Legend of the Sea Devils

Episode aired Apr 17, 2022
TV-14
48m

IMDb RATING

4.5/10

3.5K

YOUR RATING

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Adventure Drama Sci-Fi

The Doctor, Yaz and Dan travel to 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching and a monstrous force which she unwitting... Read allThe Doctor, Yaz and Dan travel to 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching and a monstrous force which she unwittingly unleashes.The Doctor, Yaz and Dan travel to 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching and a monstrous force which she unwittingly unleashes.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

4.5/10

3.5K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
This is only the second Doctor Who Easter special, after Planet of the Dead (2009), 13 years earlier. Unlike Planet of the Dead, no mention is made here of the holiday.

Goofs
The story takes place entirely in China (and the surrounding ocean) with a Chinese cast. It has been long established that the TARDIS crew are able to understand languages other than English due to the TARDIS's telepathic circuits acting as a translator, however, the telepathic circuits only remain in contact with a crew member while they're in the same time period. As soon as the TARDIS left 1807, Dan should have been unable to understand the Chinese characters.

Quotes
Yasmin Khan: My Nani says... courage is knowing something will hurt and doing it anyway. Mind you, she also said it's the definition of stupidity.

Connections
Featured in Points of View: Episode #78.1 (2022)

Soundtracks
Doctor Who Theme
Written by Ron Grainer
Performed by BBC National Orchestra of Wales

User reviews120

Featured review

3/10

Missed the opportunity to tale the Sea Devil backstory.

I was keen to watch the return of the Sea Devils to see how they would be updated to mirror the Silurian cousins and being a feature length episode, a good backstory to reveal more of these famous foes. And I was generally okay with many of Chibnall era of stories. However, I was terribly disappointed from not only the lack of Sea Devil design, but their low budget puppetry appearance which made classics version look so much more contemporary. And the story with a loosely added last minute plot was so clumsy written (lets add this and that now lets forget we did that) it just felt like they making everything up on the spot. As was the acting, nothing more than a children's pirate pantomime. Chibnall era was well-known to spend good money on graphics and special efforts, but the skills and lack of polishing off of effects was so bad I was horrifically transported back in time to early 80s film technology. I was one of those fans that was okay with Chibnall era. But this episode was a complete let down in every way.