The Sea Devils

 

I remember when a continuity announcer said that the next story would be called `The Sea Devils` and I had no idea if this was some sort of monster or period pirate piece. Since then I’ve always loved `The Sea Devils` and now I can't quite believe its fifty years since I first saw it. Inevitably it can’t thrill me like it did as a child but yet it still has a magic. Many parts of it fizz with energy and even if from this distance it can look ramshackle at times the overall effect is still strong. Part of the reason why its endured is the very experimental incidental music by Malcolm Clarke and the design of the Sea Devils themselves. Even if their eyes don’t move! So forgive if this is less a review and more notes. 

 

It’s a story with its own style, its own look, it’s own sound (definitely!) and it stands out even amongst many other third Doctor stories. The first episode sees the Doctor and Jo visiting the now incarcerated Master who is ensconced in an island prison guarded by cloak wearing soldiers who zoom about in minis without car doors in them! It’s a masterclass in how to lay out the concept- unlike other Master stories then (and now) where the villain is revealed part way through we see him less than ten minutes from the start. This is probably Roger Delgado’s finest performance in the role – bizarrely he would give his least effective one in his very next appearance – and it’s full of nuance and layers. I love the scene where Trenchard comes into the room as The Master is watching The Clangers and the expression Delgado pulls when Trenchard explains “it’s just for kids” something that obviously The Master knew. Modern stories often work to keep the Doctor and Master apart or have the former mixing with the latter in disguise but here they spar so well; verbally now but the physical conflict will come later. Jon Pertwee is now in the middle of his tenure, relaxed and yet urgent when it matters.

What really makes the opener work so well too are the aural and visual elements. I’ve known people who have listened to this quirky soundtrack on its own but it only makes sense when you hear it with the intended visuals. Often dismissed as distortion and noise, Malcolm Clarke is actually scoring what we see so he has a choppy approach for scenes where we see boats whereas when it comes to the furtive shots of the Sea Devil on the fort his music is jagged and hostile. It is such a perfect fit for this story though I couldn’t imagine it working in any another.

Visually there is clearly an attempt to match the generous amount of location work with the indoor sets. The Naval base interior has a decent length of corridor and a wide office for Captain Hart. The prison really matches the elegant exterior we see. Best of all is the Sea Fort set complete with echoey ambience and lots of metal steps and walkways. I’ve no idea if that’s really what the inside of an old Sea Fort might look like but it doesn’t matter. Often when old television drama cuts from outside to inside the appearance jars and you can’t believe it but here the match is perfect.

The episode is almost faultless except for one unlikely idea which is when Trenchard invites the Doctor and Jo to watch as The Master tries to hynotise a new guard. Then moments later they seem to believe the jackanapes when he tells them he’s turned over a new leaf. Jo even feels a bit sorry for him. Yet moments earlier they’d seen him up to his old tricks. It doesn’t ring true especially when in a subsequent scene The Master is annoyed that Trenchard mentioned the sunken ships.

Part two’s centrepiece is the fencing duel between the Doctor and the Master in the final few minutes. Expertly choreographed its only after repeated watching over the years that you notice how it’s mostly shot from behind The Master showing that Jon Pertwee did far more of his own stunt work than Roger Delgado. To be fair, the editing is sharp enough so that only the most eagle eyed would spot this on a first viewing plus Delgado gives it his best angry face and swiping gestures. Interestingly the scene chooses to portray the Doctor as far more playful to the point where he nibbles at a sandwich after The Master has been knocked onto the floor. Also there is a point where The Master loses his rapier but rather than declare victory, the Doctor gives it back to him suggesting he’s rather enjoying this hand to hand combat.

Indeed, it is a very practical Doctor we get in this episode. Earlier he lashes up two items on the Sea Fort- a means to electrocute the pursuing Sea Devil and then he converts a receiver into a transmitter using a portable radio. This building from scratch is very much a third Doctor motif in the days before the sonic screwdriver was utilised for more or less any function. He presumably has the sonic with him (and indeed will use it in a later episode) but here it remains in his pocket. For all that Messrs Letts and Dicks have been criticised for replacing the harder edged 1970 season (largely conceived by their predecessors) with paint by numbers pseudo science, the Doctor’s DIY here is much more convincing than all of that messing about with test tubes he was doing two years earlier. For good measure we also see him potting a golf ball into an overturned glass while blind folded. There’s no particular reason for this but it’s a very Third Doctor showing off scene rather like that cheese and wine moment two stories earlier.

Jon Pertwee is in particularly fine form in this episode with a lovely comedic tone that is far more palatable than some other stories where he was more preachy. I like the scene in Hart’s office when Trenchard comes in to waste the Captain’s time so as to allow The Master to steal electronic supplies. Just look at the reaction shots of both Jon Pertwee and Edwin Richfield. Clive Morton is the straight man in this scene, all bluster and waffle. Roger Delgado’s Master is often described in a manner that wholly omits his lighter touches with which this story is graced with. Yet the actor’s ability to shift from that to a savageness sets the tone for future occupants of the role.

The third episode is the weakest of the story and while there are still some enjoyable scenes, it becomes somewhat bogged down by unlikely incidents. For one thing Jo Grant suddenly develops super strength managing to first knock over two burly guards outside the prison and later poleaxe another with some sort of hold to the chest. For all the talk of security, this is also a prison that leaves windows and doors open with abandon allowing Jo to get back inside and rescue the Doctor with a real screwdriver.

Meanwhile Jane Blythe seems to suddenly have more of a grasp of the situation than her superior convincing Captain Hart to follow up over the apparent disappearance of the Doctor and Jo. She’ll definitely be getting promotion after this. I also find the Master’s scheme especially weak which is saying something for a villain whose overall plans are always the least convincing thing about him. He wants to help the Sea Devils just to see humanity destroyed? I suppose that’s what the villain is for but Doctor Who has rarely shown such a gap between the excellence of the actor performing and the character’s motivation.

To be enjoyed are some windswept sequences around the prison grounds and the episode’s climax on the nearby beach. I’d mis-remembered this as concluding with the emergence of the group of Sea Devils though but it actually ends with a close up of just one after it’s emerged from the sea. Just having the monster interact with the water like that is huge plus. The submarine escapade as a very young looking Donald Sumpter undertakes an undersea mission seems a little bit of a time filler but the stock footage at least includes shots of a real submarine diving to give it added believability though this stops once we see inside. This must be the only Doctor Who set that looks too big!

Katy Manning and Jon Pertwee both excel in this episode notably when they mime to each other that was surely the inspiration for the similar one decades later between the Doctor and Donna. Time and again whenever you watch a Jo Grant story it kicks into touch the old idea that she was just a companion who got caught, ran away or screamed at the monsters. She does so much more. However unlikely Jo’s escapology may seem it is good that in the middle of this story it’s the two female characters who shape events.

Nobody decided how Sea Devils should walk did they? In part four we see a variety of gaits including the one on the beach who runs away yelling the reptilian equivalent of “Bloody hell, that’s too risky!” as he flees exploding mines. Doctor Who monsters need to move in a manner that accentuates their scary costume. If they just walk about like people then they look less like creatures and more like people with masks on. Look at the way the Ice Warriors carry it off and then imagine if they just strolled about normally like some of the Sea Devils do here.

This is the episode where Trenchard learns the truth and it’s a hard truth for him to bear. In the Target novelisation I recall there was an excellent summation of this man, his past and his realisation about what he’d done. Without such prose and in the hands of the stoic but not especially varied Clive Morton, Trenchard’s backstory is told courtesy of objects. Behind him on a shelf is a cup, perhaps for golf. Next to that a framed photograph of a man and woman. Its too far away and out of focus to tell if its him and his wife but I suspect it is. And he’s wearing an old school tie; I’d never noticed that before. As soon as Trenchard finds out what’s really going on you mentally urge him to punch The Master out but he never does. His death- in a story that rarely takes the subtle route- is quite elegantly done.

There’s a lot of Naval action in this part of the story. The Sea Devils capture the submarine though why they would need it when they can seemingly swim about underwater at great depths I’m not sure. Edwin Richfield gets a lot to do as Hart is sent back and forth, the story speeding up here. The last ten minutes take place on a boat as the Doctor decides to take a trip in the diving bell. I remember as a kid finding this quite unnerving, even then I suppose I could sense these were not flimsy sets but a real ship at sea. I even found the ending one of the most shocking of the show to that point even though it’s obvious what’s happened.

This is an episode- and indeed a story- that demonstrates why even the most exciting Doctor Who will start to fall down if you watch it too many times or with any amount of careful attention. The minefield scene was something I’d always thought of as really well done but now I realise it was rushed- at one point Jo pulls aside barbed wire that the Doctor has just melodramatically fallen on to allow her over- and clumsily done. And anyhow just what was a minefield even doing on there on the beach?

The Pertwee period’s parade of pompous politicians is always a laugh and Parliamentary Private Secretary Walker is easily my favourite. He breezes into Hart’s office in episode five, orders breakfast and a large assault on the Sea Devils’ base almost in the same breath. He treats Jane Blythe like a hotel chamber maid and pays more attention to his own comfort than to the attack in hand. Director Michael E Briant really underscores this character by focussing on his mouth as he seems to do little but eat. “We all have to make sacrifices” he declares biting into more food. Played with relish by Martin Boddey it’s a small but important role that the actor makes his own. When he says “We’re not going to share the planet with a lot of lizards” you feel that public opinion would probably agree with him! Seeing him later lock horns with Pertwee is another treat.

The overall story is drifting at this point, the Doctor’s attempt to convince the Sea Devils to make peace interrupted by The Master’s argument that they won’t. The breathy voice employed for the Chief Sea Devil, the only one that seems to capable of holding a conversation, pales of course when compared to the intelligent discussions the Doctor had with the Silurians two years earlier. There’s also something rather makeshift about the underwater base too with one set draped in black curtains as if they didn’t have time to do anything else with it. More impressive though it an attempt to show the lips of the Chief Sea Devil moving even though this is not one of the famed `half masks`.

The episode climaxes with the start of the Sea Devil assault on the Naval base which forms the backdrop for episode six when, in time honoured fashion, the Doctor and the Master work together and the Doctor actually says “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.” It’s an episode brimming with confidence and everything an episode six should be. In some ways Captain Hart is the hero, helping Jo escape, bringing back a squadron of armed sailors to engage the Sea Devils and then for good measure firing off a few rounds of artillery. Edwin Richfield has been terrific throughout the story and I always thought it was a pity Hart never got a return appearance.

You do have to smile at the convenience of the narrative though. For example, the Doctor speaks to Jo through a window in the stores when the Master has gone to get something. Well how big is this store? I can’t believe he doesn’t hear the conversation. Then when the Doctor’s little act of sabotage causes a piercing noise to traumatise the Sea Devils it is allowed to go on exactly long enough to allow Jo to break Hart out . Only when it’s stopped does the Chief Sea Devil rush in like an irritated neighbour to say something like “what the hell was that then?” The Master, meanwhile, seems unconcerned.  Later on you wonder just why two bright orange speedboats have been left on the beach. Are they perhaps recreational boats Captain Hart and Jane Blythe use at the weekend? On the other hand the story does use the sonic screwdriver properly for the second time just to unlock a door and nothing more fancy.

The centrepiece is the shoot out at the Naval Base which despite insisting on showing the Sea Devils roaming around mostly in bunches of six (they could vary it a bit more) includes some dynamic stunts like a fall from a roof, tumbling galore and even one poor costumed stuntman looking as it he’s uncomfortably close to being blown up for real! The funniest bit is when a trio of Sea Devils come around a corner, the one at front fires then moves away, followed by the next and then the third. Such a polite group they are. The soundtrack offers all sorts of bullet sounds, ricochets included, and whoever did these was so enthusiastic you hear guns firing before any of the sailors have left the hovercraft.

`The Sea Devils` is always entertaining to watch and has a lot to recommend it even if it’s not quite as thrilling as when I saw it as a child. It’s an example of how confident the programme was in this era, how determined to create wild adventures and great monsters. Unlike Walker I’m happy to share some time with a bunch of lizards anyday!