Honestly, I can't get over just how much more attention the trailer for the next episode got over the episode itself.
Spoilers Legend of the Sea Devils grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
So... yeah. That was a thing that happened. It filled 47 minutes of air time... adequately. I guess.
From what I'm picking up, this was an idea from the original concept for Season 13, before it had to be retooled into Flux. Scenes were actually filmed in the original filming blocks back in the early days of Season 13, and when the entire concept got thrown up in the air and reshuffled, those scenes were dumped.
But then when the BBC said "give us an extra episode around Easter", they had to go back and pull those scenes out of the bin, and try and build a whole new episode around them, writing and filming new scenes that weren't anything to do with the Flux, putting in the Thasmin stuff to follow up on "Eve of the Daleks", and doing it all in the middle of a global apocalypse.
And thus "Legend of the Sea Devils" was born - a mish-mash of bits and pieces that were cobbled together into an episode even though they were never intended to be. So I guess with that kind of history I can see why this wasn't the best episode of the era.
I'm sure all its failings will be dissected with relish, but it makes me feel bad for everyone. I'm sure no-one involved set out to make a bad episode, they were just working in a shitty set of circumstances, and it's a shame they'll get dragged down by the ultimately unsuccessful result.
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From what I'm picking up, this was an idea from the original concept for Season 13, before it had to be retooled into Flux. Scenes were actually filmed in the original filming blocks back in the early days of Season 13, and when the entire concept got thrown up in the air and reshuffled, those scenes were dumped.
But then when the BBC said "give us an extra episode around Easter", they had to go back and pull those scenes out of the bin, and try and build a whole new episode around them, writing and filming new scenes that weren't anything to do with the Flux, putting in the Thasmin stuff to follow up on "Eve of the Daleks", and doing it all in the middle of a global apocalypse.
And thus "Legend of the Sea Devils" was born - a mish-mash of bits and pieces that were cobbled together into an episode even though they were never intended to be. So I guess with that kind of history I can see why this wasn't the best episode of the era.
I'm sure all its failings will be dissected with relish, but it makes me feel bad for everyone. I'm sure no-one involved set out to make a bad episode, they were just working in a shitty set of circumstances, and it's a shame they'll get dragged down by the ultimately unsuccessful result.
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Martha left.
Yaz needs to take some pride in herself and %%ck off.
Yaz needs to take some pride in herself and %%ck off.
Some really horrible science in this episode. So bad that it's at Kill the Moon levels of stupid.
How would flipping Earth's magnetic field cause global flooding? It wouldn't. And how does it cause the stars to move around in the sky? It wouldn't.
I don't watch DW for the science. But the very basic science stuff should be correct. Really takes you out of the story when it's not.
How would flipping Earth's magnetic field cause global flooding? It wouldn't. And how does it cause the stars to move around in the sky? It wouldn't.
I don't watch DW for the science. But the very basic science stuff should be correct. Really takes you out of the story when it's not.
Yeah, that was a total WTF to me.
An acclaimed writer can do a home run in one show and a constant strike-out loaded with foul balls in another. For DW, Chibs was a mixed bag worse than JNT's. His Torchwood stuff was laughable and some B-flicks from the 1960s-80s used the same concepts far better (e.g. his hilariously bad sex monster episode... Look up "Lifeforce" by comparison - that movie's how you do it... Torchwood's superficial veneer of hokum, not so much... )) Never mind his previous DW stories, which were largely awful but had a tone that helped improve things despite it all. All this more or less suggests he should have should have kept with general drama and stayed away from sci-fi.
Also, the comparison is goofy because JNT was never a writer. He was a producer, from 40 years ago back when television was made vastly differently, who knew how to stretch a budget and was quick to reduce catastrophes, having worked in the industry and noticed the number of industrial actions clobbering episodes. Everyone in the show had strengths - whether those always got used is another matter.
And yet, despite not being a writer or having consistent strengths as one, JNT's era had brilliantly brought back the Master (per an idea of JNT's dropped in), used regeneration trauma as a plot point, wanted to make show serious after years of an increasing comedy act (in both dialogue and even basic storylines, 1979 media reviews were very harsh), more accurate science (FWIW, since no era was perfect in that regard but no way would he do anything that NuWHO has vomited onto our screens, moon spider eggs and all...), more action (sheesh, even Black Orchid wasn't as snooze-inducing as 99% of Chibnall's works and that's saying something), more character consistency (and depth) ironically*, aimed at people over the age of six (by 1980 or 2020 standards), and kept doing its own thing where possible instead of cookie-cuttering all the fads. (Apart from having to compete with the 80s action schlock shows, but DW of the time has aged better than Buck Rogers and over-tropey A-Team as far as I'm concerned.)
How Chibnall dropped the ball on so many good ideas for companions (Ryan and Graham had great backgrounds, whose traits are dropped out of nowhere and for no proper reason... among other inconsistencies. Now, we saw some of the same problem with JNT. But the point is, we shouldn't have seen that whatsoever with award-winning writer Chibnall and his ensemble writing team (of the likes previous producers would have loved but never had, which makes it all even more bizarre. Even more bizarre given the gaps between seasons and compared to how much more script work had to be done in decades' past...) Worse, Ruth Doctor did in 2 seconds what Jodie couldn't in almost 60000 and come across as the Doctor... yet Chibnall chose the style for Jodie and Ruth was clearly an afterthought...***)
* yes, that one about the characters - JNT's era is also loaded with stick figures who are nothing more than cyphers. JNT was solely a producer**, not an acclaimed writer. What's Chibnall's excuse for such a poor era? (Apart from sci-fi being a very different beast compared to normal drama, no matter how many tried to blend both genres together and no matter how softly.)
** but did occasional director work and based on what he had done, he should have done more directing because he's done excellent work as second unit director in the 80s
*** On the other hand, stupid sonic magic wand and regurgitating too recently used plot tropes aside, his era's pseudohistoricals were the best since Hartnell's (JNT era's "Black Orchid" is a flop, let's face it) and I suspect if he dropped the magic and boring alien invaders/noninvaders/whocares, his historical-era stories would have been that much stronger...
It happened offscreen...
...Just like all them adventures Doc9 had with Rose and Jack and Mickey on other planets - all off screen... in a show that had said nonstop for 26 seasons prior that it could go anywhere in time and place, with countless civilizations to meet... oops... Ditto for Doc10's era for the most part as well...
2.26M overnight viewers. 3 days remain before the weekly totals are compiled, so there's still time if you want something other than a sleep aid to get a good night's rest with... (save for the historical pirate queen figure, Chibnall's good at finding historical figures that are interesting and get audiences to want to know more. Like how Pip and Jane Baker got viewers to the encyclopedias and dictionaries in order to pass tenth grade English class...)
The teaser for the grand finale is
amusing. It's chock full of baddies and old friends and all people have done is salivate over the return of old companions... in an era that has often messed up its own potential with its own current characters. This episode better be 2 hours long to fit in what might be the ultimate fanwank, what with Daleks and Cybermen fighting each other again - not to mention it's two Cyber factions and as the Lone Cyberman was ostensibly killed - maybe he's a Cyberlord in disguise (or Chibnall ditched that idea after realizing why Robert Holmes dropping it decades' earlier was the right thing to do and at least the Cybermen were genuinely scary in the 80s compared to the 21st century but I digress), Master returns (in two different forms, apparently), characters screaming, all-time fan favorites* Tegan and Ace...
* I adore them, but all they do is cookie cutter Rose's schlock from "School Reunion" about how long it'd been since they saw the Doctor (okey dokey, then) and in the next snippet are both being all Sarah Ripley and Ellen Connor with big machine guns (since Chibnall thinks neither is good enough to outdo 7 of 9's two-semiautomatic laser blasters' zapping but his era isn't given $10mil per episode either). Ace is also beating up a Dalek with a bat in one freeze-frame with the Dalek gun aimed at her at point blank range too... it's beyond a joke that a character gets in front of the thing and it won't zap... so maybe it will, if there's a poll I'm sure more people would wager one or both will be killed off.
* I adore them, but all they do is cookie cutter Rose's schlock from "School Reunion" about how long it'd been since they saw the Doctor (okey dokey, then) and in the next snippet are both being all Sarah Ripley and Ellen Connor with big machine guns (since Chibnall thinks neither is good enough to outdo 7 of 9's two-semiautomatic laser blasters' zapping but his era isn't given $10mil per episode either). Ace is also beating up a Dalek with a bat in one freeze-frame with the Dalek gun aimed at her at point blank range too... it's beyond a joke that a character gets in front of the thing and it won't zap... so maybe it will, if there's a poll I'm sure more people would wager one or both will be killed off.
^^^Well on a positive it's better than 2.25m. lol
Maybe it's time for a re-release and a remaster to save the show once again. lol
Maybe it's time for a re-release and a remaster to save the show once again. lol
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Particularly as it happens before the pole switching device (isn't) activated.
A major problem I have with the Chibnall era is its tendency to feature a strong black/ethnic woman who isn't as forgotten as he thinks, and then rob her of agency in her own story.
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Black Orchid was straight historical. Pseudo-historicals under JNT were pretty good, and very much the template going forward. (Though it’s a real grey-era sliding scale… is Remembrance a pseudo historical? Fenric? Chibnall wishes he wrote Remembrance in particular I suspect.)
A straight Historical has no aliens trying to take over/destroy the world.
Which is a story we haven't seen since the 60s.
Which is a story we haven't seen since the 60s.
Black Orchid. Definitely.
Once Adric discovered buffets I don't think he was going to stop until they dragged him back to the TARDIS.
That alone almost caused the story to become a four parter!
I suppose that technically qualifies as some kind of alien plague or infestation.
I can appreciate the Whittaker / Chibnall era in concept.
A clean slate Doctor who never discusses her past, who starts off with resolutely standalone adventures and no returning villains because she's deliberately ignoring anything that came before, who wants to let go of all that accumulated trauma and just move forward. But she goes through a phase where she starts to realise that the past is reaching out to pull her back in regardless of her intentions, as the storylines gradually coalesce and the old faces start to return. And who eventually ends up in a fully serialised story filled with returning villains where she is forced to dive further into her past than any previous Doctor, and face it head on after trying so hard to leave it behind.
Like I say, it sounds good in theory - a three-part arc with a defined beginning, middle and end. Lots of social justice ideas in the scripts, backed up by a more diverse than ever cast on screen, and a more diverse than ever production team off screen. A female Doctor letting us see the character from a whole new angle, matched by celebrity historicals about famous women of history. I can see why Chibnall suggested it, and I can see why the BBC agreed to produce it.
I just don't think that a solid concept resulted in a solid product. Was it too ambitious an idea? Was Chibnall just not capable of pulling off in the real world what sounded good on paper? Did the unprecedented clusterfuck of real-world circumstances this production team was forced to deal with affect the end product to that extent, or was it doomed from the start?
I just hoped that the era of the first female Doctor could have been more of an unqualified success. It makes me afraid that those loud-mouthed assholes will hold up that relative unsuccessfulness as "proof" that a woman Doctor was a mistake all along, and that we should go back that most under-represented of demographics, the straight white male. And that would be a shame.
A clean slate Doctor who never discusses her past, who starts off with resolutely standalone adventures and no returning villains because she's deliberately ignoring anything that came before, who wants to let go of all that accumulated trauma and just move forward. But she goes through a phase where she starts to realise that the past is reaching out to pull her back in regardless of her intentions, as the storylines gradually coalesce and the old faces start to return. And who eventually ends up in a fully serialised story filled with returning villains where she is forced to dive further into her past than any previous Doctor, and face it head on after trying so hard to leave it behind.
Like I say, it sounds good in theory - a three-part arc with a defined beginning, middle and end. Lots of social justice ideas in the scripts, backed up by a more diverse than ever cast on screen, and a more diverse than ever production team off screen. A female Doctor letting us see the character from a whole new angle, matched by celebrity historicals about famous women of history. I can see why Chibnall suggested it, and I can see why the BBC agreed to produce it.
I just don't think that a solid concept resulted in a solid product. Was it too ambitious an idea? Was Chibnall just not capable of pulling off in the real world what sounded good on paper? Did the unprecedented clusterfuck of real-world circumstances this production team was forced to deal with affect the end product to that extent, or was it doomed from the start?
I just hoped that the era of the first female Doctor could have been more of an unqualified success. It makes me afraid that those loud-mouthed assholes will hold up that relative unsuccessfulness as "proof" that a woman Doctor was a mistake all along, and that we should go back that most under-represented of demographics, the straight white male. And that would be a shame.
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As much as I hate everything to do with the Timeless Child revelations, I think giving us two very different female Doctors in the same run turned out to be a smart idea. The Fugitive Doctor helped prove the concept of a female Doctor to people who were on the fence about the idea and didn't appreciate Thirteen's more passive persona, greatly weakening any argument that a woman Doctor was a mistake.