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April 17th, 2022 20 comments

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Legend of the Sea Devils Sunday 17th April 2022 7.10pm BBC1

In a swashbuckling special adventure, the Doctor, Yaz and Dan come face to fin with one of the Doctor’s oldest adversaries, the Sea Devils.

Why has legendary pirate queen Madam Ching come searching for a lost treasure? What terrifying forces lurk beneath the oceans of the 19th century? And did Yaz really have to dress Dan up as a pirate?


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20 comments

  • Kone112

    April 19th, 2022 - 10:00pm

    I think people know exactly what dr who is about , it’s been arond for 60 years and most people have grown up with it. It was an adventure that scared young kids and was entertaining.This started with Moffat, casual viewers tuned in to inconceivable plots, the Dr baby sitting or playing football. Now people tune in to political correctness , wokeness , a lesbian Dr … who needs it . I put it on see the special effects , see the tardis land get excited then as soon as the doors open spend the next 47 minutes shaking my head saying to myself this is terrible. Chibnell,whittker (and Moffat) have added nothing to dr who. RTD has one last throw of the dice or its finished.

  • Obsie

    April 19th, 2022 - 9:45pm

    One thing to note, that it proves no reason whatsoever having John Bishop in it.

  • Pip & Jane Baker better than Chibnall

    April 19th, 2022 - 4:58pm

    ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ wasn’t very good. I found it quite boring. Didn’t feel like a ‘special’, more of a below average mid season sort of story. Plus I’m not at all surprised by the awful low overnight viewing figures. R.T.D has got a mountain to climb to rescue this series from mediocre to greatness again. But to be honest, he is the only writer around who possibly could.

  • The ergon

    April 19th, 2022 - 2:57pm

    Its going to take a massive promotional campaign on the ‘Do you wanna come with me’ scale to revive and reboot this series and it will be a mammoth task on Russells part to achieve this but if anyone can do it its him. The casual indifferent viewer needs to be coaxed but reassured this is going to be epic and ‘the trip of a lifetime’. We need to return to straightforward down to earth storytelling but with the excitement and scares that kept people coming back. Throwing old all the old monsters just isnt going to work unless you have cohesive uncomplicated storylines and characters you really care about.
    It wouldn,t surprise me if the next actor who gets the doctor role is offered a one season contract to test the water so to speak with the series being in such a precarious state, as it is at present and to see if it takes off again.

  • Haza14

    April 19th, 2022 - 12:23pm

    Wow yeah the viewing figures are concerning, even if they are only over night figures, with strong competition on ITV. I think the problem is that the general public aren’t interested anymore. For some families that I know that started watching the show in Jodie’s first series, Flux was the final straw that pushed them away.

    If you think back to the last Easter special, Doctor Who was event television. Planet of the Dead was on the cover of every listings magazine that week. While it’s wrong to compare the tv landscape from then and what it is like now, the simple fact is I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people didn’t realise this “special” was on. Doctor Who is now “part of the furniture” and Russell has a massive job on his hands to reverse that. Let’s be honest, ratings have been declining since 2014. Not necessarily because the quality was dropping, but because the shows ability to pull in causal audiences was diminishing. Jodie’s first series was great at pulling people back, but sadly you need consistent quality and stories that viewers care about to get them to stay, and Jodie’s era (in my opinion) hasn’t had that. Say what you like about the Timeless Child stuff (good or bad it’s irrelevant), to the average viewer which doesn’t care about the Doctor’s backstory, it’s meaningless nonsense. Flux was the same. Getting the balance between including the lore of the show and writing for casual viewers is hard, but Chris’ strategy of having nothing in series 11 and then loads in series 12, and then even stuff that makes hardcore fans minds boggle in Flux probably hasn’t worked for most people. Although that is just my opinion, I know for some it has worked. But I don’t think you can dispute that less people watch Doctor Who now (in the UK at least) than they did from 2005-2013. But maybe we shouldn’t care about that as long as the show is doing enough to remain on the tv, which I think it is, just!

  • The Moffat Paradox

    April 19th, 2022 - 10:58am

    And the problem remains that there are people who are in denial about viewer decline. Like a “ Dr Freedom” on YouTube who tries to explain away live viewer decline with streaming being on the increase when the same thing can be said about other programs that don’t suffer the same amount of live viewer decline on average.

    Take that to its logical conclusion then there are no depths to which live viewing figures before consolidated can’t fall without it being a cause for concern.Nonsense.

  • Doctor Stu

    April 18th, 2022 - 9:36pm

    2.2 million, that’s so embarrassing. Even RTD will struggle to pull this one back. Although her finale episode will probably pull in a few more as a load of people will be tuning in just to make sure she definitely goes, some will be back for Ace, Teegan, the Daleks, the master etc.

    Although bringing the sea devils back obviously did nothing

  • RPG74

    April 18th, 2022 - 7:11pm

    Those viewing figures-yikes! I don’t think even Russell can save it at this point. The damage has been done.

  • kone112

    April 18th, 2022 - 12:13pm

    2.2 million over night viewing figures , says it all doesn’t it.
    the lowest in the shows history

  • DoctorDredd

    April 18th, 2022 - 8:47am

    I thought the trailer was the best part of this (special) . Also, did anyone else think that the music was too loud in most of the scenes drowning out the dialogue? Looking forward to the end of this era of Jodie.

  • The Moffat Paradox

    April 18th, 2022 - 1:15am

    Good but as usual the episode will need to be watched at least once more for some of the finer details,

    I thought that was a bit ridiculous how the Sea Devils were so easily defeated in sword combat and when there were far more of them than there were humans and that they didn’t have their energy weapons as in the classic series as a fall back but then given the historical premise of the episode it would probably then have been far too easy for them to have taken out any opposition.

    (Might have been better if they were fighting a full crew; and as the stakes were getting higher.)

    Also thought that as it was a standard length episode it was a bit rushed when it needed longer and what’s the point of specials instead of a full series unless we are going to get that ?

    As for the Sea Devils themselves MORE RTD when you take over again.

  • Spoilers

    April 18th, 2022 - 12:51am

    I don’t understand how something so fast paced can be so boring.

    Slow down on the scenes, let people breathe. If you can’t afford massive fast paced well executed stunt sequences don’t chop up janky bits to make it look quicker. Limit the choreography let us see what’s going on. I doubt it was the stunt team. My impression is the scripts are way too long and they’ve overshot but removing scenes was near impossible for continuity.

    I have a very vague understanding of what happened in that episode and I don’t care to rewatch it to find out. Also I’m okay with the Doctor falling in love but they’ve had x2 lines of dialogue in the whole Jodie run. That’s not enough for a storyline.

    Sorry to be a hater but I don’t understand how these episodes are allowed to air. You can critique episodes like Love & Monsters. You can’t say they’re incomprehensible.

  • Doctor Stu

    April 17th, 2022 - 10:22pm

    And she also commits triple genocide in the last episode of series 13 with no problems at all or any ethical gripes

    Did we even find out where all the sea devils came from, why did they awake? What happened? I lost the plot a bit

  • Andy R

    April 17th, 2022 - 8:44pm

    A good episode, sea devils were really well done. One small gripe – Doctor berates the pirates for killing the lead sea devil (that was unnecessary).. yet 5 mins later she kills them all by basically destroying their base.. sigh.

  • Persona

    April 17th, 2022 - 8:33pm

    The Lone Cyberman is back, I wonder if that little detail of having different legs in the finale had sometime to do with it. None the less I am glad to see the character given another chance to shine and if he is going to die again in this episode that it is a far dignified death.

  • Persona

    April 17th, 2022 - 8:31pm

    The story had a lot of potential but seemingly fell prey to the confusing and often hard to follow plot flow of Moffat’s work. The Seadevil redesign was good but I am a little confused with the method that they used to animate expression, I can’t tell if it’s animatronic or certain features like the eyes have been manipulated in post production.

  • 1

    April 17th, 2022 - 8:25pm

    OMG Yaz was proper friend zoned

  • Rikki Krystal

    April 17th, 2022 - 8:16pm

    Sea devils looked great, shame about the story.
    Yaz as strong as a sea devil in a sword fight. god i’ll be glad when chibnal goes and yaz.
    Nice new trailer though, Tegan and ace, awesome.

  • Children of davros

    April 17th, 2022 - 7:59pm

    Awesome. And that trailer!

  • The ergon

    April 17th, 2022 - 7:59pm

    Oh my god. Tegan and ace.

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