#29: Legend of the Sea Devils.

The Sea Devils return to television! After this story, it might take them another 40 years to try again.

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Ella Road, Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Haolu Wang. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT:

The TARDIS finally brings the Doctor and her friends to a beach! That beach, however, is at a Chinese fishing village in the year 1807 - a village that has just been raided by the infamous pirate known as Madam Ching (Crystal Yu)!

Ching has come for a very specific target: a stone statue of a sea monster whose base holds the key to the location of the fabled treasure of the Flor de la Mar. What she doesn't realize is that the statue is actually a prison. When she chips away at the base, she frees its captive: A Sea Devil who has been held in place for more than 200 years.

Now the Sea Devil is free - and unless the Doctor can stop him, he plans to use his technology to flood the entire planet!


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: When she confronts the Sea Devil, she bluffs that she knows the location of the "keystone" he seeks, talking at a million miles a minute while at the same time fishing for any scraps of information he might divulge. The Sea Devil is smart enough to catch on to her game: "You talk to secure yourself time to think."

The "B" plot sees her grappling with Yaz's feelings. Yaz's interest doesn't seem entirely unrequited; if it was, moments such as showing her companion the bottom of the ocean floor while beaming that she's "not such a bad date" would smack of cruelty. Still, as she explains - and, really, as the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors' eras repeatedly showed - her long lifespan means that any such relationship could only end in pain.

Yaz: Is a little too eager to act as "mini-Doctor," the role she effectively filled during her separation from the Doctor during the Flux. However, she isn't on the Doctor's level.  During the confrontation with the Sea Devil, she gives away information that the Doctor planned to hold in reserve.  She later attempts to replicate the Doctor's use of Sea Devil technology but can't remember which switch to use. If this era wasn't ending in just one more episode, this story would have me actively expecting her to end up on a collision course with her own limitations.

Dan: Quickly bonds with Ying Ki (Marlowe Chan-Reeves), a young man whose father became the first victim of the Sea Devil. His compassion gets the better of his judgment, though, when he follows the youth onto Madam Ching's ship, separating him from the Doctor and Yaz for most of the rest of the episode. The climax sees him battling Sea Devils with startling enthusiasm... but in between, it's back to Flux territory, with Dan mostly just an amiable presence rather than an integral part of the plot.

Madam Ching: Crystal Yu as the Historical Figure of the Week. The historical Madam Ching is a fascinating figure who rose to become head of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, and who is sometimes credited as being the most successful pirate in history... which frankly sounds like the basis for a much more interesting and exciting story than this one. Yu does a fine job with what she's given, but she isn't given much, with the historical figure's life and background almost entirely unmentioned. Compared with this same era's treatment of historical figures such as Rosa Parks, Nikola Tesla, and Mary Seacole, this is disappointingly shallow, and the climax reduces her to little more than an extra.


THE RETURN OF THE SEA DEVILS:

The Sea Devils' design is extremely faithful to the Classic Series, only more polished. At first glance, the monsters looks terrific: menacing and strangely beautiful in a single image.

Then the lead Sea Devil talks, and the illusion is broken.

The problem is the full face mask. Compare with the (at the time) much-vilified redesign of the Silurians. That revamp left the face and mouth uncovered to allow a full range of expressions. The Sea Devils here are not granted the same luxury, and actor Craig Els is left with no ability to convey any subtlety because expressions are impossible. Also, because the mouth doesn't move well, his speech is indicated by a blinking light hanging around his chest. Which is very Classic Who... but in all the wrong ways.

As for the characterization? Well, the Doctor pays lip service to them as a peace-loving culture (though I'm frankly not sure how she arrived at that from either of their previous televised appearances). Despite that, the only speaking Sea Devil here is pure evil, sneering "Land Parasite!" at humans, keeping one man alive indefinitely just to torture him, and gloating about his planned mass extinction event. All that's missing to make him a silent movie baddie is a mustache to twirl and a scene in which he ties Yaz to some railroad tracks.

If Series One's Dalek served as a masterclass in bringing back a potentially silly monster and making it menacing and relevant to modern audiences, then I'm afraid this story represents the opposite. Their last major televised appearance was in 1984's Warriors of the Deep. After this, it wouldn't surprise me if it took another 40 years for their next return.


THOUGHTS:

Though this is not a good episode, there are good individual elements. Even if Dan is persistently underused, I really like the dynamic of the current TARDIS team. All three actors share a good-humored screen rapport. I actually believe these three enjoy traveling together, while in Series Eleven and Twelve it too often felt like the Doctor and Yaz were on one team and Ryan and Graham were on another.

For the first half or so, I mostly enjoyed this. The early scenes are fun: Yaz tricking Dan into wearing a pirate outfit (complete with hook), while the Doctor expresses exasperation with both of them; the reveal of the Sea Devil's flying pirate ship; Dan's compassion letting him get roped into an ill-advised misadventure with Ying Ki; and, most particularly, the entire sequence in which the Doctor takes Yaz 200 years into the past to locate treasure at the moment of its sinking, followed by a lovely pause (the episode's only one) at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Even in the early going, however, there are plot holes. I was immediately put off by Madam Ching operating her ship with no crew at all. A frigate isn't a private sailing boat, and the crew did not exist merely to repel boarders and to give the captain someone to flog when feeling peevish. You'd think the script would at least lampshade this with a couple lines about modifications. But... nope! She's sailing a full-sized pirate ship all on her own, and that's all there is to it.

The script has quite a bit of sloppiness. Characters reference information they shouldn't know. The Doctor and Yaz realize why the stars are in the wrong place, which would be an interesting reveal... except that they weren't present for the scene that showed the stars in the wrong place, and they had no opportunity within the episode to make that discovery for themselves! Much is also made of the Sea Devils' pet sea monster, but the creature conveniently disappears for the action climax.

The entire story feels rushed, which becomes particularly problematic near the end. First, the Doctor and Yaz escape from the Sea Devil's ship by jumping across to Madam Ching. At this point, the story should really take a moment for the characters to bond and pool information. Instead, it launches almost instantly into the final fight.

The incredibly poorly edited final fight. 

Editing is somewhat jagged throughout (likely covering for issues caused by COVID restrictions), but here it becomes all but incomprehensible. I replayed bits to try to figure out how the Doctor escapes certain death in one part or how Dan knocks over Sea Devils in another part. After a few times doing this, however, I gave up and just let the images pass unchallenged; in some cases I found the answers, but it frankly wasn't worth the effort.

As if the ending hadn't been botched badly enough, the main story closes with Doctor Who's most tiresome and overused trope: a Heroic Self-Sacrifice (TM). This case feels particularly superfluous. The problem that requires a character to nobly die occurs all of a minute before the sacrifice. It may not be as poorly staged as the one in The Timeless Children, but it makes up for it by feeling entirely narratively unnecessary.


OVERALL:

Legend of the Sea Devils plays very much as if the crew shot a rough draft. This may not be far from the truth. One of the three 2022 specials was an "extra," commissioned when the BBC asked for one more episode. Given that the other two specials are the traditional Chibnall Dalek New Year's special and the epic finale, Legend of the Sea Devils seems the most likely candidate.

It might actually have been better if it hadn't been made. Eve of the Daleks left the Doctor and her team soaring into their final adventures. Legend of the Sea Devils sends them crashing back to Earth, left to stumble in a daze into their final outing.


Overall Rating: 2/10.

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