up-on-the-spot technobabble. Every alien gadget or strange phenomenon, the Doctor knows instantly what it’s called and how it works. Jargon we’ve never heard before and know that, mercifully, we never will again. Kinetic hyper-curve, exo-toxic poisoning, orbital electron stripping – none of these actually mean anything.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

I see I was quite critical of this episode when I previously viewed it. I guess I was in the wrong frame of mind.

This time around, expectations were lower, and I wasn’t expecting a precisely constructed plot. Just switching off my critical streak and going with the flow, I found it a passable episode. Nice mystic atmosphere, and the music helps enormously.

The Sea Devil is a bit rubber-monster, but I’ve seen worse, and there’s a bit too much exposition by all concerned.

I did like the pirate queen, she looked a very determined and resourceful character.

There were all sorts of minor impossibilities, like when Yaz and Dan hoisted the Sea Devil up in a net – what was the net suspended from? Or, how did the pirate queen manage to hang Dan and Ying Ki up by the ankles when she’s alone and armed with a sword? But I can overlook those for the sake of the story.

Very much stolen from James Bond 007, the way the master-villain Sea Devil gives the Doc and Yaz a tour of his lair and explains his plans. And look – an underground/underwater base – quintessentially James Bond.

The Doc, Yaz, Dan, pirate queen and all, seem to be jumping from ship to ship with great abandon – howcome none of the Sea Devils stops them? There’s an awful lot of glossing over tricky details of practicality in this episode. The only way to watch it is to ignore it and just go with the flow.

So, very atmospheric, great production values, a plot so full of holes it would sink faster than Ji-Hun’s ship, but overall quite watchable. I found it more diverting than Curse of the Black Spot, which I guess is a modest recommendation.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

[A year later:]

Legend of the Sea Devils

Starts off really well. Very atmospheric, very sinister, very Xena. Madam Ching really has some presence. I really like the actress, by the way.

The mood is kinda spoilt by Dan wearing the cartoon comedy pirate clobber. And Mr Carnival-mask Sea Devil. Looks a bit like a dyspeptic mutant Chihuahua with a beak. I really want to like this episode if the costume department would let me.

Oh gods, and the Doctor *immediately* knows who Madame Ching is.    She does that all the time.   Does anyone find that a bit – odd?

Then Dan goes off with the Chinese guy for no apparent reason at all. His credibility seems to have declined since the last ep. And they [somehow] get on board Madam Ching’s ship (come to that, how did she get there – I didn’t see a rowing boat). And she [somehow] ties both of them up, single-handed. Never mind.

“No ship, Sherlock.” Ohhhhhh. That’s one of those lines where you groan then can’t stop yourself laughing.

Really nice of Chihuahua Boy to show the Doctor and Yaz his setup and explain everything. A bit like the habit of James Bond villains who famously could not resist telling an enemy agent all their most secret plans. “Do not make the mistake of thinking I wish to keep you alive.” Oh that’s a nice menacing Bond-villain line. Incidentally, parts of this are very James Bond, like the secret underwater dock.

Again, not quite sure how they got Ji-Hun out of his stasis cage and escaped the attentions of the Sea Devils to jump onto Madame Ching’s ship. Or how they manage to leap back onto the Sea Devil ship. Never mind, logistics is not the strength of this episode.

“Dan, I need you to supervise Ji-Hun and Madame Ching.” Like that’s gonna happen.

I have to say, the – relationship – between the Doctor and Yaz is quite well and sensitively handled in this episode. Actually the Doctor is quite tolerable, when she isn’t spouting technobabble (which of course is a Chibz problem not a Whittaker one).

Hey! I actually liked this episode. (And I could follow the events much more easily second time round, which is often the case). And I found the characters – at least the ones I was supposed to like – actually likeable, which is not always the case.

(I think there were probably as many physical-technical impossibilities in this as in Kill The Moon, which I loathe. Why the difference? – I think because this ep is fantasy, where the ‘rules’ can be quite relaxed, whereas KTM felt like hard sci-fi where things should follow logically. It’s a matter of tone.)

[And the last four posts are by – me.  Ouch.   I see I said this time – well, pretty much the same as I said last time.   Is that because that commentary was lurking in my subconscious, or just because certain things resonate with my psyche?   I don’t know.   It would be interesting to give me a memory wipe – like Kryten (thanks Janetteb for the reference)  and then see how my comments changed.  Or not.]

Judging by the small number of posts and the lukewarm comments, I think this episode is actually under-rated.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Legend of The Sea Devils

LotSD is not Eve but it’s not most of the dross from series 11 & 12 neither. Which probably means it’s there with T’floox, neither boring us to death nor making very much sense.

There is a jewel which the Sea Devils need, so they can wipe out the land crawlers, somehow. And they get it during some running around and exposition with added time travel. Then there’s a peculiar little sequence reminiscent of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, bottom of the sea, in which the Doctor seems to flirt like mad and Yaz doesn’t believe her.

The problem is not that this happens, but that it happens in the middle of the action. Dan and a kid are menaced by a Pirate Queen while a submarine version of a sand worm makes like Drogon complete with gnashers but no flames. But you never see much of it in case someone thinks hmm ‘Myrka.’ Now if this was series 11 & 12, the Chucklegenerations would go meh meh meh and I would probably switch off. But that wouldn’t be fair on this particular story, though I think no more of this story than much of series 11 &12. What I mean is, its not fair on the romance either; as baity as it might seem, that might yet be quite affecting.

But no, the Doctor has psychobabble to babble. And DOES she! 10 could sarky cockerny slouch, and 11 rapid fogey, 12 turned on Tucker minus Jefferty before closing the trap. Whitcoc just patter patter patters. She needs more mardy bum. Chib obviously decided that was too 12, not really The Doctor, not what The Mail could take from a woman.

That aside, this is where the bad science comes home. The head Sea Devil is going to flood the earth, but flipping the magnetic poles won’t do that. Unfortunately the theme established earlier was magnetism, sorry didn’t I say? Now, if they’d created the Siberian or Deccan traps, a volcanic province to roast the earth with maybe a phase of rapid seafloor spreading, that might be reasonably effective. And poison the oceans, too. See, this is Kill the Moon/Forest of the Night territory, fantasy science riffing on important stuff. Another epic miss.

Never mind, everyone then gets a bit shivvy, including Dan, who rocks the glowing blue plague scimitar and then blames his mum. But all is resolved, I think. Except Dan realises he is def the gooseberry and puts out an emergency call to Scouseland even as The Doctor, opening her heart to Yaz, virtually breaks into Bob Dylan’s One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later).

But the postscript IS affecting. Because The Doctor mentions her wife, but it’s obvious she’s thinking of Bill and Clara, girls SHE could not save, though they were saved, but not for HER. The Doctor’s pain is genuinely pathetic. Actually very good acting.

Meanwhile, I am sat in Larry Nightingale’s video shop, staring at the screen shouting not ‘go to the police!’ but ‘give her a snog!’

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u    Well, the story has so many plot holes it would sink faster than a rowing boat in a hurricane.   (And yes I’d picked up on the magnetic poles thing.   The Earth has had the poles flip within recent (geological) times, and I don’t think there’s any geological evidence of the entire Earth being flooded.   Why am I more tolerant of this than Kill the Moon?   Probably because this is nearer to fantasy  (pirates and seamonsters) while KTM tried to pretend to be based on hard science and technology (in every respect except the egg of course) and failed hideously at ever turn.   Also, because the characters (in Sea Devils) were likeable, in distinct contrast to Lundvik and the appalling Courtney.   And Doctor 12’s totally out-of-character behaviour.)   Actually, I’m not sure there would be any way to ‘flood the Earth’ other than reducing all the land to a perfectly round sphere.   Which I don’t think has happened in all of geological history.

So, back to the episode.  I suppose I could rate it (in quality) roughly equal to Curse of the Black Spot.   With the difference that this was one of Chibz’ better episodes and Black Spot was one of Moff’s poorer ones.

I think Sea Devils was rescued by the director and the cast – the very atmospheric opening scene for example, and the cast were easy to like.

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

fantasy science. They flaunt it so often you have to wonder if we’re being baited.

Flooding the entire Earth didn’t ought to be possible. Perhaps The Sea Devils meant he would flood low lying continental margins. That might well cause the collapse of human civilisation. Couldn’t The Doctor babble about that?

Otherwise, the known mechanisms of sea level rise would be:

global warming and melting ice caps

the early phase of continental breakup. (I think) abyssal plains containing water get subducted while new constructive margins displace water.

new water transported to the earth by comets.

geomagnetism? It happens. The problem might be solar radiation. Perhaps THATS what Sea Devil wants… to fry everything on land to a crisp.

It’s all fantastic. The energy needed to raise sea levels rapidly would be immense and marmalise the surface of the earth. But it’s interesting stuff, like the little ice age, or Carrington events, or Moon formation theories. We have science; no space bats needed here thank you.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

fantasy science. Yes, it’s part of the show but they flaunt the worst possible examples so often you have to wonder if we’re being baited.

Flooding the entire Earth didn’t ought to be possible. Perhaps The Chief Sea Devil meant he would flood low lying continental margins. That might well cause the collapse of human civilisation. Couldn’t The Doctor babble about that?

Otherwise, the known mechanisms of sea level rise would be:

global warming and melting ice caps

the early phase of continental breakup. (I think) abyssal plains containing water get subducted while new constructive margins displace water.

new water transported to the earth by comets.

geomagnetism? It happens. The real problem might be solar radiation. Perhaps THATS what Sea Devil wants… to fry everything on land to a crisp?

It’s all fantastic. The energy needed to raise sea levels rapidly would be immense, marmalise the surface of the earth and turn the ocean toxic. But this is certainly interesting stuff, like the little ice age, or Carrington events, or Moon formation theories. We have science thank you; no space bats needed here.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Looking at the next ep – Power of the Doctor – the Daleks were going to flood the Earth with lava, and even more improbable scenario.   They had a big drill in a volcano and were going to let the lava out   🙂     Of course, if they *had* managed to cause a few massive volcanic eruptions, it’s possible the dust clouds in the atmosphere might have wiped out all life on Earth by freezing, that would be a much more credible doomsday scenario.

But anyway, they were defeated by Ace and her baseball bat (and also her Nitro-9)

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent
Yes, Inferno, Caves of Androzani, Fires of Pompei… magma has Who-form.

Perhaps it’s doctor evil/panicked hero hyperbole. You only need a certain amount of flooding/volcanic activity to wipe us out, but never knowingly undersell it.

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