Who Review: Legend of the Sea Devils

China, 1807. Madam Ching, the pirate queen, arrives in a small fishing village. Following a map, she locates a strange statue depicting a large humanoid turtle-like creature holding a helpless man. She pulls out a knife and begins hacking away at the statue. A young man, Ying Ki, sees her from his house and turns to tell his father what she’s doing. The father grabs his sword and tells his son that the duty passes to him if he doesn’t return. He hurries out to confront the pirate, but she has already broken a chip from the statue. The piece of rock is etched with a strange pattern, a drawing of some artifact. As the man confronts her, the statue cracks, then explodes. The blast knocks them both to the ground. A creature much like the statue towers over the man and strikes him with its sword. Meanwhile, the TARDIS crew has landed on a nearby beach hoping for a holiday when they hear screams from the village. By the time they arrive, the creature with its blue-edged sword has already torn the place apart and killed most of the inhabitants. What does the creature want, and what is the duty that now falls to Ying Ki? As the creature approaches the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan with murderous intent, the Doctor recognizes this foe from her past. But will she live long enough to find out why it’s there…?

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

“Legend of the Sea Devils” is the second of three specials scheduled for this year. This, Jodie Whittaker’s penultimate story as the Doctor, was co-written by Who newcomer Ella Road along with show-runner Chris Chibnall. Whenever someone other than Chibbers is involved in a story, there’s hope that it might turn out to be better than a dumpster fire, and I have to say, on the whole, I didn’t think this one was all that bad. Yes, it had its low points, but it had a workable if a bit clunky plot and enough going on to keep you engaged for forty minutes.

Of course, the main hook with this episode was the return of the Sea Devils after nearly forty years. They first appeared with the Third Doctor in an aptly named story called “The Sea Devils” back in 1972. They next showed up with their cousins, the Silurians, in the 1984 Fifth Doctor story “Warriors of the Deep.” The Silurians and Sea Devils are supposed to be the Earth’s original inhabitants, the Silurians primarily living underground and the Sea Devils preferring the sea, not surprisingly. In all of his encounters, the Doctor has attempted to forge some kind of peace agreement between them and the humans whereby they might co-exist and share the planet’s resources. However, his attempts had always been thwarted by greedy, warrior factions on both sides.

In this story, the Sea Devils have clearly had enough of trying to be peacemakers and have decided to go for world domination. Their plan is to turn the world into one giant ocean suitable only for them. They can do this using their technology to switch the Earth’s poles and manipulate the environment to kill off all life on the surface and flood the land. However, at present, their capabilities are limited because they’re missing an important piece of tech they call the Keystone. They are now searching the planet looking for it, and their searches have taken them to China.

As the story progresses, we learn that the Sea Devils had been in this region centuries before–in 1533, to be precise. There they captured a ship captained by Ji-Hun, not before Ji-Hun managed to evacuate his crew. The Sea Devils put Ji-Hun in stasis, sank the ship, and kitted it out with their tech to use as a base as they search for the Keystone. Periodically they used the ship to travel, like a ghost ship, so they could scare the humans. It seems somehow one of the Sea Devils became encased in stone and formed that statue–I’m not too clear on this point. When the statue exploded, the Sea Devil appeared making it look as if it came from the statue. However, it also seems as if the ghost ship was nearby to rescue him, so it can’t have been there very long. Or was it? As I said, the plot is clunky, and this was one of those clunky points for me. Was the Sea Devil trapped in stone for over 200 years? Or did the statue give off some kind of signal when Madam Ching cracked it that summoned the ghost ship? If anyone knows, please clear that up in the comments.

We also learn that Madam Ching is looking for Ji-Hun’s ship because she believes it holds the treasure from the lost Portuguese ship the Flor do Mar (an actual historical ship that sank near Sumatra in 1511). She needs that treasure to buy back her crew, including her two sons, who had been taken hostage by some other pirates or something.

I have to say, it took a couple of viewings to get these plot points straight which isn’t a good thing. I’m inclined to believe the episode was originally ten minutes longer but for whatever reason they had to edit it, removing some important explanatory elements along the way. That may or may not be true, but there are some things I couldn’t explain even after two viewings that suggest someone was a little sloppy with the scissors. As well as the business with the Sea Devil and the statue, there’s the whole Keystone business. It appears the reason the Sea Devils and their leviathan Huasen had honed in on this village was that Ying Ki’s father had the Keystone, and the duty he had passed on to his son was protecting that Keystone so the Sea Devils wouldn’t get it. I don’t recall seeing the Keystone until the reveal late in the story that it’s on a string around Ying Ki’s neck. When this fact was revealed, the Keystone glowed orange. Why did this not happen before when the Sea Devils or the Huasen were around? Why only now when we needed to know where it was?

Some other clunky parts of the story include:

• When did Dan suddenly learn to use a canon?
• When did Dan and Yaz become skilled at sword fighting?
• Why is the Doctor so bad at sword fighting after all these years (check out “The Sea Devils,” “The King’s Demons,” and “The Christmas Invasion” for example)?
• Why did the Doctor feel compelled to share her strategy with Yaz?

Also, I have to say I was not impressed with the statue cracking animation. The CGI looked more like someone drawing on the statue with a big black marker. Quite unconvincing, and very out-of-character for New Who where the CGI is usually at least good enough, if not exceptional. As if to illustrate that point, not long after this abysmal piece of digital art we have an underwater sequence that is superbly done.

For me, one of the worst parts of the story was the whole “Yaz-has-the-hots-for-the-Doctor” thread which started in the previous story and is picked up here. Of course, because this is woke-master Chibnall, we have scenes where the Doctor tells Yaz she’s a good “date,” and that if she was to go on a date she would go with Yaz, and how she thinks Yaz is the most amazing person she’s ever met (which is clearly a lie because all of the Doctor’s classic companions have more character in their pinky fingers than Yaz). In the end, though, the Doctor can’t hook up with Yaz because she can’t fix herself to just one person, because it’ll hurt… though the Doctor did at one point have a wife (more than one, actually if you count both River Song and Susan’s mother), as she offhandedly admits to Yaz while trying to sabotage the Sea Devil’s ship. Clearly ending those relationships didn’t hurt as much as hooking up with Yaz would. And that’s because Yaz, who she’s known for two minutes, is more amazing than anyone else she’s ever met, including Sarah Jane, and Jamie, and Rose, and…? Do you get my frustration??

Even aside from the cack-handed attempt at appearing LGBTQ-friendly, this kind of romance in Doctor Who is completely unnecessary. It served no purpose to plot, characterization, or to any bigger arc. It had absolutely no reason to be there other than to please a certain segment of what’s left of Chibber’s audience. Actually, I take that back. It did serve a purpose: It demonstrated conclusively why it’s good that Chibber’s time as showrunner is coming to an end.

As for Dan and Yaz, they were there. I have no love for their characters at all. In fact, maybe the story would have been better if they had stayed in the TARDIS and let the Doctor work with Madam Ching, Ying-Ki, and Ji-Hun. In fact… did they contribute anything useful to the story, other than participating in the fighting? I don’t think so.

There were a couple of good dialog moments. One that particularly stood out was when the Sea Devil responded to the Doctor calling it a Sea Devil by calling the Doctor a “land parasite.” This was a neat reminder that the term “Sea Devil” is one that the Doctor used, it’s not a name they use of themselves. And, as the Sea Devil rightly noted, it’s not a very complimentary name, hence the insulting retort.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something about the Sea Devil costumes. As with other classic villains, the modern production team tried to be faithful to the original 1972 design but with some enhancements that take advantage of 2022 technology. Aside from the fact that the masks are a little more convincing, they addressed the fact that the turtle-like mouths of the Sea Devils are not really conducive to good verbal articulation. How can that beaky mouth make such good “p” and “f” sounds? If you watch these new Sea Devils speak, they make movements with their mouths and necks that trigger a blue device they wear. Clearly, this device is what converts the neck and mouth contractions into speech. I thought this was clever and well-executed.

To sum up my thoughts, as I said at the beginning, this wasn’t a bad effort. But, as I’ve observed with a number of the stories during Chibber’s era, it could have been so much better. If they had cut the Doctor-Yaz romance, they could have allowed more time to explain some of the plot points I felt were not adequately handled. Also, it would have been an improvement if Yaz and Dan actually brought something useful to the story, like character and purpose, or had sat this one out. “Legend of the Sea Devils” is not compelling Who, not “must-see” Who, not good Who, but okay Who. I don’t think you’d regret spending 40 minutes watching it. But you’d probably be better entertained watching the original 1972 story.