One has to admire the sheer audacity of a Doctor Who spin-off that manages to be both a triumph of casting and a masterclass in environmental sermonising. The War Between the Land and the Sea is, in its better moments, a brisk little five-episode thing that feels like Russell T Davies decided to remake The Day After Tomorrow but with more Dalek-adjacent sea creatures and considerably fewer ice caps. The plot, such as it is, concerns a subterranean amphibious race rising from the depths to reclaim the surface from humanity’s carbon-emitting clutches. It is, in short, the sort of story that might have been written by a particularly earnest Year 9 geography teacher who has recently discovered eco-anxiety and a word processor.
The acting, however, is where the show briefly escapes its own sanctimony. Russell Tovey, as the beleaguered UNIT employee, gives a performance of such quiet, sardonic charm that one wonders why he isn’t given more to do than run around in a raincoat looking mildly put-upon. He has the rare gift of making exposition sound like conversation rather than a briefing note from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Gemma Redgrave, meanwhile, is magnificent as Kate Stewart: steely, weary, and just the right side of camp. She delivers lines about “the planet’s last stand” with the conviction of someone who has seen too many committee meetings and not enough actual saving of the world.
Together they are the best thing in the show, and one suspects they know it. The environmental messaging, however, is less messaging than a full-blown lecture tour. Every third line is a finger-wagging reminder that we’re all doomed unless we stop using plastic straws, and the show seems to believe that if it shouts “climate crisis” loudly enough, it will become drama rather than propaganda. It is the televisual equivalent of being trapped in a lift with a vegan who has just read The Uninhabitable Earth and wants to make sure you’ve suffered for it. One half-expects the closing credits to be followed by a QR code to sign a petition.
Worse still is the narrative sleight-of-hand that Davies attempts with the Doctor himself. The Fourteenth Doctor—David Tennant’s return, remember, the one who was supposed to be the emotional anchor of this whole era—plays no role whatsoever in The War Between the Land and the Sea. Not a cameo, not a phone call, not even a mention. He is, apparently, too busy enjoying a quiet retirement in a TARDIS-shaped bungalow somewhere in the Home Counties, while UNIT and the planet itself are being threatened by angry fish-men. One might charitably call this “subtle world-building”. One might less charitably call it “a gaping hole in the continuity that even a blind Dalek could spot”. If the Doctor is the universe’s designated problem-solver, why is he sitting this one out? Has he run out of regenerations, or has he simply decided that saving the Earth from climate change is a bit too on-the-nose for a man who once regenerated to avoid a tax audit?
One cannot help but wonder whether this curious absence reflects a larger problem: that Davies, having poured so much of his creative energy into this spin-off, left Ncuti Gatwa’s second series of the main show undercooked and under-supported. The Fifteenth Doctor’s sophomore outing arrived with the enthusiasm of a soufflé that had been left in the oven too long—beautiful in theory, but rather flat in practice. The ratings were dismal, the critics were kind but unconvincing, and Gatwa himself has since vanished into the ether, leaving the show in a state of what can only be described as narrative limbo. One is tempted to ask: did the boss spend too much time worrying about the sea rising and not enough time worrying about the audience?
In the end, The War Between the Land and the Sea is a show that wants to be taken seriously but keeps tripping over its own moralising shoelaces. Tovey and Redgrave are excellent, the production values are handsome, and the monsters are reasonably convincing. But the preaching is relentless, the Doctor is AWOL, and the whole thing feels like a side-project that might have done better as a side-project. If this is the future of Doctor Who, it is a future in which the Time Lord has apparently decided that the best way to save the planet is to let UNIT do all the work while he tends his begonias. One can only hope he remembers to water them.