| Episode: | 870 | | | Writer: | Ella Road and Chris Chibnall |
| | Director: | Haolu Wang | | | Air Date: | 17-Apr-2022 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching a Doctor Who episode... though maybe not the one you're expecting. I know I said that I'd be writing about the episode The Doctor's Wife from the Eleventh Doctor era, but that's because I forgot that Legend of the Sea Devils starring the Thirteenth Doctor was going to be on TV. Don't worry, you'll still be getting that other episode soon, you're just getting a bonus episode first.
Also I usually give my reviews a proper second draft to fix all the inaccuracies, rephrase sentences that make no sense, and catch at least half the typos, but this time I'm in too much of a rush. I want to get this published as soon as possible, so I'm mostly giving you my first thoughts, right off the top of my head.
Here's my first first thought: wow, it's weird seeing these opening titles for the second to last time. Presumably. It really doesn't feel like we've had them long, at least not to me. Legend of the Sea Devils is the second of the three specials we're getting this year in place of a full season, and it's the penultimate episode of the Chris Chibnall-era. Only one more story to go after this, and that's it for Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker.
The episode was also written by Ella Road and it was directed by Haolu Wang, who are both new to Doctor Who. In fact they're both pretty new in general, as this is the first script Road has gotten on TV and up to this point Wang had only ever directed shorts. You've got to start somewhere I guess!
Alright I'm going to go through the episode basically scene by scene and try to write something halfway interesting underneath each screencap as I recap the story and share my thoughts. There will be SPOILERS, though I won't give away anything from the 'next time' trailer at the end, even though I accidentally watched it.
Rain's a good excuse for not having too many extras outside while COVID is making filming more awkward, but we do see a few villagers rushing to get inside quickly as a mysterious woman walks into town.
They're a bit concerned about how she's headed for their statue and the dad decides to go out and face her alone. Someone's got to stop her from unleashing whatever, and if the dad dies here that duty will fall to the son. Though they're not going to try to stop her together, because then they might both die! That's just logic.
The music's all very dramatic at this point by the way. It sounds plenty Chinese but somehow also halfway to being a western.
Though the weirdest thing about this scene is how the woman is dressed like a pirate, but she's strolled into town alone like she's a gunslinger. I'm really feeling the absence of a crew here.
She pulls a blade and starts to chip away at the base, causing cracks to spread across its back. They have kind of a stylised ink-on-parchment look, but I don't think that was intentional.
Anyway this is the point where the dad finally turns up. I guess he needed to put his shoes on first and find his keys. He orders her to stop, but the damage is done by this point. The statue bursts open, releasing the creature, and the two humans are knocked to the ground... at least that's what's happened by the next shot. What I actually saw was it exploding and the two of them disappearing in smoke.
The creature swipes at the camera with his sword, the dad screams, and that's the end of the teaser.
The TARDIS crew are dressed for a trip to China but they discover that they've overshot by a couple of centuries. Still, at least Yaz has finally got her trip to a beach. Plus Dan's decided to wear the clothes she picked for him.
Just then the Doctor's earring starts being pulled by an invisible force. Dan's right there covered in metal buckles but it only wants the earring. Fortunately she's able to use her sonic to sort it out. Then she gets them skimming stones over the ocean to test a theory, and watches as they all veer off wildly. It's a kinetic hyper-curve apparently. Geomagnetic disturbance. I guess they must have been throwing metal stones.
But they can't dwell on this mystery for long, as they're distracted by screaming from the dark and rainy village nearby.
The TARDIS crew arrives to find they're too late to save people, but they've still got a monster to stop. The Doctor calls him a Sea Devil and he replies with "Land Parasite", which I suppose is fair. She asks him what he'd prefer to be called (she's come a long way from the days when she mocked T'zim-Sha by calling him Tim Shaw all the time), but he doesn't give her an alternative so I guess we're sticking with Sea Devil.
The production team have made a real effort to stay true to the original look with this guy, which I can definitely respect. I thought the series did alright in the Moffat-era with its updates of the Silurians and the Ice Warriors, by revealing that the clunky original look was actually a mask, but sometimes it's nice to just go old school. I'm not sure the CGI augmented mouth is working though. A bit of lip wobbling isn't enough to be convincing.
Though hang on, where did the net come from? Did they see it on the ground and decide to make use of it, or has there been a time skip and they've been working on the project all afternoon while he was busy killing innocents on the other side of town?
The weird thing is that I don't think he's actually cut anything here. He just lit the sword up and the net fell down. I suppose the production crew might have only had the one net and didn't want to ruin it in case they needed another take.
Well now they're screwed. It's the three of them versus a creature that's just hacked a village to death with a glowing sword. Also he's got a giant flying boat which sails in through the mist! "That's impossible," exclaims the Doctor, utterly shocked by the sight of an ancient race using their advanced technology to make a ship hover. Actually to be fair she seems mostly confused about Sea Devils having any kind of ship, because they live underwater.
And then the Sea Devil leaps up onto his vessel.
Well that effect looked kind of terrible, but the thing that's bothering me most about the scene is that the Sea Devil kind of just ran away for no reason. I mean maybe he was just murdering people as something to do while waiting for his boat to arrive, but it does seem really strange that he's lettiing the people that caught him in a net live. In fact his whole Sea Devil pirate crew are just making a run for it.
It's at this point that the female pirate finally wakes up after being caught in the statue explosion, and she still has the bit of statue with writing on in her hand. The other guy isn't doing so well though, as he's dead, and the stab wound has left him with blue lines all over his skin.
Just then the son arrives to avenge his dad, and lasts approximately 2 seconds in a sword fight despite catching her by surprise.
The Doctor arrives to tell him that the blue lines mean she didn't kill his dad and we learn that the woman is called... actually she says her name pretty quickly and I found it hard to catch, but I looked it up and she's Zheng Yi Sao, also known as Madame Ching. The Doctor's really hyped to meet her, calling her a pirate queen, and she's not exaggerating. She was the most successful female pirate in history, with 400 ships and around 50,000 men under her command by 1807. I guess they're all just off screen at the moment?
Dan shows off an impressive knowledge of 16th century shipwrecks, pointing out that it went down off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but Zheng Yi Sao claims that the treasure was taken by a great captain called Ji-Hun... who then went and got his own vessel shipwrecked somewhere else.
He tells his men to unleash the Huasen and let it feast.
Unfortunately the only fish around right now is a gigantic leviathan that swipes his net and then lurches up out of the water to eat him.
 |
| (Artist's interpretation) |
Meanwhile I'm still waiting for the episode to really reach out and grab me. I'm not hating it, I'm just feeling very detached from the story right now and a bit confused about what's going on.
The episode cuts to the beach where the son (called Ying Ki according to Wikipedia) looks out at Zheng Yi Sao's boat. He's still kind of pissed that she killed his dad, so Dan decides to pull a 'Graham' and go over to chat with him about it.
He tells Dan that they can get to her boat by swimming, but Dan points out he's not supposed to split up from the others. Cut to the Doctor in the TARDIS being annoyed with Yaz for letting Dan go off on his own thing.
Hang on, what? I feel like we're just skipping whole scenes right now. It has to be a script choice not an editing choice, as it cuts straight from Dan's line "I'm not supposed to wander off," to the Doctor saying "Rule one: don't wander off," but it doesn't quite work. It's like we missed one scene where the group split up, Zheng Yi Sao returned to her boat and the Doctor decided to go back to the TARDIS, and another scene where Dan talked to Yaz about going off on his own. Sure all the information has been given in dialogue, but it's like we're getting people's reactions to the story instead of the story itself.
Her plan is to get Zheng Yi Sao's assistance by going back in time to Ji-Hun's ship and finding the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar, which is actually what they came for in the first place before they got dragged to the 19th century. So that's a bit of a coincidence! These are their treasure hunting outfits I guess.
Oh, she also gave Yaz a bit of backstory about the Sea Devils, saying that they're from Earth and they lived her before humans.
Dan and Ying Ki have successfully swam all the way to Zheng Yi Sao's ship by this point and they find that she's the only one there. Which is lucky as if there was anyone else on the deck they probably would've gotten caught almost immediately.
I keep trying to figure out what's wrong with the look of some of these shots. Because it's not the set they're on, that looks fantastic. I think it might be the lighting making it look like it was filmed indoors on a soundstage.
Ying Ki tells her that he's come here to kill her, which is true. But Dan volunteers the two of them to become her crew and she's happy with that arrangement. She needs someone to help her run the ship if she's to get to Ji-Hun's treasure, and even though Ying Ki hasn't said a word since "we're going to kill you", she's going to trust him. I guess this means that the Doctor made it back from her trip and landed the TARDIS at the same time she left, otherwise it wouldn't be around to translate what they're saying to each other here. Then again Dan might be able to speak Chinese for all I know, he has been here before.
The Doctor parks her TARDIS in a room on board and goes to take a peek at what's going on outside. Turns out that Captain Ji-Hun is driving his crew overboard! So that's weird. It's also a bit weird that the Sea Devil captain materialises out of some green mist. I don't remember them being able to do that before.
The Doctor and Yaz decide to make a run for the safety of the TARDIS and leave empty handed, which is a bit of a shame as the treasure's right there on the deck.
I don't often have a reason to mention the dialogue in a Chibnall-era Doctor Who story, but I do like the Doctor's line here about how history's a lot like Stephen King movies, as things are never quite like they are in the books. Though it would be nice if history did resemble the history books a little bit, so the time travel means more than just a change of scenery.
Though the Doctor makes it a bit awkward for Yaz by saying "Not a bad date, am I?" The smiles disappear and the two of them look at each other in the doorway. "Something's missing", the Doctor says, before turning towards the vast and empty ocean that surrounds them. "No ship, Sherlock!"
Okay they did well there; the writers, director, actor, everyone involved. In fact this whole scene is probably my favourite part of the episode so far. Probably less fun for the Thirteen and Yaz shippers who actually wanted a ship though.
I can tell that Yaz is kind of in her own world right now as she doesn't spot the ocean floor loudly collapsing below them either. She does at least spot that they're not falling, though the reason for that isn't actually explained.
I think this is one of those moments where the viewer has an unfair advantage over the characters, as we're only seeing the important pieces of the puzzle. Because the Doctor and Yaz are wondering what could've possibly happened to Ji-Hun's ship, while also wondering where the Sea Devils got their flying ship from. You don't have to be a 2000 year old genius Time Lord to connect those dots.
Meanwhile on Zheng Yi Sao's ship (they should really give these vessels names), the pirate queen is a bit confused about why her compass is going crazy. So she tries to navigate by the stars instead.
Here we finally get to learn why Zheng Yi Sao is out on her own, desperate to find this treasure. It turns out that her crew have been taken hostage by Guo Podai and the Black Flag Fleet, including her two sons, and she needs the money to pay for their release.
History says that her sons were born in 1803 and 1807, but I guess history doesn't know what it's talking about as it's 1807 now and she says that her sons are aged 3 and 6. History also mentions that Guo Podai was actually under her command. In fact she ran the pirate confederation of six fleets, so those are a lot of people to be taken hostage.
Just then her sad story is interrupted by an attack by the Huasen!
Zheng Yi Sao tells Dan and Ying Ki to man the cannons, which they're of course able to do. I mean I presume they're able to do it even though we don't actually see them do anything but light the fuses. They fire three rounds rapid right into the ocean and the cannonballs disappear below the waves... before being thrown right back at them! Then they collide in the air and explode, knocking the three of them out.
Like I said, I'm not an expert on 19th century naval warfare, but as far as I know cannonballs were generally just solid iron, which doesn't explode on impact. But I imagine there's no reason they couldn't have been exploding cannonballs. They could've had their own fuses on them that I just didn't see. Also this is super nitpicky, but the episode started with them skimming stones across the water, so I'm going to mention that cannonballs apparently skim across the water too.
Anyway the important thing is that the three characters have been temporarily taken out of the story without being eaten.
They're met by the Sea Devil captain who asks them what they know. And then Yaz goes and tells him! How has she been hanging around with the Doctor all this time without picking up how this works?
It turns out that the Sea Devil captain is one of those villains that lets the Doctor go wandering around his command centre, examining all the equipment and describing to him what he's up to. Soon she's the one who's asking him the questions, like how he ended up in the statue, and what happened to Ji-Hun's ship.
I've been preoccupied with another mystery though: where actually is all this? Inside the monster? In a cave under the sea? Oh wait, it can't be inside the Huasen, the ship would never fit in his mouth. Never mind, ignore that.
The Sea Devil captain would like to know where the 'keystone' is and again Yaz opens her mouth, admitting that they don't know what he's talking about. C'mon Yaz, you've been useless in the past but you've never been an outright liability like this before. The Doctor manages to turn it around though, and negotiates to get on board his flying ship in exchange for more conversation about the keystone.
They apparently kept the vessel because it instils fear, not because they really need a ship. I think it has to come in handy though; I mean land dwellers can get around just fine on their legs but they can get further in a car. Plus the ship has one feature the cave doesn't have: a stasis booth or whatever containing Ji-Hun! It seems they put him in there right away as he hasn't aged a day since the 16th century.
Ji-Hun reveals that he kicked his crew off the ship in order to save them from the Sea Devils and get the keystone safe. It was a part of the lost treasure they picked up: a gem with infinite powers. So like an infinity gem from the Marvel films then?
This is the Doctor's cue to leap into action, so she uses her sonic on a console to raise the ship from under the ocean floor! The villain made the classic mistake of leaving the Doctor free to run around in a room full of buttons. Still, it could've been worse for him. I mean instead of pulling a sonic out of her pocket she could've just pulled a gun out and shot him dead. A space gun which fires bullets that work against Doctor Who monsters.
Though there is at least one Sea Devil on board, which is a bit of a problem. Especially to the Doctor and Yaz, who are still stuck in the control room with him and his glowing blue sword.
Ji-Hun doesn't even get a shot of him swinging in when he arrives, but hey this means they were able to save him from the stasis field somehow! Man, it was fortunate for the three of them that there was a ship nearby, otherwise their daring escape wouldn't have gotten them very far.
It's funny how the historical pirate queen is being overshadowed now by this other guy they just made up for the episode. At this point I have to wonder why they even made her a historical figure when it has no relevance to the story and her situation bears no resemblance to her history. They should've just made her a ship captain, because that's all she is here.
They figure out that Ying Ki is wearing the keystone, but then the Sea Devil captain teleports over! Well they're screwed now. Or maybe they can just walk away from him again. Maybe he'll leap away from them again!
Turns out that the Sea Devil captain tracked Lei Bao down to shore but he used the stone to freeze him as a statue, and then passed the duty of defending them down to his descendants. They did a great job with that. Quick, throw the stone over to the Doctor so she can turn him into a statue again!
The Sea Devil captain gets the keystone (which is a plutonic crystal, apparently) and teleports away again, and the Doctor figures out that if they don't get over to Ji-Hun's ship right now the world is doomed! So they say "Geronimo!" again and now they're on the other ship. Animating CGI people swinging on ropes is hard I guess.
The Doctor goes right back to that control room she only just escaped from to confront the Sea Devil captain and explain his own plan to him. He's going to use Sea Devil technology to flip the Earth's magnetic field, which will somehow melt the ice caps and flood the world. The dude's such a Bond villain.
This effect apparently explains the weird magnetic pull on the Doctor's earring, why the stones they threw went flying off course, and why the stars looked weird... even though he couldn't activate the machine until he had the keystone. I dunno, maybe it was running at 10% or something. I don't get exactly why the stars would look weird though. Some kind of heat haze-like visual distortion?
Fortunately it turns out that the Sea Devils are basically human sized... despite the fact that the Sea Devil captain was turned into a giant statue holding a tiny human. Plutonic crystals truly are strange and powerful.
The good news is that Yaz can sword fight somehow (police sword fighting training?) so she's able to not immediately die, unlike all the people in the village earlier. Dan's somehow holding his own as well, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised as his outfit makes him more prepared than anyone for how campy this is getting.
I'm starting to wonder if the other Sea Devils have actually had any training or experience with a sword, as despite their glowing sci-fi blades they're absolutely getting their asses kicked here. Literally in Dan's case, as he swings a hook into one and then gives them a boot. Plus Zheng Yi Sao saves Ying Ki's life, so that's probably made him a little less likely to stab her in the back. It's also nice that she hasn't given up all her screen time to Ji-Hun.
One thing's pretty clear however: if they were going for an elaborate wuxia homage, they missed.
The Sea Devil captain gets down there just as fast (somehow) and yanks her away by her ankle, but she's back on her feet by the next shot, ready for Ying Ki to kick the sword over to her. It turns out she doesn't even need it however as the others have grabbed the Sea Devil captain and got him pinned... possibly? It's hard to tell, as we don't see any of it. But the Doctor seems happy enough to leave him in their custody while she gets the ship back underwater so she can return to the secret base.
Then Ji-Hun stabs the Sea Devil captain to death! I think. I mean they're still not showing stuff on screen, but he definitely stabbed the floor and I heard a yell. Ji-Hun must be feeling kind of stupid now for telling all his men to jump overboard back in the day instead of having them hold their ground and take the Sea Devils on in a sword fight.
The Doctor's angry about his death, but Ji-Hun's not inclined to give mercy to a man who took everything away from him. So that's that then. They don't exactly have the time to discuss it further to be fair, as the machine's starting and they need to stop it quickly or else the entire world is doomed!
Cut to Dan and Yaz having a chat about whether he told the Doctor that she's secretly in love with her. They don't talk long though as Dan and Ji-Hun are tasked with defending the Doctor and Yaz as they work to save the world in the cave's command centre. Zheng Yi Sao and Ying Ki were supposed to be holding the line as well, but Ji-Hun tells them to go grab the treasure instead. I guess she told him her sad story off screen?
Five or six Sea Devils come marching down a corridorand now it's all on Dan and Ji-Hun to buy the Doctor the time she needs. The Sea Devils form a line in front of them and...
It was a big deal when Ji-Hun stabbed that other guy, but these are just henchmen so you can slice them up guilt-free I suppose.
Meanwhile the Doctor sets up the machine to create a gravity field strong enough to pull everything around here in, which is apparently the correct solution to this problem. It'll definitely stop the Sea Devils from leaving and presumably also crush them to death or just hold them in one place until they starve.
I expect different viewers would've thought of different answers for who the wife is. Could it be:
- River Song?
- Susan's grandmother?
- The TARDIS?
- Cameca from The Aztecs?
- Queen Elizabeth I?
- Marilyn Monroe?
- Some other woman from a mysterious adventure that's never been hinted it until now?
The rest of them race to the TARDIS and escape in the nick of time. Oh Zheng Yi Sao and Ying Ki have put the lost treasure on the TARDIS by the way, so they've already had their 'it's bigger on the inside' moment off screen. If they have any thoughts about the TARDIS they don't say anything.
Well I've sure learned a lot about this interesting and dynamic historical figure who commanded an entire pirate confederation to huge success through her charisma and cleverness. Now I know that she really cared for the crew of her one ship. Also she's pretty much adopted Ying Ki, partly because he lost his only family because of her, partly because it's really hard to sail a ship on your own.
The episode ends with the TARDIS crew back on the beach, under a deep turquoise sky. Dan gives Diane a call and she actually picks up! Seems that she's been missing him. Meanwhile the Doctor and Yaz have a proper chat, and she explains that she can't stay in one place, or with one person, because of who she is. And because she knows that someday it'll hurt.
CONCLUSION
Legend of the Sea Devils is about two things: one last fun adventure before the Thirteen's finale, and her relationship with Yaz. Eve of the Daleks revealed that Yaz was in love with her, giving new hope to all the fans that had been shipping the two of them all along. And this episode slaps that hope right off the table and lets it clatter on the floor! Okay there's no reason that the Doctor can't change her mind later and accept the inevitable hurt, but there isn't a lot of later left. It seems like there's hope for Dan and Diane though, so that's good at least!
The main plot is a real 'an adventure' kind of story. They went on an adventure in this episode. They travelled to 19th century China, met a famous pirate queen, fought some monsters, found some treasure, and saved the world. It's all very lightweight and goofy, with ridiculous looking monsters and a plot about finding a crystal to activate a Bond villain doomsday weapon, and it's kind of hard to take seriously at all. They really weren't going for naturalistic with this one, and the lack of characters really added to the feeling that I was watching a handful of actors playing around in costumes rather than a historical epic. I mean the story includes two legendary captains and neither of them has a crew with them!
Zheng Yi Sao did get to be a bit commanding at times during the first half, but they've taken a pirate queen who led entire fleets and given her a story about how she's awesome enough to sail a ship all on her own, kind of. It's a real waste of a historical figure. Especially as Ji-Hun kind of stole her thunder in the second half. Also I don't know how old Ying Ki's actor is but as the episode went on I really started to get the impression that he was supposed to be much younger. Things like his comments about Dan being 70, Zheng Yi Sao not taking him seriously after he says he'll kill her, and the way he's basically adopted at the end make me think he should've been more like 13 than 23.
And Yaz was also there. Actually that's not fair as she was definitely given some focus in the episode. All she really did was talk too much at the wrong times, but what she was feeling during her scenes with the Doctor were at least as important as anything else that was going on. Plus the Doctor is very Doctory in this one. Sure she loses a sword fight, but she's very proactive and quippy, and she does the thing where she talks for a bit and then hits the switches. She holds her own in a story with four ship captains... even if Ji-Hun has to deal with the villain and sacrifice himself at the end instead of her.
It's weird for me to say this about a Chibnall-era Doctor Who story, but I think the cinematography might have been the most obvious problem for me with this one. Well, the whole way it's been shot and edited really. All the blues have been tinted green for some reason, the scenes on the pirate ship look very fake and flat, the action scenes give the impression of combat without showing a whole lot of it, and it feels like there are entire scenes missing at times. That whole sequence with Dan suddenly being on the beach with the kid, then deciding to infiltrate the pirate ship without talking to anyone, and the Doctor flying off without him was just bizarre. And the characters moving between the two ships by basically yelling "Geronimo!" off-screen wasn't great either. I've heard that the episode had a troubled production and I can really believe it. I don't know if it's COVID that caused it to be so compromised, or something else was going on, but the end result is a bit of a mess.
But despite the production problems, terrible action and shallow story, I honestly didn't hate this. Moments like the Doctor and Yaz's 'date' on the ocean floor really help it rise above some of the other flawed episodes in the series' past. Plus it didn't piss me off or have the heroes do anything horrifically out of character, so that helped. Overall though it's probably one of my least favourite Thirteenth Doctor stories, which is funny considering that Eve of the Daleks is right up at the top of my rankings. We've already gotten the full range from Chibnall's scripts in these three specials and there's still one left to go. I'm dying to see what last minute retcons he's got tucked in his sleeve.
NEXT EPISODE
Doctor Who will return very soon, as next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be travelling back by about 96 episodes to cover episode 6-04: The Doctor's Wife.
I love Who and I can be an apologist for its flaws at times, I know, but this one was too choppy even for me. It felt like half of a two-parter, except we got half of each of the two original episodes, and all in the wrong order.
ReplyDeleteWhy is the Doctor surprised to see the Sea Devil ship in the underground base when she has already seen it twice, once in the teaser, and once in 1533? I was thinking I'd missed something when she was asking what happened to Ji-Hun's ship, as if the Sea Devils one was obviously a third, unconnected, boat.
Dan's dressed as a Hollywood pirate, which feels like it's supposed to be a punchline to a joke about the wrong kind of pirates, except they don't know that they've gone to China to meet a pirate yet, so is that deliberately timey-wimey, or did someone print the script pages in the wrong order?
And you're doing an episode about Zheng Yi Sao, an interesting historical figure that most people may not know much about (unless they've been listening to the BBC's excellent You're Dead to Me podcast), so why then sideline her into a B-plot for most of the episode?
It was fine, I didn't hate it (I can't hate Who) but it was very choppy and messy and not a good example of the show's strengths. It didn't feel at all like a "special".
Oh, and the Doctor also married Elizabeth I, so you can add her to the list of wives.
ReplyDeleteDamn, good memory. I'll update the list of wives and anyone who scrolls down to read the comments will know that it was you that made me do it.
DeleteYou sure say "somehow" and "for some reason" a lot when you're talking about this show. I wonder if that means the writing is bad?
ReplyDeleteYou'd probably have to compare these reviews to the ones I've written about universally beloved episodes of critically acclaimed TV series before coming to conclusions. It could just be that I'm bad at following stories.
DeleteBut yeah I get the impression that Doctor Who's writing isn't at its peak right now.