C+Q - The Sea Devils (1972)

It's the third instalment of my 60th anniversary series, following An Unearthly Child and The Moonbase. Dr Who and his companions started out fighting for their lives, then began fighting for the lives of others. Now the consequences of the Doctor's meddling have caught up with him and he's been exiled to Earth, forced to change his appearance once more.

I chose The Sea Devils as the third post for a few reasons. It's literally the middle serial of Jon Pertwee's middle season, and is a perfect snapshot of this era. It's an Earth-based story with Jo Grant, soldiers, vehicle chases, Venusian aikido, moral dilemmas, and two iconic villains - the Sea Devils who are quintessentially Pertwee and the Master who's one of the big three villains of the entire show. The only real element missing here from the Third Doctor's era is the regular UNIT family, most obviously the Brig. Other than that, this is as Pertwee as it gets. How many of these 60th anniversary posts will I manage this year? No idea. But The Sea Devils has been on my list for quite a while.

Part One

The story has an incredibly strong opening with Dr Who and Jo visiting the Master in prison. That set-up is solid enough, but what makes it so good is the choice to play it as friends reuniting. Making two characters hate each other is easy. Here the Doctor is coming face-to-face with his arch-nemesis - it wouldn't be surprising if this was a tense scene filled with suspicion and thinly-disguised rage. Thing is, they actually just have a pleasant conversation. They smile, they laugh, they exchange banter. This relationship is far more complex than pure hatred, and Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado play it beautifully. Katy Manning is really interesting here too - the way the Master and Jo say goodbye to each other with smiles on their faces, you wouldn't think they were enemies at all. It's such a captivating dynamic. When the Master asks the Doctor to visit more often, I really feel how unique these two are as the only two Time Lords on Earth. And I love the Master laughing after the Doctor and Jo leave, not in a villainous way, but in a way that feels genuine, like the absurdity of the whole thing got to him.

We leave the Master after he asks for another television set - in colour, of course. What sort of fool would watch television with no colour?

The Doctor talking about his childhood with the Master is a much more open and relaxed glimpse into the Doctor's past than we've seen previously in this 60th anniversary retrospective. There's a warmth to this Doctor that we haven't seen before either. Jon Pertwee is the most straight-forward leading man of the three we've seen - less mysterious and dangerous and more dashing and protective. The way this Doctor charges into people's offices and takes control of any situation is always so much fun. It's a joy to see the Third Doctor and Jo Grant investigating some strange goings on.

Anyway, we love dramatically zooming into windows in this episode, don't we? My favourite is the zoom into the window of the naval base in an establishing shot that then cuts to a shot of an actor looking out that window that has the same zoom, sorta merging the two shots together. There's even a dramatic zoom into a window from the inside as the hand of a Sea Devil reaches into it! The cliffhanger of Part 1 is not a traditional fast dramatic zoom however, but a slightly slower, more tense zoom. Only a connoisseur would know the difference. Overall, it's a great first episode.

Part Two

The opening five minutes with Dr Who encountering a Sea Devil and rigging up a trap to fend it off feels like such classic Pertwee. We see the Doctor trying to communicate with the creature peacefully before using his head to science up a defensive non-lethal solution. The little moment when the Sea Devil jumps after turning the corner and seeing the Doctor does so much to make it seem like an innocent creature rather than a malicious monster.

Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning are so much fun together in this story and I love the little moments of banter like when the Doctor is working on the radio. The warmth that comes from this ensemble of actors is something I'll always associate with this era. The Doctor and Jo make such a good team, with their silent signals to one another to check the coast in clear and the way the Doctor utterly believes Jo when she says she's seen the Master wandering around the naval base. There are moments when the electronic sound design and music get to be a little overwhelming in these scenes but in general it creates a nicely unsettling atmosphere.

The cliffhanger here is simply iconic. After the friendly chat the Doctor and the Master have in Part One, here we actually have them trying to kill each other, but even that has an undercurrent of gentlemanly competition. Dr Who kicking the gun away from the Master is so 70s, then the scene transcends when both Time Lords reach for a row of duelling swords that are inexplicably hanging on the walls of this prison. The choreography! The stances! The facial expressions! The music! The quips! The quality of the Doctor's footwork! It's the best version of the Third Doctor and the Delgado Master having a sword fight you could possibly hope for. Cheeky, classy, perfect.

Part Three

I like that the Part Three opening recap shows us the entire sword fight again. They knew what they had.

This episode unfortunately has a bit of needless back and forth from location to location that you get a lot in six-parters. The Master and Dr Who fight in his cell, Trenchard arrives and has Dr Who taken away and arrested, then the Master immediately summons Dr Who back to his cell to talk. It's forgivable because the end result is that the Master and Dr Who do talk, and any plot point that brings Roger Delgado into conversation with Jon Pertwee is the result of good writing. By the way, there's something funny about the Time Lords having records of the Sea Devils.

The main forward momentum in this episode comes from Jo's escape and rescue of Dr Who. I like that the baddies just assume they have her taken care of, never imagining she could've gotten away. The silent communication between her and Dr Who really shows how good of a team they are. The Doctor/companion dynamic has certainly come a long way since kidnapping school teachers.

The underwater shots of the submarine are really well done. Donald Sumpter stands out as the sub commander, giving those scenes real intensity.

Also, another classic cliffhanger. A nice bit of Pertwee action as Dr Who and Jo climb down a rope to escape but find themselves trapped between a minefield and a car of armed guards. Then, from out of the water comes a Sea Devil! Brilliant.

Part Four

This episode is the one I think about most when remembering this story. Such a heroic Pertwee man-of-action opening, escaping from armed guards and Sea Devils through a mine field. Dr Who throwing himself on the barbed wire to let Jo get across safely is SO Third Doctor. It also has *the* iconic Third Doctor sonic screwdriver shot: using it to detect and then detonate the mines to repel the Sea Devil.

The sequence of the Sea Devils melting through the door of the sub like the opening of Star Wars Episode IV is a great moment of escalation. Unfortunately, this starts to create a problem for this story, and for so many others - it's difficult to make all six parts of a six-parter feel fresh and new and exciting. Here, in Part 4, it feels as if the story is reaching its climax. The monsters are actually attacking, the Master is on the loose, it's all very urgent and thrilling. The problem is that there are two more episodes after this. The story is still entertaining because it's still finding new set pieces to throw in but there's now a question of how long it can keep this up.

The soundtrack for this episode, which mostly continues to be nice and unnerving, has a few unfortunate moments where it spills over into being annoying to listen to with no obvious creative justification. A short scene of Trenchard on the phone has the dialogue almost drowned out by the music. Speaking of Trenchard, I like his ending here. Right before he's killed, he's given a bit more depth as he starts to have suspicions that the Master might, in fact, be a baddie. Fs in chat.

The cliffhanger for this episode is that something has happened to Dr Who while he was under the sea, and we'll have to wait until next episode to find out what. He could be dead, he could be transformed in some way, or as ends up being the case, he could have vanished. I like that we don't find out which yet - it adds to the eldritch weirdness of monsters under the sea.

Part Five

The Doctor in the Sea Devils' base having a philosophical discussion about sharing the Earth is just the change in tone and energy the story needs.

This episode introduces Walker, a guy in a suit who arrives five episodes in and starts ordering people around, claiming to have the solution to it all. His introduction uses the story's length in a way that's perfectly frustrating. What the hell does this guy know, he's only just turned up! And he's a sexist prick. I especially like the zoom in on his mouth when he says he doesn't care about the lives of the men on the submarine - it's very effective at dehumanising him, reducing him to just a mouth without a brain, giving orders and eating.

I like that the Brig blowing up the Silurians at the end of Doctor Who and the Silurians has some ramifications here as the Master uses it to make the Doctor seem untrustworthy. It's a real shame the Brig himself couldn't have had some role in this.

The attack on Sea Devil's base and escape in the submarine is thrilling and looks very impressive. Unfortunately the story's final cliffhanger is a bit weak - Dr Who announces he has to go back to the place he just escaped from. Still, there's a charm to all the Sea Devils walking out of the sea, especially the last moments of a Sea Devil getting ready to shoot Dr Who.

Part Six

And hey, at least it resolves with some Venusian aikido!

Despite the lack of the Brig or usual UNIT regulars like Benton, the Doctor is still hanging around military bases being assisted by soldiers. It's a very different vibe from the previous stories we've looked at, An Unearthly Child and The Moonbase, where the Doctor and his companions are a chaotic outside force. In An Unearthly Child, the Doctor was at the mercy of the caveman society he suddenly found himself in. In The Moonbase, he was helping out as an eccentric adviser, being weird on the fringes of scenes in contrast to the serious personnel at the base. Now, in The Sea Devils, he has the backing of huge teams of dudes with guns who arrive by hovercraft to save him.

The whole thing is pretty spectacular. Violent, and kinda at odds with the earlier critique of the Brig killing all the Silurians, but spectacular. Dr Who is doing epic stunts and escapes and explosions and boat chases like he's James Bond or something.

Then, just when this story couldn't get any more iconic, we get the Doctor reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. The full unabridged line. And of course the Master gets away at the end by hypnotising someone to obey and putting them in a rubber mask. Perfect.

Overall

The Sea Devils is a fantastic story. Unfortunately, it doesn't need to be six episodes long. There are a lot of similar sequences - escapes from bases, Sea Devils rising out of the sea to attack, tense build-ups to evil military dudes launching missile strikes with a chance of killing Dr Who. Some of these could have been consolidated if the goal here was just to tell a great story rather than to also fill six weeks of programming. Still, the main trio of Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, and Roger Delgado are on top form. It's thrilling, action-packed, brilliant Doctor Who.

Looking at it in the context of our 60th anniversary series, alongside An Unearthly Child and The Moonbase, we can see the show moving away from mystery and horror, especially where its lead character is concerned. The Doctor is now a dashing action hero who we all know and love, presumably having been shaped by his past experiences with each regeneration. A lot of that heroism has arisen from the show's focus on the monsters, which continue to be a major part of Doctor Who's formula, here taking over from the exploration.

The Pertwee era is so unique in its use of action spectacle and violence, but what ultimately makes this recognisable as Doctor Who is the discussion of morality throughout it. The Doctor gives the Sea Devils a chance. He doesn't glamorise their deaths and instead does what he has to do to prevent a war. Jon Pertwee's Doctor is capable, brave, and above all else compassionate. We're a long way away from bashing a caveman with a rock or running past a fallen Barbara without stopping to help her up. It's probably not a coincidence that the Third Doctor wears a cape.

Next: ???