It’s no secret. If you caught any of our Doctor Who Watching Now episodes over the last couple of years, you’d know that I’ve been less than enthused about a few things in the Who-niverse lately. There were some pretty good episodes in that Ncuti Gatwa run, but equally, there have been some very low LOW points, including both the Season 1 and Season 2 finales. They both sucked balls and culminated in extremely bad CGI monsterfests that tried to appeal to fans of the original series, but did so badly that it almost retroactively made those shows worse.
I also think that Who’s deployment of companion characters has been, for lack of a better term, dogsh*t. Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday had a lot of promise that was squandered by the slap in the face that was the reveal of her normal-ass mother. Varada Sethu’s Belinda felt like she could be someone who could call The Doctor out on his sh*t, but she devolved into the same type of sycophantic companion that everyone else seems to.
However, what I have enjoyed from the last two seasons is the renewed focus on UNIT, particularly Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave). That’s why I was very interested in The War Between the Land and the Sea, the Doctor Who spinoff with no Time Lord attached (because it’s kinda in flux at the moment… no, not The Flux, that’s something else). When humanoid creatures begin to make contact from the oceans of Earth, low-level UNIT employee Barclay Pierre-Dupont (Russell Tovey) gets dragged into political machinations, fighting to broker a peace before it’s too late.
Did this 5-episode miniseries sans The Doctor hit the mark? Or did it go the way of the latest seasons of the show? This review will be spoiler-free, so if it hasn’t released yet where you are, you’re good.
The “threat” to the human race is the indigenous people who call the oceans their home, coined Homo-Aqua. Their beef with us is that we’ve been polluting the waterways for so long that it’s becoming a struggle to survive in their natural habitat. Fair enough. Although this is a new species, they feel very close to the underground Silurian race in origin. They have the same matter-of-fact way of speaking, but do seem more reasonable in general.
The emissary of Homo-Aqua is called Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and she steals every scene that she’s in. Beautiful in her own way, she develops a mutual respect with Barclay, and their relationship becomes the centerpiece of the show. Mbatha-Raw and Tovey had great chemistry in their scenes together, and their performances were top-notch.
Some of the sequences with the Homo-Aqua look really good with the CGI being on point. There is a fantastic scene in the third episode that I won’t spoil which took my breath away. However, as with all Doctor Who media lately, there were also some dodgy Disney-fied graphics that took me out of the show. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was just a bit meh.
Jemma Redgrave does some of her best work as the head of UNIT, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. We get to see the immense pressure that she’s under when the Doc isn’t around and a weirdo crisis is at hand. You can see the toll that it takes on her to be the most senior member of the team expected to deal with these types of things.
Of course, it’s not just Lethbridge-Stewart that returns. Colonel Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient), Kate’s paramour and UNIT’s security dude, and Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley), the wheelchair-bound rocket-firing analyst, also make their returns. Both do a good job with the roles that they were given in the show, and it’s always nice to have some continuity in UNIT command.
Barclay is technically a part of UNIT, but he’s so low-level that he barely counts. It’s fun to see the bureaucratic mistakes that lead him to effectively become the ambassador for the human race. I do like Russell Tovey in this role, but he’s no stranger to the Who-niverse. He was a shipmate on the Titanic 2 in “The Voyage of the Damned”.
The Doctor is an important character, especially in the Who-niverse, but I was pretty psyched for a show without the time traveller defeating the enemy by just being smarter than everyone else. I wondered if a show could be carried by UNIT alone, without any cheap nostalgia companion pops to lift it up. Let me tell you this: The War Between the Land and the Sea is far better as a limited series without the Time Lord.
There are things you can do when The Doctor isn’t present that you just can’t when he’s there. Humans are pretty crappy lifeforms at times, and the Gallifreyan doesn’t let that happen very often, usually either tricking or guilting people into doing the right - the moral - thing. I enjoyed seeing the underhanded machinations of the human race fighting back against an enemy that threatens the balance of power on Earth (racist name for a planet that’s mostly water, just saying).
Sure, there’s that same old theme you get in Doctor Who where the writers continually tell us that we’re bad people when we’re left to our own devices, but sometimes bad choices lead to better stories. I’m somewhat excited to see what the fallout of this series will be with the big kahuna.
I’m not saying The War Between the Land and the Sea is first class Doctor Who content, but, honestly, I don’t think the last two seasons of the actual show have been great, either. This show is a good 5-episode miniseries set in that world of The Doctor and I would definitely recommend it for any fan. Even if you’re not, it’s a decent “What If…” Sci-Fi scenario which is fairly standalone.
With great performances from the two leads and a terrific supporting cast, this UNIT-centric story delves into what it’s like when The Doctor isn’t around to play the high and mighty moral compass, and I very much enjoyed my time with it.
If you keep your expectations in check and don’t let one extremely bad American accent spoil your viewing, there’s fun to be had here, for sure.
