Please note that traditional language will be used in this review. Silly neologisms will be eschewed. Thus I am not under any circumstances going to call Sea Devils ‘Homo Aqua’, ‘Homo Aquaticus’, ‘Homo what’s happened to their string vests?’ or any such nonsense. For the same reason, I will resist any future attempts to rename the Daleks ‘Dustbinius Motorisicus’ or the Weeping Angels ‘Angelus Lachrymosus’.
Ahem. For the purposes of this review, I have only watched part one of The War Between The Land and the Sea, named Homo Aqua. And I thought it was pretty good, actually.
Tonally, it was very different from Russell T Davies’ last two seasons of Doctor Who. Far less silly, far less self-righteous, and far less mawkish. There was a bit of Messaging with a capital ‘M’ but we were not beaten over the head by the writer’s worldview or exhorted to do stuff that we do anyway. Good. I’ve always preferred Who as a drama series, so I massively preferred the tone Arty Dee has adopted here. A decent episode of a reasonably good spin-off, then. It wasn’t brilliant but it wasn’t a turkey, either. I felt about it the same way as I feel about, say, the film of Dr Who and the Daleks: solid and fun, but not in the league of The Caves of Androzani or Planet of the Spiders et al. We’ll see how it develops, but so far, so good.
This time, it’s the Sea Devils who get the make-over; the Silurians got theirs more than a decade ago. I know John Friedlander’s masks look a bit dated and static now, but I’m afraid the originals remain better than the revamps. This view may partly result from the attachment to the Sea Devils which I have nurtured since my youth. I used to draw them all over my exercise books when I was at primary school and once got sent out of class for impersonating them too loudly. (I would mime their holding up their torches and would hiss ‘Sssss’ in a penetrating and sibilant fashion. Mrs Turner didn’t like that and also objected to my over-frequent pictorial representations of the finest of these demonic submariners.) I’m not sure about the new look. It’s okay. Salt’s design is good; the others are a bit meh, and I don’t like their new beaks or their spears (why do monsters from the sea always have to carry spears in science fiction?). The old tortoise heads captured children’s imagination; I’m not sure these skinny, beaky things will do the same.
The acting was decent. A lot of the new UNIT characters are pretty cardboard and interchangeable; contrast to the ensemble of the Jon Pertwee years: real people with real personalities. But they’re alright. Jemma Redgrave’s always good. Nice to see Mr Wickham out of Pride and Prejudice making his Who debut. Or Who spin-off debut. Whatever. (I refer, of course, to Mr Adrian Lukis.) Gugu Mbatha-Raw gave a sympathetic and attractive performance as Salt, though she didn’t have a huge amount to do in this episode.
I really rate Russell Tovey: a fine actor, who’s possibly become a bit typecast. He seems to have cornered the market for playing amiable twits. He was great in Being Human. Saw him as Tintin in the stage play of Tintin in Tibet, too, way back in 2008; he was superb. I think The War Between The Land and the Sea was probably helped by having Russell and Gugu in the leads — had they cast less talented actors, the script wasn’t really strong enough for them to have carried it.
And, of course, there’s the rub. The script. A series about UNIT, sans the Doctor, has been talked about since the Nineties, when Derrick Sherwin tried to get one off the ground. And here it is. The problem is the same one that Malcolm Hulke identified as long ago as 1969. If Who becomes Earth-bound, you’ve got only two plots: invasion from space or mad scientist. As we know, Hulke and Terrance Dicks worked on the concept of the Silurians to overcome this. Instead of an invasion from outside, the threat had always been there – but in suspended animation. So yes, The War Between The Land and the Sea worked as a piece of drama, but it’s already old hat. Classic Who did it twice. 21st Century Who has revisited it. Admittedly, the majority of the audience won’t have seen either Doctor Who and the Silurians or The Sea Devils, so it’s fresh to them… but it’s a shame they couldn’t come up with something new. When you’ve run out of ideas, reach for continuity.
Malcolm Hulke’s influence was pretty strongly at work in this new series, too. Villains painted in shades of grey, rather than in black and white; moderates providing a counter-balance to hardliners. Okdel versus Morka. The Sea Devil grunts (do Sea Devils grunt?) versus the Chief Sea Devil. Salt versus – well, I don’t know yet, because I’ve only seen the first part. But I’m afraid Hulke’s shadow does remind one of a great truth: he’s a much better writer than Russell T Davies. Hulke is not afraid of giving a message, but it’s in the subtext and it’s done subtly. The audience is not told what to think; they’re allowed to muse over the ideas raised by an intelligent and thoughtful script, and yes, they’re also allowed to come to their own conclusions. Doctor Who and the Silurians is one of the best stories of the classic era; as well as being a cracking yarn, it’s also a parable about racism, bigotry, and demonising others. It’s a sign of the times that nowadays we do our messaging fortissimo; we seem to have lost the capacity for quiet debate. Who was always anti-racist; it just used to do it much more gently. Quiet messages can convert; shouted messages can alienate.
On a side-note, I watched the new re-edit of The Sea Devils; it’s well done and they haven’t butchered it as they did with The War Games. But I’m afraid my rewatch just confirmed that it’s simply better than The War Between, dated costuming notwithstanding. (And that’s saying something, as The Sea Devils is an inferior re-tread of The Silurians. A three-star Pertwee is superior to what we’re offered in 2025.) The Sea Devils stalking out of the waves has a much bigger impact than their CGI zooshing round a big tube full of seawater. (Oh, and I do wish someone would teach actors how to cross themselves properly! Wasn’t there anyone on the crew who was a Catholic or a High Anglican, who could show Russell Tovey how to do it? But at least it was allowed to stand and was made an important plot point, without being sneered at. It was quite touching, too. Okay, I digress in my irrelevant rant and will now be quiet.)
Well, there we are. Solid and decent, but not brilliant. Worth watching. I enjoyed it and it was fun. I’m glad they made it. Give it a go if you haven’t seen it; you may be pleasantly surprised.
