"The War Between the Land and the Sea" was obviously going to be
a political allegory with plenty of propagandisations? so all in
all, it was fairly predictable how this mini-series would play
out once we knew the people writing it and its premise. There
was nothing in the five episodes that caused me any surprises...
One thing that was missing though was an actual WAR!

The Message: Humans are destroying the planet - TICK

Sea Devils are not Devils: They are cute fish-reptiles with
feelings - TICK

Human-Sea Devil relationship: TICK

Unnecessary Soap Opera family members: TICK

US Military Warmonger: TICK

Etc...


"The War Between the Land and the Sea" started out interesting,
and looked quite good. There was a lot of promise in the first
episodes, but there needed to be huge leaps of faith to believe
the characterisations and their reasoning in this series, so as
the narrative progressed and the plot got thinner, it sunk to
the bottom fairly fast, like a lead anchor. As this was
basically the 'Barclay & Salt Show' everything else was pretty
much just your stereotypical political types, military
warmongers, corrupt rich industrialists and UNIT... in an
eco-drama by the numbers. Five episodes was overkill for this
and the story might have worked a lot better had it been
much tighter, say two episodes or a 90 minute TV movie.

Barclay seemed the most unlikely character to lead negotiations
on behalf of the world, and quite frankly, I wasn't convinced by
Russell Tovey's performance at all. The first two cliff-hangers
were basically Barclay just saying a reluctant yes to an
outlandish proposition. Which might have conveyed his unwilling
participation but they were lame episode endings for a series
that wanted people to come back for more... The only reason
Russell Tovey wasn't playing a gay man in this was so that his
character could have a sexual relationship with Salt. Other than
that, it was perfect RTD tick-boxing; Barclay had a mixed race
family and a non-binary child... neither of whom did anything
much as it turned out, bar provide the soap opera family drama.
In RTD Land, everyone has to have their home life shown to prove
their are real characters, even if they are irrelevant to the
actual story. If you want to write Coronation Street Russell, go
write it! Barclay's family literally had no impact on the story
whatsoever. So why waste our time on them?

Salt started off as the angry fish-lizard whose habitat and
off-spring had been destroyed by humans polluting the oceans.
However, once she got a taste of life on the surface - and a
taste of Barclay - she became totally different. By the final
episode, a large percentage of the Sea Devils had been killed
off and Salt seemed happy enough to tell the humans that they
had won the war... and then after some kissing in the waves swam
off with the Homo-Aqua convert Barclay to live happily ever
after at the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart got a big role in this series, which is
great for her, as it's a bigger role than the character
deserves. But she didn't add much to the proceedings overall
either. She just came across as an unstable depressed woman with
hallucinations that needed to blackmail her GP for increased
medication to get through the day. Then she threatened to kill
some guy on a beach because he dropped a plastic bottle! WTF?
Some UNIT hero!

As for Kate's toyboy soldier getting killed... clearly he was
the disposable one out of the UNIT ensemble. Which says a lot
about his whole character during the past few years! He was
Colonel Nobody. I'd have killed off the wheelie woman too but of
course you can't do that sort of thing these days or people
would protest about an anti-wheelchair agenda, or something. The
funny thing is, in "Doctor Who" Shirley Bingham was the
scientific advisor but in this series she's handling diplomatic
relations between the humans and fish-lizards... and even then
she doesn't really do much. But it's good to show people in
wheelchairs, inclusivity and all that, so we'll keep her around
for next time... she might even get to roll up that TARDIS ramp
one day.

Whilst UNIT not calling The Doctor in was strange for this
mini-series set in the "Doctor Who" universe. So what, the
Doctor just sat idly by and watched all that garbage rain down
on London and not wonder where it came from? Or saw on the TV
news that UNIT were part of the negotiations between mankind and
his old foes to stop a war, but just said "put the Kettle on
Donna, I'll leave them to it". Nah sorry, that just doesn't work
for me.

RTD claims this was his big idea when he returned to producing
Doctor Who, well he can shove his big ideas if they're going to
keep turning out to be badly plotted messes like this. He might
be good at writing gay dramas, obviously he understands that
sort of stuff as it's something he has the feel for, but as a
sci-fi/fantasy writer he isn't at the races. This could, and
should, have been so much better.

Overall, for a series that was interesting and had potential, it
all got a bit muddled and the end result was something entirely
forgettable... I'd give it a 3/10 rating, and one of those
points is only because the Sea Devils were not leaping around
like Super Mario as they were in their last on-screen outing.


Quote of the series:

Human: "You ate our dogs!"
Sea Devil: "You eat our fish!"

Yep, that's definitely a BAFTA winning script we've got here!

Notes:

Humans are accused of dumping their rubbish and excrement into
the sea... which is true, but fish also shit in the sea and
nobody blames them for polluting the oceans! I presume the Sea
Devils also shit in the sea too, or under it somewhere... or do
they secretly come onto land to take a dump?

Barclay and Salt getting it on was something akin to the Madam
Vastra-Jenny situation. As actors are playing the roles it all
seems perfectly normal to the viewer that two characters are
having a relationship in a drama... but, humans and
lizards/reptiles are not supposed to have sexual relations with
one another and only deviants would write such stuff. This is
blindsiding the audience and making such perverted acts seem
normal. Which is pretty much what those type of writers try to
do. Normalise deviancy!

Because of the happy ending for Barclay & Salt, I'm not sure now
what actually was the main message of this series. Was it really
all about the environment, or was this basically just a
human-lizard romance story whilst virtue signalling
environmental concerns?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)