The War Between The Land And the Sea Is Trying To Pull Off A Difficult Trick
Can we believe this is all the same universe?
Turning the universe of Doctor Who into a serious and grim Earthbound science fiction TV series is hard. The hyperbolic nature of Who doesn’t necessarily lend itself to naturalistic or realistic modern-day science fiction. And yet, with the just-released new spinoff, The War Between the Land and the Sea, the Whoniverse is attempting to recreate a feat that arguably, it's only pulled off once before.
With a Doctor Who spinoff set on Earth, and very much without the Doctor, the vibe of the first trailer of The War Between the Land and the Sea seems to want to recreate the highest point for another bygone Who spinoff: Torchwood. Back in 2009, the high point of Torchwood, the miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth, proved that a show that was two steps removed from the zany world of the Doctor could work. And yet, with Torchwood’s rocky track record, will this kind of thing work again?
The premise of The War Between the Land and the Sea is focused on a conflict on Earth between the “Sea Devils” and humans. In Who canon, the Sea Devils are not aliens, but rather terrestrial Silurians, the water-dwelling cousins of the reptilian versions who first appeared during Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor era. More recently, the reptilian Silurians reemerged in Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor era, starting with 2010’s “Cold Blood.” But the aquatic Silurians didn’t return to Who until 2022’s 13th Doctor adventure ‘The Legend of the Sea Devils.”
Here, with the new show, it seems that showrunner and creator Russell T Davies wants us to forget what we thought we knew about the aquatic Silurians. The show stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Salt, a Silurian who looks way more human than previous Sea Devils we’ve seen before. The show also stars Russell Tovey as Barclay, although he previously played Midshipman Alonso Frame in the Who episode “Voyage of the Damned.” The series will also focus on the current incarnation of UNIT from Doctor Who, and will feature Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart and Ruth Madeley as Shirley Ann Bingham, who first appeared in the 2023 Who anniversary special, “The Star Beast.” Meanwhile, Redgrave’s Kate Stewart has been a part of the Whoniverse since 2011’s “The Power of Three.”
All of this feels very Torchwood, since that show, and subsequent miniseries, starred John Barrowman's Jack Harkness, a character who originated in Doctor Who Season 1 back in 2005. By 2009, Torchwood: Children of Earth presented a grim, deeply serious story about aliens who return to Earth after it's learned that Earth authorities made a terrible deal with them decades prior.
Eve Myles, John Barrowman, and Gareth David-Lloyd in 2009’s Who spinoff, Torchwood: Children of Earth.
Like the trailer for The War Between the Land and the Sea, the surprising thing about Torchwood: Children of Earth was the way it tonally shifted away from the world of Doctor Who, despite using characters and situations set up by its parent show. And, just like this new spinoff, Torchwood was very much the brainchild and passion project of Russell T Davies.
Will The War Between the Land of the Sea pull off this tonal shift? Can it really become the Torchwood of the 2020s? Right now, this spinoff seems like a very big and very ambitious swing for the Whoniverse.
But, with no new season of Doctor Who confirmed at this point, The War Between the Land and the Sea is the only known new installment in this fictional universe. Whether or not the true future of Who resides in the watery depths of Earth remains to be seen.
