Doctor Who: now discussing The War Between the Land and the Sea (spoilers!)

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[Dave]

Discuss your favourite Timelord here.

• This topic was modified 4 years ago by Dave.
• This topic was modified 2 years ago by lorcan_nagle.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by paul f.

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Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have started a podcast together – called Pondcast – where they rewatch their run of Dr Who and invite guests on to  reminisce about working on it, with the first being Steven Moffat. Incredibly, this is somehow not a joke.

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Dave, Ben

Ben wrote:

Interesting. Not the first time Big Finish have done that and they do similar for Twelve. Do have an uncanny skill for casting too.

Wasn’t it John Culshaw playing Twelve? He had it down pretty well as I recall.

Culshaw’s been doing a fair bit of BF work. He’s done some audio novels, played The Brigadier and has very recently done Twelve.

Both Eleven and Twelve in their Chronicles ranges were voiced by Jacob Dudman.

I had thought TWBTLATS was starting tonight; it feels weird that Who is in the big Sunday night slot on BBC One.

paul f wrote:

I had thought TWBTLATS was starting tonight

I thought that too. There was even a Guardian TV preview yesterday that indicated as much.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/06/tv-tonight-a-mega-new-doctor-who-spin-off-from-russell-t-davies

Good start to it.

Did love Kate’s line:

“I’m in the mood for a bollocking.”

I watched the first episode and thought it was alright – a lot more coherent than recent Who, with a reasonably interesting setup and a fun hook at the end of episode 1.

I am cautiously hopeful that it might not be the shitshow that Gatwa’s run ended up as.

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lorcan_nagle, Dan

Nice to see the plastic bag from American Beauty make a cameo in episode 2. I’ve always wondered what they were up to.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

I’m up to date on TWBTLATS The Sea Devils Show now – four episodes down and one to go (this Sunday).

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

It’s still not amazing top-tier TV, but it’s telling an engaging story in an entertaining way, with good performances and makeup/effects and some interesting ideas at the heart of it.

It also manages to incorporate progressive aspects (particularly when it comes to environmental stuff) without beating you over the head with it or being overly blunt.

Even Russell Tovey is likeable in it!

I wish Doctor Who had been more like this for the past couple of years.

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Ben

Yeah, I’m liking this.  It just now needs to nail the landing.

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Dave

Dave wrote:

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

Martin Smith wrote:

Dave wrote:

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

He only writes episode one, which is the weakest so far – the other three episodes so far are written by Pete McTighe.

There are more details on how the writing worked here, but in essence RTD came up with an initial episode and then basically turned the idea over to McTighe to actually write the rest of the series, with RTD only contributing basic plot ideas. Maybe he should move more in this direction with Doctor Who if he sticks around as showrunner.

However RTD is returning to write the finale of this miniseries. But he’s good at finales, right?

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Uncle Retrospective

How did writing the series as a co-writer with Russell T Davies work?

Russell and I have known each other for ages, so it’s always a joy working with him. He had written episode one before he wrote any of the 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials. So, quite a long time ago he’d written it and it kind of sat on the shelf. And then when I had delivered my first draft of my Doctor Who episode, Lucky Day, he said, there’s something else that I’d like you to have a look at. Do you know, do you want to be involved? And I read this script and thought it was extraordinary. And of course I was involved. Absolutely. From reading page three or four, I was in!

We were filming Doctor Who at the time, so we didn’t have a lot of time to plot stuff. Russell had broad ideas about where he wanted the show to go. So for every episode, we would just sit down and snatch time here and there, an hour here, an hour there, and talk about what we think might happen. And then I’d go away and write, and then we’d come back together and, you know, move certain things around. So, for instance, some characters that I established in episode two, we would then go back into episode one and seed them there, so they’re established in there. I knew that he would be writing the finale, so I had to write episode four, leading towards certain plot points and knowing what was coming. But it was just a really lovely, close working relationship, and we just laughed a lot. It was never a drama. And yeah, it was great fun writing.

But yeah, sure, keep minimising RTD’s involvement to suit your own narrative.

All I’m saying is that RTD didn’t do the majority of the actual writing of the series, as credited – three out of four episodes broadcast so far have been by McTighe – and it has turned out better than recent RTD-scripted Doctor Who stories.

RTD is still showrunner and very much in charge of this era of Doctor Who, and is obviously still driving the ideas, but this series shows how much better things can be when he steps back and lets other writers take charge of the actual scripts.

The standout episodes of the two Gatwa seasons were also ones not written by RTD, so although I’m not trying to construct a “narrative” it also feels like there’s a definite trend.

Sigh, that ending to The War Between The Land And Sea really didn’t work for me. Oh well.

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Uncle Retrospective, Dave

Ben wrote:

Sigh, that ending to The War Between The Land And Sea really didn’t work for me. Oh well.

Yep, it was terrible. Felt like a different show entirely and threw away all the potential of the preceding episodes. What a shame.

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Uncle Retrospective

Humanity has destroyed 90% of a sentient species, to the point that their corpses are clogging up the Thames.

But that’s ok, let’s have some underwater frolicking. 🤷🏻

I mean, it was better than Doctor Who, but that’s a very low bar these days.

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Ben, Dave

Yeah it was just such a tonal mismatch. Very clunky and weird and left a ton of stuff up in the air and unaddressed.

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Uncle Retrospective, Ben