After we took a have a look at the opening episodes of the new Doctor Who spinoff The Warfare Between the Land and the Sea a few weeks ago, there have been just a few nuggets of potential swimming beneath its in any other case largely murky floor. However now that the present has come to an finish, we all know for a truth: that potential is lifeless and buried and has solely sunk additional into the depths the longer the present went on.
The remaining three episodes of Warfare Between, after its premiere spent quite a lot of time taking part in up the political relationship between the revived Sea Devils—reborn as “Homo Aqua”—and humanity, spending their time squandering the distinctly unsubtle, but nonetheless intriguing, local weather change messaging that sat at that plot’s core so as to focus on establishing a quickly burgeoning romantic relationship between Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Uncooked) and Barclay (Russell Tovey).
Sparked by the former saving the latter after a diplomatic mission to Homo Aqua’s territory beneath the waves was disrupted by a double agent unleashing a bomb to kill the human and aquakind attendees alike, regardless of Mbatha-Uncooked and Tovey’s chemistry, the romance that abruptly turns into the major driving topic of Warfare Between comes off as a Nice Worth Form of Water. Barclay’s infatuation with Salt above the rest is not actually given any time to develop, placing him on an instantaneous 0-100 escalation, nevertheless it’s Salt who suffers the most ignominies in the course of, not offered as Barclay’s political equal and the advocate of Warfare Between‘s most radicalized notions of the local weather disaster, and as an alternative flattened right into a strolling embodiment of the “born attractive yesterday” trope, thematically and narratively taken out of the image for a lot of the present’s center act as soon as Barclay rescues her from UNIT detention.
This jarring pivot in focus is broadly emblematic of Warfare Between‘s most damning of points: the collection merely can’t commit, from second to second, on each stage, to an thought of what it needs to be or say, rendering it fully inconsequential from each a thematic viewpoint and a narratively logistical one in its broader place in the Physician Who universe. In some methods, this was a poison tablet baked into the present’s very premise—extra typically than not, a Physician Who story about the Physician’s absence finally has to lead to little or no affect outdoors of that exact story, each as a result of it calls into query what it takes for the Physician to contain themself in a given disaster and since it calls into query simply how a lot a derivative collection can really feel supposedly “obligatory” to Physician Who‘s establishment going ahead.
The Warfare Between might by no means ship on the thought of aqua and humankind negotiating an amicable, symbiotic strategy to their shared existence on earth, as a result of it could shunt Physician Who‘s depiction of the “actual” Earth a step even additional past our personal actuality. However as an alternative of taking part in inside that tight constraint to inform a contained however nonetheless attention-grabbing story, Warfare Between tried to go large, solely to be unable to ship on that scale in a passable manner, abandoning something that gave it weight because it hobbled in direction of a muddled finish.
A number of instances in the collection, either side declare to one another that the titular battle is coming, that it’s right here, that it’s over, however we by no means actually get to see that battle, as a result of Homo Aqua, after elevating uncomfortably true considerations about humanity’s function in local weather change, has to be first rendered unforgivably villainous—which is executed in the weird opening sequence of the ultimate episode that depicts a retaliatory act by Homo Aqua summoning, capturing, and consuming each canine on the planet, a situation that is raised inside a matter of minutes after which by no means touched once more—after which successfully eradicated as an ongoing concern, executed so by way of an ill-explained engineered virus, dubbed “Severance,” that finally kills all however 10% of aquakind as rapidly because it’s launched in the again half of the present’s ultimate episode.
Humanity’s specific genocide of Homo Aqua can be a fascinatingly darkish level to finish the present on, however Warfare Between doesn’t truly care. The extermination and capitulation of Homo Aqua are executed and resolved in the again half of the present’s ultimate episode, giving Warfare Between little or no time to have its human gamers wrestle with the ethical price of what it’s executed (just a few temporary, awkwardly inserted flashforwards suggest that what stays of Homo Aqua will get its comeuppance on the direct people chargeable for Severance’s deployment, however that’s about it). As a substitute, it continues to focus on Barclay and Salt, the former rewarded for his allyship with what is now a minority species by being slowly reworked into an aquakind/human hybrid, the sole particular person allowed to stay amongst the remnants of Homo Aqua at the expense of leaving his human life behind.
This lack of care extends throughout all of Warfare Between‘s narrative threads. The affect of Homo Aqua’s radical makes an attempt to shift humanity into motion are dropped as rapidly as they’re launched. Episode two climaxes with Salt dumping every bit of water-bound waste onto land, successfully burying the planet in garbage and severely disrupting the logistical bedrocks of society, however by episode 5, that situation has been cleaned up in the background, by no means to be touched once more. The collection’ continued failure to interrogate UNIT’s function as a corporation that is seemingly gleefully obsessive about weaponizing a surveillance state solely compounds the points raised by collection co-creator Pete McTighe in his 2025 Doctor Who episode “Fortunate Day,” climaxing not with a self-reckoning, however with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart threatening her personal therapist with the publicity of her husband’s infidelity (why does UNIT have entry to that sort of particular person surveillance? The present doesn’t care; it’s simply cool hero spy stuff) if she doesn’t let her preserve having a task in the ongoing negotiations, a win for our hero, and by the present’s finish, it’s constant sufficient that Kate simply begins threatening gross invasions of privateness as a jokey apart.
It’s Kate that Warfare Between truly ends on, in a very weird scene that is emblematic of Warfare Between‘s incomprehensible thought of tone or message. Having seen off Barclay and Salt to stay their new underwater life collectively, she comes throughout a runner on the seaside who casually tosses his water bottle as litter beside her. The ultimate photographs of Warfare Between—the ultimate photographs of Physician Who‘s Disney period, the ultimate photographs of the franchise till this time subsequent yr—have an more and more indignant and manic Kate pull her gun on the runner, repeatedly screaming that he choose up the bottle as her finger inches nearer to the set off.
Tonally it instantly follows up an prolonged, dialogueless sequence of Barclay and Salt’s reunion set to a Goldfrapp cowl of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” so it’d be nearly humorous if the present wasn’t abruptly attempting to deal with it as a critical, darkish second. It’s a weird finish word on Kate’s character (for now, a minimum of), launched 13 years in the past as the level-headed, “science leads” future stepping away from UNIT’s militarized previous. However it’s additionally the literal final minutes of the present abruptly lurching again to an thought it had broadly deserted for many of its runtime, as if it lastly remembered that it as soon as yearned to be a present that truly had some extent to make, and that by addressing it in its dying gasps, the journey to get there meant one thing.
It’s a symbolic word for Doctor Who‘s awful year to exit on, reflecting the finish of an period that had a lot promise and potential when it started simply two years in the past solely to get slowed down in an aimless malaise that muddled the collection’ capability to actually commit to commentary and reflection of the world we stay in by its sci-fi lens. It’s becoming, maybe then, that the less-than-amicable breakup between Disney and the BBC has resulted in a lot of the world not legally having the ability to see Warfare Between till some nebulous level subsequent yr, when it’ll doubtless be dropped in its entirety with little in the manner of fanfare: a present with nothing to say, buried in the deep to by no means be considered once more.
The Warfare Between the Land and the Sea is now streaming in its entirety in the UK on BBC iPlayer. The collection will stream on Disney+ internationally a while in 2026.
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