{"id":2921,"date":"2022-04-18T22:42:19","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T22:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2921"},"modified":"2022-04-18T22:42:19","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T22:42:19","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-the-thing-with-the-sea-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/04\/18\/so-what-did-i-think-of-the-thing-with-the-sea-devils\/","title":{"rendered":"So\u2026 what did I think of the thing with the Sea Devils?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have the energy anymore. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a detailed, beat-by-beat exploration of this story which no doubt I could write and probably would if I were a bit more motivated, but I am not going to do that today. Instead, please accept these disjointed ramblings and let\u2019s hope for better things to come.<\/p>\n

A statue either appears out of thin air, or is just regarded with astonishment by a pirate chick who kills a dude and then releases a thing from the statue. The TARDIS arrives in the wrong place. This is possibly due to some space\/time\/magnet\/gravity thing. Everybody delivers some exposition and then Yas and the Doctor wander off to the TARDIS, to give Dan time to wander off. They make a short jump to the past, secure in the knowledge that they can definitely come straight back, despite the space\/time\/magnet\/gravity thing which makes it impossible to steer the TARDIS. The TARDIS gets swallowed by the Myrka, which is cool. The TARDIS materialises underwater, which is cool. The Doctor delivers a stern rebuke against killing, and then hands Dan a light sabre which he uses to murder all the Sea Devils with a single blow. Someone offers to blow themselves up for the Doctor, which is a self-homage to the end of The Master Shows The Doctor His PowerPoint Presentation<\/em> or whatever it was called.<\/p>\n

Then, because Chris has been reading the forums (never read the forums) and he\u2019s found out that some people want the Doctor and Yasmin to become a couple, he has a scene in which the Time Lord cracks on to the novice policewoman, and then is all like \u201cJK I\u2019m on me own.\u201d This of course takes place during a suitable break in the action because Character Development And Plot Advancement Are Two Very Separate Things Never To Be Confused. Any nuance that might have been developed from this situation is firmly erased, but then so is any complexity regarding the morality of having jolly adventures with pirates or the notion that the Sea Devils have a right to their planet. (\u201cSlight wrinkle there,\u201d says the Doctor and then never refers to the issue ever again.) The Sea Devils\u2019 plan is to cover the planet in water, because two thirds of its surface being covered and the oceans being miles deep in places just isn\u2019t enough room. Great, now we can just kill \u2019em all without compunction.<\/p>\n

This is all shot in such a way as to never look remotely nautical or remotely Asian, edited in such a way that it\u2019s barely possible to tell who is where or what is going on, and acted in the now-standard Blue Peter style. At the end, everyone is friends again, the son warmly embracing the woman who slaughtered his father for being near a statue. Even by the very low standards set by the last three seasons, this was thin, amateurish, will-this-do gibberish, with too much dialogue given to a Sea Devil whose lips don\u2019t move, bizarrely empty ships for COVID reasons, and a supporting cast who do little more than provide a running commentary on whatever is happening in front of them (\u201cHe\u2019s forcing them off to die in the water.\u201d) like the world\u2019s shittest magician.<\/p>\n

Make it stop. Please, just make it stop.<\/p>\n

But \u2013 hey! \u2013 Ace and Tegan are back.<\/p>\n

Cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t have the energy anymore. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a detailed, beat-by-beat exploration of this story which no doubt I could write and probably would if I were a bit more motivated, but I am not going to do that today. Instead, please accept these disjointed ramblings and let\u2019s hope for better things to come. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-2921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-L7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2924,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions\/2924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}