But as with many things involving the Disney partnership, things didn't shake out the way they'd first been envisioned. In October 2025, Disney announced that they weren't renewing their deal with the BBC for Doctor Who -- although it wasn't officially confirmed, part of the issue was apparently that Disney was suddenly worried that an unapologetically progressive series starring a gay person of color wouldn't play as well as they thought it would in the US, in the wake of Trump's 2024 reelection, and so they were no longer that interested in promoting (or paying for) the series.
Somewhat awkwardly, however, that still left a five-episode spin-off still to air. The show did end up airing in December 2025 on BBC One, but as of writing there's still no sign of it on Disney+ in the United States, either available or even scheduled. Consequently, that means that I've gone ahead and imported a nice Blu-ray copy from the UK for these purposes -- and that, perhaps more importantly, I haven't actually watched this yet. That means in some ways you'll be getting my first impressions of this series, without any idea of what's actually coming up. So with that understood, let's go ahead and dive in (sorry not sorry).
This first episode, "Homo Aqua", opens in grand Who tradition with a never-to-be-seen-again group of people (Spaniards in this case, it seems) fishing while also tossing garbage into the sea and inadvertently catching something. But where we might then expect to cut to some familiar faces in UNIT, we instead move to a slightly different (but still familiar) face: Russell Tovey is back, having last been seen in 2010's "The End of Time Part Two", but this time (also in grand Who tradition) playing a new character. Here he's Barclay Pierre-Dupont, a low-grade civilian UNIT employee who's in charge of transportation but who has been accidentally pulled into this situation due to a bureaucratic cock-up. (Nice to know that one of the most advanced organisations on Earth isn't immune to stupid human error.) What this effectively means is that Barclay is the audience surrogate, experiencing this new situation the same way we presumably would. In this case, it's the accidental killing of a new form of
This episode moves at a pretty brisk pace, introducing Barclay and his family, the UNIT crew, and the new Homo aqua presence. It's to Tovey's credit that we get a reasonable sense of Barclay as just an average guy who's been thrust into a strange situation. His general sense of alarm and confusion comes off as rather endearing, rather than just annoying, and so we're interested in seeing where this is going. That said, where it's going seems to be, at least at this stage, a retread of Children of Earth, only with Homo aqua revealing themselves to the world instead of the 456. Humanity even builds a holding tank to interact with Homo aqua, just like we saw in Children of Earth. (The presence of General Pierce does little to dispel this sense of familiarity.) The main difference here is that we don't have the underlying sense of conspiracy that pervaded Children of Earth (but then again they've still got time to go down that path if they want). So instead of conspiracy, or possibly wonder, we get a vague sense of unease. It's not perhaps the most exciting feeling in the world, so it's good that Barclay's presence really anchors this -- to the point where when a bunch of familiar UNIT faces show up (Kate Stewart! Colonel Ibrahim! Shirley Anne Bingham!), it actually feels mildly like a distraction. It doesn't help that the episode seems to assume that the viewer will be vaguely familiar with these characters, so they don't really get a proper introduction. (Mind you, the moment where the camera goes out of its way to delay showing us what Sir Jonathan Hynes looks like, only to show someone we've never seen before, has the opposite problem of building up a reveal that doesn't actually seem to warrant it. (Unless we're just meant to be excited that it's Adrian Lukis?)) That means that our sympathies lie with Barclay while we wait for all this to unfold.
So this is definitely an episode all about setup, which is why it's a touch odd how many things get just sort of glossed over. I get that they want to get to the "monsters" as soon as they can, but it means we're left with questions such as, how much contact has UNIT had with Homo aqua before? Given the general is coining the name in this episode, it seems like not much, but then how can they translate their language? But then they also know about the pearls in the throat, so maybe there has been contact before. But if they have been in contact before, why does Homo aqua (and specifically them, no Silurians or Sea Devils in sight) decide to reveal themselves to the entire world now? Are they just fed up? And why is General Pierce so casual about Barclay's revelation that he has no real clearance and is basically there due to a clerical error? Maybe some of this will be addressed later, but right now it feels like we're being asked to just go along with it for now and not worry. Which isn't perhaps the worst of sins, but there's not enough action or drama in this episode that they can get away with that just yet.
I'm worried I may be making this sound worse than it is. To be fair, this is a well-crafted and reasonably self-assured piece of television: it looks great (even if for every shot of Mallorca there's a shot of Wales pretending it's Spain), and none of the performances let the side down. The writing, at least at the dialogue level, is also pretty good, as you'd generally expect from a Russell T Davies script. (Although there's a weird moment where Barclay and his family discuss the pejorative meaning of "homo" in a joking manner that falls really flat, even while they try to acknowledge it's outdated.) It's just that there are just enough flaws to be noticeable, to bring things down to the level of "Wait and see" rather than "This looks like it will be excellent". And to be fair, the idea that Homo aqua want Barclay to be the representative of humanity because he was the only one to show some respect to the body of their killed comrade (making a rather sloppy-looking (to my Catholic eyes) sign of the cross) is an interesting one, setting up the "civilian" compassionate viewpoint as a potential contrast to the more military-minded approach of the rest of the UNIT. (Although composer Lorne Balfe seems to have over-scored this episode rather, with a number of lighter moments sounding like they're just as dramatic as the rest of the episode: the ending, where Barclay squeaks out "OK" to being asked to represent humanity, being underscored with serious dramatic music instead of a lighter touch is only the most noticeable moment.) So we have reason to be cautiously optimistic about where The War Between the Land and the Sea is going, even if it's not yet eager anticipation for what's coming next.