Doctor Who: The Sea Devils (1972) - Revisited

The shot of the Sea Devils rising from the sea became an instantly iconic image in the minds of a whole generation of children in 1972. As someone born nearly three decades later, my first impression of the Doctor Who's aquatic foes was a photograph on the front cover of the Destiny of the Doctors computer game: a strange tortoise-like creature wielding what appeared to be a mechanical eye. I'd no doubt seen odd shots as part of monster montages on Doctor Who Confidential, but about a decade ago, I finally watched all six episodes of The Sea Devils for the first time ever.

Malcolm Hulke's scripts for The Sea Devils are sequels to not one but two stories: firstly as a successor to his own Doctor Who and the Silurians, a tale of prehistoric lizard creatures being reawakened millions of years into their future to find that mankind has taken over their planet; secondly as a follow-on from The Daemons, the finale to the preceding "Master season" that introduced the Doctor's best enemy, at the end of which Roger Delgado's suave Master was captured by U.N.I.T. Perhaps as an attempt to veer away from the Master/U.N.I.T formula that had dominated Season 8, The Sea Devils completely removes the fictional organisation, and instead puts the Master in a "normal" prison - naturally allowing him to take over, ala The Mind of Evil.

This brings us to the main issue with The Sea Devils: it's all a bit familiar, and feels a bit too repetitive over six episodes. The Master takes over a prison - again. Reptilian creatures from prehistoric times are reawakened by humankind and want to take over the world - again. Hulke's scripts deal with some strong themes, but despite a variety of superficial and structural differences, the story still feels a bit too similar to previous outings, although not as strong. The Master's alliance with the Sea Devils is teased and then revealed, but it's never shown exactly what that dynamic is, why the creatures trust him, or how he discovered them in the first place. The Doctor seems to give up on peace very quickly, and rather comfortably resorts to murder - a curious contrast with his attitude in Silurians. The moral conflict between the Sea Devils and humankind feels tacked-on in the second half of the serial, with so much of the overall narrative taken over by the Master's antics. Delgado is as brilliant as ever, and the sword fight is fun, but it does feel unnecessarily padded-out, and the titular Sea Devils as such make much less of an impact.

Yet thus ends my complaints, as The Sea Devils is arguably one of the finest Doctor Who productions ever put to screen. The production values are very strong, aided by the assistance of the Royal Navy, the Sea Devils themselves are a brilliant design, impeccably realised (for 1972, that is), the action sequences are excellent and the performances are consistently strong. The serial is littered with iconic shots and moments (the minefield, the Sea Devils taking over the base), and when it hits its stride, it's a really fun watch. A slow-burn perhaps, and lacking the nuance of the earlier Eocene story, but an undisputed classic nonetheless.