The Sea Devils

The Third Doctor and Jo visit the Master, imprisoned on a small island in the English Channel. Despite his claim to have reformed, he refuses to reveal the location of his TARDIS. As they depart, the Doctor hears of ships mysteriously disappearing. Curious, he investigates a sea fortress, where he and Jo are attacked by a sea-adapted bipedal reptile, called a Sea Devil by one witness. They escape to a nearby naval base.

The Doctor discovers that the Master, with the misguided aid of his ostensible jailor Colonel Trenchard, is stealing electrical equipment from the naval base to build a machine that will control the so-called Sea Devils, intending to use them as an army through which to conquer the world. He summons them and they begin to emerge from the sea. A battle for the prison ensues during which Trenchard is killed. The Doctor and Jo once again flee to the naval base where Captain Hart tells them a submarine has disappeared. Whilst the crew prepare for battle, the Doctor is seized by the sea creatures.

The Doctor offers to broker peaceful negotiations between the sea-creatures and the humans, recalling how he failed in his earlier attempt with the Silurians. Matters are left unresolved in the wake of an attack by depth charges ordered by Robert Walker, a British politician arrived to take control of the situation and intent on repeating UNIT's actions against the Silurians, namely blowing them up, but this time with a nuclear weapon. The attack is opposed by Jo, but does provide the Doctor with cover as he flees to the naval base, where he persuades Walker to allow him another, final attempt at negotiation. In the meantime the Sea Devils capture the naval base, a move instigated by the Master. As part of his plan, he now forces the Doctor to help build a machine to revive dormant Sea Devils around the world. The device activated, the Sea Devils imprison them both, their uses ended, but the Doctor has sabotaged the machine. He escapes with the Master using equipment from the captured submarine.

The sabotaged machine destroys the Sea Devil base before a military attack can begin. The Master evades capture by faking a heart attack and then hijacking a rescue hovercraft.

Working titles for this story included The Sea Silurians. Because of the story's location filming requirements it was allocated the second slot in the production run for Doctor Who's ninth season so as to allow filming in October. However, to alternate the stories between those set on Earth and those set on other worlds it was transmitted third in the season. This was the first time stories were produced out of transmission order. The serial was mainly filmed around Portsmouth, HM Naval Base Portsmouth, No Man's Land Fort,[2] the Isle of Wight and HMS Reclaim.

The earlier Doctor Who and the Silurians had resulted in many letters from scientists and geologists who argued that it was impossible for a reptilian lifeform to have existed in the Silurian era. In this story the Doctor admits that the name "Silurian" is inaccurate and states they should more properly be called "Eocenes".[3]

The Royal Navy waived royalty fees on the use of stock footage and clips showing ships in action, happy with on-screen credits and the positive publicity generated by the show. Many sailors volunteered to help with the filming, so that most of the extras during the sequence at the Naval Base were actual service personnel, except in some of the stunts. In the first episode, the script called for Jo Grant and the Doctor to climb up a ladder to get into a sea fortress. The ladder proved too slippery for Katy Manning, so stuntman Stuart Fell did the shot dressed as Grant.[1]

A model of a submarine was created by purchasing a Woolworths submarine model kit and then altering the propeller. By chance, the alterations to the model strongly resembled an actual prototype submarine being developed by the Ministry of Defence. After footage of the model was broadcast as part of the story, director Michael Briant received a visit from two Naval Intelligence officials, who were concerned about where the visual effects team got the plans for the model.[4]

When the wiping of episodes ceased in 1978 it was discovered that the first three episodes had only survived as black and white telerecordings made for overseas sales. In the early 1980s NTSC transfers of all six episodes were returned from broadcasters in Canada. These were converted back to the original PAL format.[5]

The story was edited and condensed into a single omnibus episode, broadcast on BBC1 at 3:05 pm on 27 December 1972,[9] reaching 8.7 million viewers.[10] An unscheduled repeat of the omnibus was shown again on 27 May 1974, with a rating of 4.6 million viewers.[10] A full repeat of all six episodes was shown on BBC2 from 6 March to 10 April 1992, 20 years after the original broadcast, with ratings of 3.12, 3.55, 2.96, 3.37, 3.10 & 3.04 million viewers, respectively.[11] As referenced on the DVD release on screen notes, episode 1 was originally transmitted at the end of the 1972 UK miners' strike which had caused national power blackouts, possibly accounting for the sharp increase in viewers from episode 2.[12] Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping gave the serial a favourable review in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), calling it "a good Malcolm Hulke script", with a "pedestrian" pace that still allowed for some suspense. However, they felt that the music "veers between being eerily experimental and tunelessly intrusive".[13] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker described the story as "a colourful adventure yarn" with quality direction and high production values. They praised the acting of both the main cast and the guests, finding Trenchard the most interesting. They noted that the incidental music had a mixed reception because of its radical departure, but it remained the most striking aspect of the story.[14]

In 2009, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times wrote that The Sea Devils was the Third Doctor's era reaching an "apex in ambition and quality", praising the design of the Sea Devils and the supporting characters.[15] DVD Talk's John Sinnott wrote that the story was "very good", although he felt it would have been better as a four- or five-parter. He also disliked the incidental music.[16] Den of Geek felt that The Sea Devils was the best story on the Beneath the Surface DVD boxset (including Doctor Who and the Silurians and Warriors of the Deep), though it was also noted that the story would have worked better if it was shorter.[17] The website included the serial on their list of "Top 10 Classic Doctor Who Scores".[18]

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• The Sea Devils at BBC Online