No, your eyes didn’t deceive you: the Sea Devils are coming back to Doctor Who, in the Spring 2022 special, Legend of the Sea Devils!
At the end of Eve of the Daleks, we saw a new trailer for the next episode, which will be Jodie Whittaker’s penultimate special as the Thirteenth Doctor. Mandip Gill is back as Yasmin Khan while John Bishop returns as Dan Lewis too, this time alongside Crystal Yu as Madame Ching, Arthur Lee as Ji-Hun, and Marlowe Chan-Reeves as Ying Ki.
Here’s the synopsis:
“This episode finds the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) in 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat – from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching (Crystal Yu) and a monstrous alien force which she unwittingly unleashes. Will the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan emerge from this swashbuckling battle with the Sea Devils to save the planet?”
Arguably, the Sea Devils are the last “classic” Doctor Who monsters to come back for 21st Century Who, with the Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians, Sontarans, Ice Warriors, and even Macra all redesigned (to varying extents) between 2005 and 2021.
This will be the Sea Devils’ first appearance in Doctor Who since Warriors of the Deep (1984) — that is, on TV because they’ve come back various times in different mediums.
Eve of the Daleks probably leads directly into Legend of the Sea Devils, the episode concluding with the Doctor deciding to find out what happened to the Portuguese ship, Flor de la Mar, which sunk in 1511.
Legend of the Sea Devils will air on BBC1 and BBC America in Spring 2022. We reckon at Easter…
