Who are the monsters?
Russell T Davies on the new Doctor Who spin-off, The War between the Land and the Sea
BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon
- Huw Fullerton
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The first time you see a blue, six-foot fish-man walking towards you, it’s a shock. But after your third or fourth — and once you’ve seen them yawning, stretching and singing Whitney Houston songs between takes — you get used to it. After all, rubbing fins with the blue and scaly is everyday life on the set of The War between the Land and the Sea, the new spin-off from sci-fi stalwart Doctor Who that reimagines classic 1972 monsters the Sea Devils. Although…
“It’s racist to say Sea Devil,” screenwriter Russell T Davies tells RT, with a twinkle in his eye. In the context of the show, he says, the sea-dwelling race prefer to be called “Homo Aqua”. And don’t call them monsters — arguably, it’s we humans who are the villains of the piece. After years of humankind polluting the oceans, Homo Aqua have had enough, with violence brewing unless human negotiator Barclay (Russell Tovey) and aquatic ambassador Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) can broker peace.
“I think every writer in the world is thinking, how do you write about the climate crisis?” says Davies, while showing us around the twisted, tendril-strewn dome of the Homo Aqua base. “We’re already in a climate war. This just dramatises it.
Russell Tovey stars in the new series. BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon
“When they first approached me about coming back to Doctor Who in 2021, this was the first bit of my pitch,” he adds. “I had this idea separately first. But weirdly, it needs the Doctor Who setting. If I just go and pitch this cold, saying, ‘There is a race of creatures that live in the sea…’ They’d say, ‘Really? You sure?’ The pre-existence of the Sea Devils takes all the problems out of it.”
Still, despite the presence of a Jon Pertwee-era monster, several returning Who characters (led by Jemma Redgrave’s UNIT boss Kate Stewart) and in Tovey and Mbatha-Raw two leads who starred as different characters in Davies’s 2005—2010 Doctor Who run, we shouldn’t expect a repeat of the main show. Or for a familiar blue police box to turn up.
“It’s deliberately tougher. There are things here that would never happen in a Doctor Who story,” Davies says. “It’s in the same universe, but just a different slant. I’m really pleased with it.”
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The War between the Land and the Sea comes to BBC One later this year
Authors
Huw FullertonCommissioning editor
Huw Fullerton is a commissioning editor for Radio Times magazine handling comedy, entertainment and specialist drama. In a previous regeneration, he covered all things sci-fi and fantasy for RadioTimes.com.
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