Doctor WhoManaged to Make a High Seas Adventure as Dull as Dishwater

Dr. Who ’s had a flake of event enfeeblement lately , thanks to a schedule more order by the chaos of the past two year than of its own particular volition . BetweenFluxand the special episodesclosing out Jodie Whittaker ’s timeas the Doctor , we ’ve been instruct to gestate big things , exciting thing , because this is all the Doctor Who you ’re getting for months at a prison term . So what happens when the excitement forgets to show up ?

That ’s kind of what “ Legend of the Sea Devils ” is : an episode of Dr. Who that would perhaps be a utterly fine adventure in a full season of the show , rather than being sold as the next big special . You know , that sort of spine every time of year of Who is built on — an Aggressively Fine story you watch once and then block about entirely because of much more exciting thing going on elsewhere in that chunk of episodes until you revisit that season and forget it all over again . It ’s got all the makings of something playfulness : the take of a Graeco-Roman monster in the Sea Devils , 50 years after their debut ; a cool diachronic setting in the form of the sea around 19th century China ; and , perhaps arguably most important of all , plagiariser ship ! Two pirate ships , one of which is flying and ostensibly full of Sea Devils !

And yet , none of it really works beyond the cursory idea that it was , ultimately , an episode of television that got made . There ’s little build up or latent hostility around the Sea Devils that dampens ( good-for-nothing , not sorry ) their scourge — they appear , they say they need to take over the world to the Doctor , and then they just … kind of sit there doing that until they ’re kibosh . They ’re great appear monsters ( perhaps one of the best in Who ’s recent history in terms of redesigning a familiar look ) but not especially monstrous , so there ’s little of that classic fear outside of a little , acute dosage virtually at the start of the installment . The tiny handful of guest characters — Crystal Yu and Arthur Lee as the piratical Madame Ching and Ji - Hun , respectively , and Marlowe Chan - Reeves as the irritable young villager Ying Kei , who loses his family in the first Sea Devil attack — don’t get much in the way of background signal or even base motivation beyond awkwardly return exposition that is then largely left unaffected . Ying Kei wants vengeance , until he does n’t ! Madame Ching want to pay off debt holding her children hostage , and then cause the goods to do that . Ji - Hun … wants to die because the Sea Devils have kept him in suspended vivification for a few hundred years , and that ’s rude of them .

The beginning of the end for the 13th Doctor is off to an unexciting start.

The beginning of the end for the 13th Doctor is off to an unexciting start.Image: BBC

Everything about “ Legend of the Sea Devils ” feels like that : perfunctory . The deficiency of genuine tenseness means you never really manage about the Sea Devils and their scourge . The deficiency of clock time with Ching , Ji - Hun , and Ying Kei intend that beyond their initial motivations , you do n’t get to see them go on satisfy arcs . By the time everything ’s mean to crescendo in the third act , it palpate like the hearing is counting down the clock , and everything monkey out beyond a bit of aroused solvent for the Doctor and her friend ( more on that afterwards ) . It ’s also not hard to feel the constraints of shooting an episode like this at the altitude of mid - pandemic safe production rules , because what does n’t help “ Legend of the Sea Devils ” and its lack of energy is how empty it feels .

From wide open shots of empty sauceboat decks to very awkward transitions to avoid showing how the Doctor and friends spring from one ship to the next , everything about “ Legend ” feels somehoweven more limitedthan doc Who commonly does . The primary chuck beyond the Doctor and her friend is low , and that ’s about it for genuine masses in the instalment that are n’t covered under layers of Sea Devil prosthetics — and even then , there ’s not many of them at a time , so scenes just finger grieving . There ’s no veridical stakes to what the Sea Devils need to do outside of the initial village attack , so it ’s hard to handle about , well , the thing Doctor Who is about : the Doctor of the Church racing to stop the colossus from their evil architectural plan .

And it ’s not like Doctor Who ca n’t do tawdry - feel , small - stake bottle episode dash adventures . It ’s Doctor Who , it ’s literally about 60 % that and has been for nearly 60 twelvemonth . Hell , the last episode of the show was just that . “ Eve of the Daleks ” was a write up that act to the strengths of its obvious limit , a pissed timeloop taradiddle that could unfold on a circumscribed number of set with a special amount of form that could be in a room together for a given distance of clock time with purpose . It gave us a chance to actually care about not just the Doctor , Yaz , and Dan , but the new characters introduced , because it knew it was all it had . “ Legend of the Sea Devils ” wanted to be a big , wholesale eminent - ocean adventure , but just … was n’t , and trundled along hoping for the safe anyway . It ’s narrate when the trailer forthe next episodeat the close had more agitation in it than anything in “ Legend ” itself .

Image: BBC

Aside from the hum - drum nature of the escapade itself though , “ Legend ” got one thing right : thanks to its guest ace for the most part exist to give Dan someone to babble to now and then , its actual strength comes in grant the Doctor and Yaz time to be with each other , and talk through their complicated feel about each other at last . It might have to condense a little pass on the nature of this not just being a one - off episode , but the penultimate entry before Whittaker ’s Dr. is out of the show entirely , but finally lease Yaz and the Doctor awkwardly dance around theirobvious affection for eachother gave “ Legend ” an emotional core it miss elsewhere , even if most of that magnetic core is entirely freestanding from the chief driving force of the episode .

Even if the idea of the Doctor and Yaz record a romantic relationship is doomed — both textually , from the medico ’s warning that their nature as a Time Lord means that any kinship with a human , romantic or otherwise , is doomed to end in heartbreak , and metatextually , with the quickly impendent remnant of Whittaker and Chibnall ’s time on the show — have to see both character pushed out of their ease zones with each other , it ’s important to at least have those moments out in the open air . If only for the stakes of making the next installment in reality matter even more now , it ’s an important development for both Yaz and the thirteenth Doctor likewise — specially the latter , whose glum impulses have promote her down a way of being dishonest with her close friends time and meter again . Making herself vulnerable to Yaz , even if it ’s to secern her just how much she can not yield to face the heartbreak of being truly vulnerable with her , is a step toward healing some of that pain and dark she ’s been contend with since hertrials on Gallifrey .

But we know further heartbreak is on the way for the 13th Doctor now — her final Day , and a engagement full of old friends and onetime enemies to end this current earned run average of Doctor Who . As befit a show about sentence travel , it ’s always the future that ’s the most exciting and full of potential … even if Doctor Who had to swop quite a turn of exhilaration in the nowadays to set the stage for it .

Image: BBC