Mark Harrison | On 27, Feb 2022

Offering 626 Doctor Who episodes broadcast between 1963 and 1996, BritBox UK is bigger on the inside. If you’ve watched all of the new series already, then why not join us as we turn on the TARDIS randomiser for a monthly primer on the adventures of the first eight Doctors…

As we learned at the end of Doctor Who’s 2022 New Year special, Jodie Whittaker’s penultimate episode, Legend Of The Sea Devils, ticks one of the last A-list classic monsters off the list of New Who returnees. They’re the aquatic relatives of the Silurians, who have appeared in various New Who adventures since 2010.

Created by Malcolm Hulke, both the Silurians and the Sea Devils (the Doctor posits various alternate names, including Eocenes and Homo Reptilia) present a more diplomatic challenge than big-hitters such as the Daleks, Cybermen or Sontarans. They’re another indigenous Earth population, presenting conflicts with humanity about who is the dominant species.

Having gone underground all over the world to avoid a forecast planetary collision – which just turned out to be the Moon joining with Earth – these ancient castes pop up when they’re shaken out of their faulty hibernation chambers thousands of years later and are very unhappy with the civilisation that’s sprung up while they were sleeping.

If you want to brush up on their previous three stories, which include diplomacy, derring-do, and, er… a toxic pantomime-horse-looking thing, now’s a good time to start. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Sea Devils’ debut and the Whittaker special will arrive on BBC One at Easter, so here’s where to look on BritBox….

Doctor Who and the Silurians (Season 7, 1970)

“There is not room for both civilisations.”

Jon Pertwee’s second serial as the Doctor is notably the only TV story in the show’s history to go with the Target novelisation naming scheme, which is one step further than it being implied for the new series – “Doctor Who and Rose”, “Doctor Who and the End of the World”, and so on – but beyond that bit of trivia, it’s a bold reconfiguration of the show.

Exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, the Third Doctor has only recently started working as a scientific adviser to UNIT when energy from a nuclear research centre awakens a Silurian caste. The Brigadier and company arrive after some human bystanders encounter their pet dinosaur and the Doctor does his best to broker peace between the two species.

Across seven episodes, the Doctor has to deal with aggression from both sides, whether it’s a deadly disease of Silurian design or the itchy trigger fingers of the military above ground. But at heart, it’s a different type of sci-fi invasion than anything the series had done up to this point and, true to his name, Hulke smashes it.

Without getting into specific spoilers, the story comes to a shattering conclusion that should colour the Doctor and UNIT’s relationship forever, right at the very start of it. So naturally, it hardly ever comes up again.

The Sea Devils (Season 9, 1972)

“Why begin a long and bloody war where thousands will be killed on both sides?”

After the experimental style of Season 7, Pertwee’s era found its tone from the second year onwards, with the introduction of Roger Delgado as The Master and Katy Manning as Liz Grant. And so, Hulke’s sequel story, The Sea Devils, is something of a remake of Doctor Who and the Silurians with the new, action-packed formula in place.

There’s plenty to recommend it. After several clashes with the Master, UNIT has successfully locked the devilish Time Lord up on a small island in the English Channel. While visiting his old frenemy, the Doctor and Jo hear reports of a “Sea Devil” attacking a sailor and confront another Homo Reptilia awakening.

50 years old this week, the serial boasts one of the all-time best-remembered visuals of the classic series – Sea Devils emerging from the sea in an iconic mid-serial cliffhanger. It’s one of those moments that seems to have captured audiences’ imaginations, which isn’t bad going for a rubber head and a mesh vest.

UNIT sit this one out, but there’s an interesting wrinkle in their actions from the previous Silurians story forming a military precedent for the Royal Navy, which features heavily after the BBC secured their cooperation. By comparison to the think-piece of the previous story, this shows more of the Pertwee era’s trend towards 60s Bond and Batman-inspired antics. That’s not to say it’s a typical Third Doctor caper, because it’s an exceptional one.

Whether it’s the Sea Devils doing their Honey Ryder thing or the deliriously entertaining sword fight between the Doctor and the Master, this may be the ultimate comfort watch as Classic Who goes.

Warriors of the Deep (Season 21, 1984)

“There should have been another way.”

If you really want to do your homework, this Fifth Doctor story brings back both species in the backdrop of a highly allegorical cold war between two superpower blocs, set 100 years after the serial was first broadcast. The Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough arrive on an underwater base with nuclear capabilities, just as it’s invaded by both Silurians and Sea Devils, who want to light the powder keg and annihilate the usurping humans. Oh, and they’ve brought a Myrka, a terrifying marine creature that kills on contact via bio-electricity.

Afflicted by studio limitations, terrible production design, and a contentious script-editing process, Warriors of the Deep is a real low point in the Fifth Doctor’s era. The behind-the-scenes documentaries usually have various recriminations about what went wrong, but this is one of those stories that’s remembered for only bad reasons.

There are salvageable parts of Johnny Byrne’s scripts, which intended something more in the vein of the 1979 movie Alien than the clinical white corridor run-around we get here. Script editor Eric Saward was making most stories darker and more violent, at odds with the increasingly tasteless production design decisions.

If you made a coat of arms for the worst of 1980s Who, you’d find the Myrka mounted on at least one side – a garish, wet-paint-covered rubber pantomime horse that galumphs around electrocuting people on touch. There’s a bit where Hammer horror icon guest star Ingrid Pitt attempts karate on one and meets instant death and it’s often touted by then-BBC One controller Michael Grade as the reason he was right to try and kill the programme.

Peter Davison is by this point used to doing his best to elevate the material – see his bitter delivery of the line: “I sometimes wonder why I like the people of this miserable planet so much…” – and it’s a coincidence that he announced his long-time plan to leave after three seasons during the production of this story. Still, Warriors Of The Deep is there for completists and masochists everywhere!

 

New Who viewing

In 2010, showrunner Chris Chibnall revived another caste of Silurians in the two-parter The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood. This story comes to a slightly different resolution than usual, but it’s a stalemate that kicks the can up the road for as-yet unmade stories. Chibnall also wrote 2012’s Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, which takes place on a Silurian Ark after it’s been hijacked by an amoral trafficker.

After this return, Steven Moffat also introduced Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh, a Silurian who sets herself up as a Sherlockian consulting detective in Victorian London. Recurring from 2012 to 2014, Vastra leads the Paternoster Gang with her human wife, Jenny Flint, and their Sontaran valet, Strax. But, like Strax, she doesn’t talk about her species’ going concerns all that much.

Written by Chris Chibnall and Ella Road, 2022’s Legend of the Sea Devils takes place in 19th-century China and also features pirate queen Madame Ching (Crystal Yu). Here’s the teaser trailer:

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