June 8: The Sea Devils Episodes Five & Six

The Doctor has been taken by the Sea Devils into their base, where he tries to convince them that he can negotiate a peace between the Sea Devils and the humans; there's no need for any violence.  But the Master is down in their base too, and he has told them that man is weak and that they can easily reclaim the planet for themselves.  The Doctor is on the verge of convincing them when their base is attacked by the Royal Navy.  In the Doctor's absence a Parliamentary Private Secretary named Walker has arrived at the base and is dead-set on attacking the Sea Devils' base.  It's worth noting how director Michael Briant directs the scenes with Walker, often in extreme closeups while eating.  Walker appears to be obsessed with food, which not only accentuates his callousness -- as he appears to be more concerned with his stomach than with the consequences of his actions -- but also, when combined with the direction, makes him appear more monstrous than the Sea Devils. 

In any event, once the attack occurs the Sea Devils won't be dissuaded from attacking humanity, so the Doctor rescues the submarine crew and helps free the sub, allowing it to return to base.  After tearing into Walker ("I think you've got it all wrong, old man," Walker says, trying to defend his actions.  "Seek and destroy.  That's what you chaps say, isn't it?"  "But the point, Mister Parliamentary Private Secretary," the Doctor replies heatedly, "is that you have not destroyed.  You have just made them angry.  Very, very angry!"), the Doctor announces his intentions to go back down and try and broker peace again.  But before he can do so, the Sea Devils attack the naval base.

The Doctor fends off a Sea Devil. (The Sea Devils Episode Six) ©BBC

Episode six has a rather entertaining battle between the Sea Devils and the navy (I particularly enjoy the part where three Sea Devils round a corner one at a time, each stopping to fire its gun at the camera before moving on to let the next one have a moment), and the business with the Master and the Doctor is nice (the reason the Sea Devils are on the surface is to get parts to repair their reactivation switch), with the Doctor criticizing the Master's circuit design before making corrections -- except the Doctor is actually adding in some additional features that the Master is apparently unable to recognize.  This suggests that the Master isn't as much of an electronic genius as he sometimes claims.  There's also the rather amazing sequence where the Doctor switches a couple wires around, creating a shrill whine that incapacitates the Sea Devils.  This is allowed to go for so long that Jo is able to rescue Captain Hart, charge down to the beach, get a hovercraft going, and head out to sea for reinforcements before the Master switches it off -- despite the fact that there's a Sea Devil in the room with the Doctor and the Master, clearly writhing in pain the whole time.

Captain Hart arrives with more naval personnel to retake the base (so this is where the aforementioned battle occurs), while the Master takes off on a jetboat with the reactivation device with the Doctor in hot pursuit -- although this looks more like a chance for Pertwee to drive a jetboat (which he is clearly loving) than for any reasons of story, since the chase ends on the beach, only with Sea Devils ready to take the Doctor and the Master down to their base.

Walker is all ready for a nuclear strike, but he's beaten by the Doctor; once the Doctor learns that there's no chance of peace with the Sea Devils, he sets the reactivation device to overload by "revers[ing] the polarity of the neutron flow"⁶⁷, which will cause their power supply to surge and explode, taking everything with it.  The Doctor and the Master manage to escape the colossal explosion, but in the subsequent confusion the Master manages to escape (by driving a hoverboat into naval-infested waters, but never mind).

There's nothing particularly wrong with The Sea Devils; it's sufficiently entertaining, and there are some moments in the serial that are quite marvelous indeed.  But the main issue here is that we've already had this story once before, only an episode longer and set in Derbyshire, and this new version doesn't have anything different to say.  The main impetus seems to have been to get the Royal Navy to help them make the show (which would have been a major coup for producer Barry Letts, who served in the Royal Navy during World War II), and to see what happens when the Master is inserted into the same basic set-up as Doctor Who and the Silurians.  But the fact is that, as good as Roger Delgado is, his character ends up distorting the story so that The Sea Devils is more about him than the eponymous creatures.  But as this iteration has nothing new to say on the subject of human-reptile relations, this isn't as great a loss as it might have otherwise been.

The bottom line is that, despite the best efforts of Michael Briant and Malcolm Clarke to do something different, The Sea Devils is content to simply carry on doing what's been working for the show for the last couple years, and, entertaining though it may be, it doesn't have any real ambition beyond that.  Still, this is the first story aired out of production order (they made it before The Curse of Peladon on account of the weather but showed it after to break up the two "space" stories this season), so at least it's pioneering in that respect.







⁶⁷ It's a requirement at this point to note that this is the only time this phrase occurs during the Pertwee era proper (though it'll show up again in The Five Doctors), but we've probably reached the point where anyone who's aware of this line as a catchphrase for the third Doctor's era is also already aware of this fact.