SPOILER FREE!
I’m so sorry. So so sorry to have to say this… but this was the usual tsunami of Chibnall clichés. Remarkably cartoonish, with the usual two-dimensional characters spouting exposition disguised as dialogue, on cue like they’ve been given truth serums. It never seems to occur to Chibnall that his characters might not want to instantly divulge everything they know at the slightest prompting. This is too much subtlety to ask for.
Indeed, like robots, everyone does what the plot requires them to do, instantly and obediently according to the writer’s wishes. By the end, everything and everyone has been slotted into place as if their fates were predetermined. This is the way an immature screenwriter sees things. I used to say Chibnall writes like a paint-by-numbers painting, but he actually writes like a dot-to-dot puzzle. Everything is decided ahead of time and the dots are simply connected. Trust me, there are ways of sewing this kind of tapestry but with invisible seams, but Chibnall has no interest in that kind of attention to detail. All of this was so immediately transparent to me that I was continually pulled out of the story. There’s so much more to say about this, but I have limited time.
The Sea Devils are in it, as the title announces, and, yes, I can confirm that they’re actually there. Yeah, they’re in it alright. Yep. There they are. That’s it. Nothing new is added. Except perhaps glow-swords that don’t actually do anything an ordinary sword doesn’t, except look cooler. Likewise, The Sea Devils aren’t particularly important to the plot, which could’ve been accomplished with virtually any generic villain. Oh, but they’re sea creatures, you say, and thus perfect for a sea adventure. Yeah, exactly. This is the depth of Chibnall’s thinking as well. We’re supposed to be excited just by their presence among the potpourri elements thrown in indiscriminately.
And weirdly—it’s so hard to put my finger on this precisely—the special effects/cinematography look simultaneously beautiful and cheap, like they’re cheap special effects rendered in especially high definition with a good color grade. Oh, and by the way, you can’t skip rocks on ocean waves. To do so requires the kind of reality-bending that Chibnall prefers. (He needs to defy the laws of physics so he can hammer his heavy-handed metaphors home. Solution: CGI. Terribly obvious CGI.)
Then, finally, we get to the possibility of some kind of depth—dealing with the previously-skimmed over feelings between Yasmin and the Doctor—and, ultimately, the two of them decide not to deal with it and preserve the status quo. Whether you like this outcome or not, it’s something of a metaphor on this era in general: not exploring human emotion beyond the shallowest surface level, in both the characters and the audience engagement, neither of which ever evolves beyond vapid titillation.
The Legend of the Sea Devils is the usual cheap throwaway Doctor Who runaround that I’ve come to expect from this era. It feels rushed and factory-made to order, as if an AI analyzed all the prior episodes and tried its hand at writing one. It tries to be both fun and funny, but instead bombs all night long with the casualness of a comedian who thinks they’re genuinely funny but isn’t. (I can imagine this hypothetical comedian leaving the stage afterwards and delusionally deciding that the audience had no sense of humor rather than developing new material.)
Sadly, after the relatively high quality of “Eve of the Daleks,” I had been really excited about this episode and had hoped that Chibnall would dial up the quality towards the end, but instead he seems to be phoning it in even more than usual. It’s possible that many will enjoy The Legend of the Sea Devils for its bubblegum pop approach to the concept, though I sincerely doubt they’ll have strong memories of it a week later. Personally, I think it’s a real tragedy that Jodie Whitaker got saddled with Chris Chibnall’s writing and production throughout her entire run. I would have really liked to have seen what she could have done with something from a real showrunner.
Jodie, I’m sorry, so, so sorry.