An Hour of Who a Day: 09/22/22

September 22: "Legend of the Sea Devils"

Promotional photo for "Legend of the Sea Devils" (from SpoilerTV)
©BBC

At the end of "Eve of the Daleks", the Doctor expressed an interest in learning what happened to the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar, a (real) Portuguese ship that sank off the coast of Sumatra in 1511. And so here we follow up on that -- except instead of arriving in 1511 Sumatra, the TARDIS has been dragged off course to 1807 China, where the pirate queen Madam Ching (also a real figure from history, perhaps more appropriately known as Zheng Yi Sao, but we'll call her Madam Ching because that's what the credits call her) has just unwittingly released an "ocean demon" from its stone captivity...

When Chris Chibnall's final year on the show was being planned, they initially settled on a total of eight episodes: the six episodes of Flux and two specials. However, at one point BBC One asked for an additional episode to form part of the BBC's Centenary celebration in late 2022. Now I don't know for certain, but I'm willing to bet this is that extra episode. That's partly because this episode isn't concerned with either cleaning up after Flux or foreshadowing the end of the thirteenth Doctor's time, but instead is content to be something of an uncomplicated adventure.

One of the downsides of that, however, is that because this has been made during COVID, it's a curiously empty-feeling tale. You sort of expect a pirate adventure to be full of, well, pirates, but we only get a very small handful here: Madam Ching is the only true (human) pirate, while the villager Ying Ki and the captain-out-of-time Ji-Hun also do some pirate-like things. And, other than the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan, that's it. They try to explain it away with some stuff about how Ching's crew has been captured and is being held ransom for the treasure of the Flor de la Mar, but they don't really get away with it. They made the limited cast a virtue in "Eve of the Daleks", but they try to push it too far here. Which is not to say that the actors we do get aren't worthwhile: Marlowe Chan-Reeves is rather sweet as Ying Ki, while Arthur Lee gets to be noble and decent as Ji-Hun -- and of course, Crystal Yu does a good job as Madam Ching, searching out the treasure that she believes Ji-Hun claimed before he too underwent a mysterious disappearance. The people we get are great; you just wish there had been a way to include more people, even just as background artists.

Of course, that's also because they've chosen to have a bunch of Sea Devils in as well. And unlike the Silurians in series 5 and later, these are proper Sea Devils, with the heads looking more or less the same as they did in The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep. (Reportedly, they in fact had a cast of one of the original heads that they used for their design.) They look fabulous, and being dressed in more pirate-y outfits (as opposed to the string vests in The Sea Devils or the, er, samurai outfits of Warriors of the Deep) doesn't change that at all. There are a couple minor niggles (they've tried to make the faces more mobile, but they still don't quite pull off the impression that the Sea Devils are talking, while someone's concerned we won't recognize which Sea Devil is talking -- even though only one of them ever speaks -- so they've put a necklace around the Chief Sea Devil's neck that flashes like Dalek dome lights (or the Silurians' third eye in Warriors of the Deep) whenever it says something), but overall it's a nicely faithful design without being in any way risible. It's a little strange, however, how Chris Chibnall and co-writer Ella Road have given them characteristics like the ability to teleport in a cloud of green smoke or to leap hundreds of feet in the air (with less than ideal CG -- but then, somewhat surprisingly, there are a number of somewhat ropey CG shots in this episode; is this a side-effect of the COVID restrictions, perhaps?). Presumably it's a technique to save narrative time, to not have to worry about how the Chief Sea Devil (Craige Els, by the way, back after having played Karvanista in Flux) gets from place to place, but it still feels odd, especially since no one comments on it; they just accept it like it's a natural part of being a Sea Devil. And if we're pointing out oddities, the way the Sea Devils keep calling the humans "land crawlers", while their ultimate goal, of causing the Earth to be flooded and once again "aqua", either forgets that their ostensible cousins the Silurians also lived on land or suggests that the Sea Devils aren't on as friendly terms with the Silurians as we've been led to believe.

Still, in terms of story there's nothing terribly wrong here, other than the usual occasional "just go with it" moment that seems to characterize a lot of Chibnall-era Who. They even fit in a bit of time to develop that "Yaz has feelings for the Doctor" storyline from last episode, with the added wrinkle that maybe the Doctor reciprocates those feelings. "You know what I said earlier about not being a bad date?" the Doctor says to Yaz, referencing an earlier line. "Well, dates are not something I really do, you know. I mean, I used to. Have done. And if I was going to, believe me, it'd be with you. I think you're one of the greatest people I've ever known." It's a nice line of dialogue, but the problem is that it's difficult to believe, primarily because, as I've frequently noted, they haven't developed Yaz's character enough. Whether you liked it or you didn't, you could at least see what they were getting at with the Doctor and Rose's relationship, but this version just rings hollow. Yaz up to this point hasn't distinguished herself from any of the other companions, at least as far as we've seen, and so it's not clear what makes Yaz any different from, say, Ryan, or Bill, or Nardole. And to be clear, this has nothing to do with Mandip Gill, who's been excellent as Yaz; this is the fault of the writing, which hasn't made enough of an effort to actually show us how Yaz stands out. It's as if Chibnall assumed that simply stating it was enough, without doing the work to have it play out on screen. I'm not upset that they're going down this road, but I do wish they'd let us actually see what the Doctor sees in Yaz. Not that this story's going anywhere anyway; the thirteenth Doctor only has one episode left, after all, while Gill has also made it clear she's also leaving, so it's not like this will be explored under Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor. So there's also a sense that this just being introduced for the sake of doing something, rather than because there's a clear purpose behind it.

I've discussed this rather at length because it's one of the meatier things to engage with in this story. The rest of the tale consists of a bunch of running around and worrying about technobabble-y problems. That's not the worst of sins; sometimes you just want a straightforward romp, and like I said, there's nothing really wrong with "Legend of the Sea Devils". It's just that there's not a whole lot here to wow you either. This is another one of those pleasantly average, vaguely forgettable stories the show occasionally turns out, and if this had been in the middle of a series I don't know that anyone would be that put out by it. But because it was an Easter special, and one of only three new episodes this year, it's a bit more frustrating that this wasn't a bit more ambitious. In many ways this just feels like marking time before the end of Thirteen, and while that may be the result of circumstance, it's still a disappointing place to find the series right before the thirteenth Doctor's final adventure.

But once again that brings us to the end of this year's set of reviews and reflections on the past year's episodes. I hope you'll join me here on September 23, 2023, for a discussion of the finale of Jodie Whittaker's time as the Doctor. "The Power of the Doctor" awaits...