The Cutprice Guignol

Well, as The War Between the Land and the Sea comes to a close, at least I can say that it matches the tone for most of the rest of the Doctor Who television released this year. Which is to say, it’s really bad.

It doesn’t really come as a surprise that this finale just doesn’t work; the last four episodes, shoved out in a messy, crowded release schedule that only left them feeling more of an afterthought, have been a head-bangingly irritating blend of bad decisions almost across the board. Bad writing, baffling directorial choices, and a dreadful central romance had already let the show down by the time we got here, but that doesn’t mean that this finale isn’t deserving of some harsh criticism.

We pick up where we left off last time, as Tide, the villain tossed into the final act of the second-last episode, threatens humanity once more and Salt and Barclay try to avoid getting caught in the clash between humanity and the Sea Devils.

And, while we’re on the matter of Tide, I’d like to talk a bit about the Sea Devils as a whole, because I really think one of the majors ways this miniseries fumbled was by failing to explore them as a species. Sure, we got glimpses of their world, and references to certain cultural values they hold, but I still don’t feel as though we’ve dived (heh) too deeply into them as a whole and how their society functions. How cool would it have been to see more of how they developed as a species under the water, how they came to understand and implement notions of family and community, how they developed their sense of morality? Perhaps it’s a bit too niche for some viewers, but I would have loved to see more of how their society worked and how it contrasted or paralleled with humanity, given that the central conflict is between the land-dwellers and the Sea Devils, but, instead, we got….barnacles and dog-scoffing. I don’t know.

But, truly, that’s just the beginning of my problems with this appalling finale, which really might be the nadir of the current Who era thus far. It’s the kind of lazy, abjectly awful writing that’s almost galling to sit through when you reflect on how much time and money was poured into this project – it’s hard to even muster the enthusiasm to go over the plot problems when that would likely take more effort than Russel T Davies and Peter McTighe did writing the damn thing in the first place.

Tide threatens humanity with a catastrophic flooding via the melting of the ice caps (which we are introduced to via Planet Earth footage with the watermark scrubbed off), and then the Prime Minister gives the go-ahead to unleash a virus that (off-screen, obviously) annihilates 90% of the Sea Devils. Salt comes back to surface, and poutingly tells humanity that they could have moved forward with respect and love and all that if only we hadn’t slaughtered them. Em, pay no mind to the fact that they were threatening humanity with the same kind of devastation, if not moreso. Don’t worry about it! It’s very sad. Look at all these badly-CGI’d bodies floating around indistinctly in the water!

Barclay, still smitten with Salt, starts turning into a fish. Because, I guess, why not? It’s never explained, never justified, never really made sense of, and worst of all, it doesn’t even work on an emotional level since the relationship between Salt and Barclay has been so comically short as to feel like a parody of a Romeo and Juliet-style love story. I can’t even really pick apart why it’s so bad because there’s so little to pick apart at all. There’s no chemistry here, no real sense of connection, just a lot of soggy jeans and wading into the sea to howl. That’s my Thursday night, and they’re trying to convince me this is miniseries worthy? I think not.

But it’s not just the big plot strokes that are obviously, evidently awful – no, the detail work here is just as spectacularly dreadful too. Lore details are dropped ad nauseum as and when they’re relevant to the plot, where they should have been introduced earlier for a sense of pay-off; What do you mean, the lead scientist investigating the Homo Aqua “forgot how good they were with water”? What do you mean the villain introduced in the last episode is scuttled off again within a half-hour of this one? What do you mean Barclay’s final farewell with his entire family happens via silent montage when his child was such a driving force behind his choice to get involved with this in the first place? Why does nobody out of this allegedly highly-educated cast not know what the fucking word Accord means? I feel like I’m losing it.

Worst of all, though, is just how boring it is. There’s no feeling of investment in anything that’s going on, little sense of scale, even in what should be dramatic set pieces. The characters feel mostly static, the action thin and reedy, the direction uncinematic and bland. There’s little worse I can say about a piece of media than it did nothing to hold my attention – as much as I’ve disliked the last couple of seasons of Doctor Who, I wasn’t often bored by them – and The War Between is so trudgingly, grimly, punishingly dull.

There are a couple of brief highlights here – I will always love Jemma Redgrave as Kate, and, while I know this harsher and more ruthless version of her isn’t to everyone’s tastes, I like to see her character going through changes, and Redgrave really sells this darker side of Kate (even if the writing really urgently needs to contend with her apparent embracing of being an extrajudicial paramilitary leader if they want to avoid just tacitly approving of it). The scene early on when she swiftly blackmails her therapist into giving her medication with knowledge of her affair was probably the highlight for me, and her confrontation with the littering runner on the beach made me laugh in its ridiculousness (and reminded me of the time my mum stalked over to a car full of teenagers who had just thrown a carton of chips on to the street, only to pick it up and toss it back through the window on to them), even if I’m not sure that was the intention. The performances are overall solid, though I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Russel Tovey giving it his all only for the script to spend more time on his abs than his backstory.

The War Between the Land and the Sea is a trudging, badly-made, and most of all boring entry into the broader Who canon – a huge waste of a great cast and an interesting premise, and a frankly insultingly bad script and story. Cast this back down to the depths of the ocean where it belongs, and let’s never speak of this again. Well, unless you’d care to check out my reviews of the series, of course!

Anyway, with the show finished (before it even really got started, frankly), I would love to know what you thought of it. What would you have changed? What did they get right? What classic Who villains do you think would work as the focal point of another short series like this one? Let me know in the comments!

If you liked this article and want to see more stuff like it, please check out the rest of my Doctor Who reviews! I’d also love it if you would check out my horrible short story collection, and, if you’d like to support my work, please consider joining me on Patreon!

(header image via Cultbox)