I struggled to keep a straight face during Russell T Davies’s The War Between the Land and the Sea
If neither David Attenborough making documentaries nor Greta Thunberg getting arrested has made you aware that we are messing up the oceans, then it’s hard to see how a new Doctor Who spin-off from Russell T Davies is going to get the message through. But it gives it a good go: The War Between the Land and the Sea (BBC One) is a simple tale of impending planetary destruction that begins when a trawler finds an alien caught up in its nets.
Capturing and killing this “sea devil”, it quickly becomes apparent, was a huge mistake. It rouses the ire of an entire sub-aquatic species, who start appearing from the shallows like Antony Gormley sculptures to ask humanity if they would kindly mind leaving them alone. They were here first, after all. Humanity being humanity, negotiations quite quickly descend into the total war described in the show’s title.
All of this finds us squarely in the alien catastro-fiction file that includes War of the Worlds, Independence Day and Armageddon. Just as in those stories, a likeable regular guy soon emerges to save humanity in this one. Step forward Russell Tovey, whose character Barclay used to book taxis for important people until an HR error accidentally made him the most important person of all. Barclay is quickly chosen by the Sea Devils as humanity’s global ambassador on the grounds that, unlike everyone around him in a position of power, he is not a pompous ass.
One thing about the Sea Devils – you can’t say we weren’t warned. Doctor Who fans have been aware of the threat since 1972, when the bi-pedal marine race that used to rule the Earth before humans came along first appeared, with only Jon Pertwee to stop them. But even back then, they suffered from the total absence of menace that comes with looking like the rollerblading turtle from the Avanti West Coast adverts crossed with the golfer Tommy Fleetwood.
Flippant though that may be, and flippant though it may be to call things with flippers flippant, it encapsulates the problem for The War Between the Land and the Sea. This is: how do you maintain the highest of high stakes (we’re all going to die!) in a friendly family drama? That, of course, is the balance beam that Doctor Who has walked for many decades, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.
I am a huge Russell T Davies fan, but I prefer his non-Who to his Who. As such, I enjoyed the first two episodes of TWBTLATS in the moments when it was Tovey, who very nearly pulls this off, playing likeable everyman with his family. Whereas, when it shifted gears and entered the Whoniverse, propelled by some rather obvious politics, composer Lorne Balfe’s relentless strings and a constant battle with its own effects budget, I struggled to keep a straight face.
Perhaps the overt environmental message is meant as a prompt for the younger generation, but if so, it is all the more misguided – they are far more aware of what their parents have done to our planet than their parents are. They don’t need to be told that “we need to build a better world,” as one clunking line had it. They need us to get out of the way.
Or perhaps, in Tovey’s Barclay, this is meant to be a fanfare for the little man ignored by bloviating politicians. “Maybe it’s time people like me had more of a voice,” Barclay says at one point, in another line that I can barely believe came from the mind of a genius like Davies. I would argue that this again is Boomers preaching to the converted, but in the context of the drama it doesn’t matter. Because all of these lines are delivered by an awkward-looking Tovey in stern conversation with poor old Gugu Mbatha-Raw dressed as a massive fish. In the War Between Earnestness and Accidental Comedy, I’m afraid there can be only one winner.
The War Between the Land and the Sea, and a re-edited version of the 1972 Doctor Who story, The Sea Devils, are both available on BBC iPlayer now
