Doctor Who Reaches A New Low

and before this video begins i'd like to give a special shout out to my as bantium level patron fallon cortez [Music] legend of the sea devils is the latest result of chris jimnel pulling down his trousers and aggressively defecating onto his computer keyboard except this time he really outdoes himself because he manages to do it all in his sleep as well despite me actually being quite cautiously optimistic going into this episode because of flux being decent legend of the sea devils is a boring incomprehensible cgi fest full of dream logic and the effects budget of an alistar king youtube skier as we slowly painfully crawl ourselves over a broken glass towards the end of the chimney era we get a whistle stop tour of all of his favorite tropes with countdowns exposition and awkward will they won't they thazman's stuff making up the bulk of a largely forgettable episode it's almost like chimney saw how bad planet of the dead was and decided to make something even worse so brace yourselves because this isn't going to be pretty the easter special this year is called legend of the sea devils so i suppose the appropriate place to start would be with the titular sea devils because unlike chivnall i understand the importance of structure one of the few compliments you tend to see about the 13th adultery era is the quality of the updated designs of classic monsters there were redesigns of daleks cybermen and the centaurons since chimner is desperate to leave some kind of a mark the centurions are probably the best example finding a way to transform the wobbly 1970s rubber suits with jacket potato heads into actual decent quality costumes making them look like a suitable contemporary threat so you'd probably expect the same kind of glow up to apply to the sea devils too since they clearly needed one with their first appearance having them wander around in torn hospital gowns fans have been begging for years to see the return of sea devils so when they finally appear in the modern show this is what they got no in fact that's not actually a picture of the latest doxie fan film starring an unconvincing teenager running round of affairs this is actually real with the bbc's budget in 2022 and the bar has been lowered to such an extent by this point that a lot of people actually liked this redesign i guess they started celebrating 420 a few days early sure these new sea devils look very similar to their classic counterparts but is that really a good thing they're the kind of cartoonish bug-eyed monster sydney newman banned from the development stages of doxie's first serials they're not scary at all especially because they have these big googly eyes like a kid went to hobbycraft and decided to make the next big doctor who villain there's an unsettling uncanny valley feeling to how they're animated moving so uncomfortably and looking painfully fake they're unbelievable as real creatures inhabiting this universe they emote weirdly and on top of that they're just so unwieldy the prosthetic costumes are so chunky with the monsters lumbering around it creates some very dodgy looking moments especially when they're involved in sword fights it ends up like watching a power rangers megazord fight so it's really no surprise that the sea devils barely even show up in this episode they move with all the grayson de chrome of a reversing dump truck and i don't mean me walking backwards it's so bad that they have to find ways to avoid showing them walking so you get them instead mario jumping onto ships perfect as expected by this point chibnall seemingly expects the audience to have already watched a third doctor serial from 1972 because he barely explains to the viewer who the sea devils actually are and why they're a big deal remember this is the first time they're showing up in the modern show and it's been eight years since the last proper silurian appearance so it's not even like the doctor can just point at the sea devils and say these guys are just underwater silurians if anything she's weirdly against the idea saying that the sea devils simply regard earth as their home planet which makes no sense because it actually is their home planet this isn't a matter of perspective it's fact which makes it so uncharacteristic for her to be against these creatures being from earth and not planet zogbar prime the episode does such a horrible job of actually reintroducing these monsters they're not given a particular spotlight or narrative weight like most other returning monsters and villains get if anything you probably come away from the episode knowing even less about the sea devils than you do going in because general just expects you to know already so from the perspective of a casual viewer they may as well just be the zogbarians after all so you have the sea devils making their big return to doctor who but what do they actually do what's their plan in this episode no that's not a rhetorical question i'm genuinely asking you because i have no idea the plot is that incomprehensible and downright boring from what i could gather in the moments my eyes weren't glazing over it seems like the sea devils want to reshape the earth and the solar system to melt the ice caps and turn the planet into an ocean despite it already being 70 water even in the time they were ruling the planet land existed it's not like the human race came along and plonked down land for the banter there's a really confusing moment as the literal stars in the sky rearrange themselves because of the sea devils what technology could they possibly will to do that did chimneal forget what stars actually are you can't just move them around like fridge magnets and on top of that the episode acts like switching the polarity of the earth's magnetic field will cause chaos and wipe out all human life allowing the sea devils to prosper but it seems like neither chimney nor co-writer elero took the time to do a quick google search since this is already a natural process that happens every two to three hundred thousand years so it's not the big world ending event the writers seem to think it is and it won't melt all the ice caps there's also a random magical keystone mcguffin which suddenly shows up halfway through the episode and someone has to see devils she's a random sea monster creature only for it to suddenly vanish from the story with no explanation which come to think of it pretty much sums up the absolutely abysmal plot where's the crew well that'll be us we don't stand a chance i think it's actually generous to say legend of the sea devils has a plot it's more like a patchwork episode made up of random set pieces and boring exposition you see events playing out on the screen in front of you but you have absolutely no emotional attachment to them or any reason to care about what's happening it's lifeless and soulless making it disposable on average which means it's a complete disaster it constantly rapid fire stuff at you a sea devil statue a flying pirate ship chinese pirates from different periods of time stars moving around a magical stone an ear in a box it's messier than the casting couch at the end of the working week there's never any build up or payoff things just happen and you never get any explanations for why things are actually meant to mean anything it's confusing you don't even care about trying to make sense of the plot because of how mind-numbingly dull and boring it is characters just happen to appear anywhere they need to go and immediately have the right knowledge for that scene it feels like half the script was blown away by the wind during filming it's shockingly disjointed like when the doctor is trying to get the pirate ship to return to the surface only for it to immediately cut to her and jazz escape in the ship having apparently freed the captive pirate captain there's a massive piece missing since they were in the literal enemy base but can apparently just walk out if they decide to the episode feels incomplete with no flow which makes me wonder just how much was cut during editing it's the shortest special since the show is revived just 47 minutes long which further shows how bland it is because it's basically just a cut series 13 episode retrofitted as a special which means it's anticlimactic and just not special legend of the sea devils actually had quite a lot of promise to it it's a historical episode set in a period of history you wouldn't expect focusing on an interesting figure from that time period it continues the more international historical trend of the chimney era which had previously explored rosa parks the partition of india and the rivalry between thomas edison and nikola tesla most previous historical episodes were british history or the generic kind of history you'd expect like ancient romans so having a story all about the infamous pirate queen zhang yisel is a brilliant idea to expand the show and include more elements of world history and that's what all the promotional material was suggesting we were promised a meeting with a legendary pirate queen herself only for the episode to squander that set up to an almost insulting degree instead of the infamous and feared pirate she becomes bland woman with a sad family backstory teaming up with bland boy with a sad family backstory and then bland historical pirate captain in classic gymnal fashion you feel absolutely nothing for any of them because they're void of personalities they just exist as tools for the constantly crumbling story persistently reminding you of their motivations through monologues zingy cell is especially shakily acted coming across as some edgy teenager trying to be a badass mysterious anime protagonist instead of living up to the reputation of being possibly the most successful female pirate in the entire world and if you're lucky you might make it back home alive if the doctor hadn't repeated back her entire name and wikipedia page you probably wouldn't even know she was a real figure given the disjointed editing and short run time it's obvious that things were cut from this episode especially because there were leaks and rumors during production that there was trouble with china over something in this episode at first i assumed it was the truly terrifying existence of homosexual people but now it feels like the story wanted to instead one up the talents of wang chiang by being horrifically racist and insensitive in some form it definitely seems like some characters were dubbed over so god knows what accents they were doing in the original car you can even see it with some of the costumes they're apparently not very accurate instead ending up an awkward hodgepodge of different southeast asian cultures which is always a great message to send they couldn't even be bothered to have their characters wear accurate footwear instead they were modern day trainers like the production team was inspired by the coffee cup in game of thrones yes let's talk about continuity errors because this episode is as riddled with them as an 80s porn star is riddled with stds there's selective rain disappearing and appearing depending on the shot you get people in the 19th century wearing trainers and it's never clear where everyone is physically meant to be in relation to each other on top of all of that the doctor yaz and dan walk into a village and immediately have the net set up to trap the sea devil dan is able to swim all the way to an offshore pirate ship without showing any signs of exhaustion or being cold because of the weather it's also confusing that dan is wearing a comical pirate costume considering they arrive there by accident and don't realize until they've left the tardis so why did he wear the costume did they think they were going to a fancy dress party legend of the sea devils is so shortly put together it fails on every level it looks decent at some points like they're cold open in the village but the episode is so reliant on cgi and it really drags it down because the effects are abysmal the green screen is amateur level and the sea devils are almost comically bad in crowd shots it's like a slap in the face which you almost get physically with how bad the sound mixing is i spent half the episode straining to hear what people were actually saying because the music and sound effects were so loud and overpowering but what really takes the cake is the directing bafflingly the episode was handed to halo wang who has only ever directed small scale indie short films this is her first ever directorial credit on a tv show and the lack of experience definitely shows with headache and juice and fight scenes rivalling taken with a shaky camera and unnecessary camera cuts it's so difficult to comprehend what's going on in the sequences and it's not even like the episode is good when it's not focusing on these terrible action scenes the episode is so static with so many scenes of characters standing there monologuing and talking so much it's genuinely like a big finnish audio drama with the characters narrating and describing everything you're literally already looking at you should have locked all right yes did you just stand up like this in 19th century china this isn't a mutiny my ship is yours jihan's in league with the sea devils did you see the stars just moved to find out what happened to the lost treasure ship well here it is stolen by a sea devil i solved the mystery of zihang and found the lost trash of the florida lemar the dialogue is atrocious with constant tecno babble and convenient buzzwords along with some horrible attempts at comedy no sherlock the episode tries so desperately to be hip and down with her kids that is one step away from having yaz make a tick tock of her achieving a sassy victory royale i mean the doctor even references megamind of all things weaponizing cringe to an almost atomic level rumors of his seth have been greatly exaggerated and now we get a thazmin which i left until the end just like how chivnal left it to the last minute to actually do anything with it indeed much later the daleks before it the most notable part of legend of the sea devils is its exploration of the romantic relationship between the doctor and jazz this was something that thasmin fans wheeled into existence because it wasn't planned and only started to become purposeful in the haunting of villa diodassi before being confirmed in eve of the daleks leaving just two episodes to cram all the phasma and stuff into unlike previous episodes legend of the sea devils actually addresses it to an extent no longer treading water and poking it with a stick but it's still horribly mismanaged because of how unbelievable it all is there has never been any chemistry between these two characters the obvious comparison is the temp doctrine rose the only other full-on doctrine companion romance as early as the christmas invasion it was obvious that the pair shared a bit of an unspoken romantic attraction the foundation was already there and it took center stage a new earth but you never had anything like this between 13 and yes because yes always faded into the background having a total of three other companions to share screen time with they never had the chance to build up the kind of romantic chemistry a tv relationship requires for the audience to buy into it they barely even come across as friends because of how badly the doctor treats she has it's a borderline abusive relationship which shouldn't be celebrated the same kind of problematic relationship writing that caused an entire generation to think bdsm relationships are supposed to be physically and emotionally abusive tasman is not a healthy friendship or a relationship yes has completely abandoned her life her job and her family all for the doctor she's even perfectly fine with killing people now but we never understand why she does all this for the doctor and it's never addressed as character development instead we just constantly see the doctor shutting yaz out refusing to explain things to her and snapping at her for asking basic questions so legend of the sea devils essentially comes along needing to play catch up for two series of relationship building intention but instead we get swordfights and this scene [Music] how bad day am i yes this episode manages to both confirm the doctor's feelings towards yours whilst chimner still tries to sit on the fence and avoid committing to either side it makes you wonder why they even bother acknowledging it since it's going nowhere as it stands it's bad enough that yaz seems perfectly content with being outed to a crush without a consent but shimno really decides to go down the route of copying school reunions idea of the doctor not being able to settle down with a human because they don't age but the show has changed so much since then and even in school reunion it was all linked to a wider thematic story in this episode the doctor reciprocates the feelings but turns yells down because of the danger and inevitable death but if she really does love jazz as much as she says why does she let her stay and risk her life so often the 10th doctor tried to send rose into the parallel world to be safe with her family and later the 11th doctor forced amy and rory to leave him for their own safety because he couldn't bear the thought of standing over their graves so why is it different for yaz why does she still let jazz travel when she loves her enough to not want to start a relationship out of the fear of yaz dying it makes no sense and besides the doctor has settled down multiple times since school reunion the 11th doctor spent thousands of years on trends a lot watching the people of christmas live and die the 12th doctor spent twenty four years with riveronder william and then countless years as a university professor so the thirteenth is excuse just seems completely off base compared to what we've seen she even compares her love for yas to her love for river her literal wife which is another mind-boggling narrative decision but the point is if it was going to be anyone it'd be you indeed in the midst of all the weird cgi sea devils mario jumping and continuity errors the real worst moment of legend of the sea devils is the scene where the 13th doctor says yaz is the most amazing person she has ever met what has yaz ever done to warrant that kind of opinion she hasn't had a huge brave moment proving her worth rose absorbed the time vortex martha saved the entirety of earth donna became part-time lord clara jumped in the doctor's time stream to save his life all these other companions had very significant impacts on both the episodes and the doctor's life but yaz has had nothing close to this i failed to see how she could consider yaz better and more special than all of those previous companions if anything she's the least special most underdeveloped companion of the modern era up until his point the doctor hasn't shown even the slightest inkling of seeing her is more than a friend but now chimneal decides to make it so that she considers yaz the ultimate soul mate it hasn't been built to and now it's up to the characters to desperately monologue to us about how much they actually care about each other because guys can't you see they really do love each other so very much it's just so superficial and ham-fisted it could have been a really good payoff to a properly structured long-term story but it's not there were no little hints here and there no roots or sense that the doctor felt anything towards yaz so what's the point why make this an integral part of legend of the sea devils if you're just going to bait the audience with it suddenly yanking it away of such a dismissive line can we just live in the present of what we have tasman was basically only turned into a real thing because of the fans so what do you gain from turning on those fans none of it makes any sense and the characters suffer from this game of hot potato and besides with one episode left until the 13th october regenerates shimlo has already added at least one more barricade to his trophy cabinet because we literally already know he's going to kill off another gay character legend of the sea devils is the latest doctor who dumpster fire it's a complete disaster through and through there are failures on every level from the writing and the acting to the directing and editing it's almost impressively botched even though it was co-written by ella rhode it feels very much like a typical chimney episode including the iconic contradictory and frustratingly inconsistent morality the doctor scolds the character for killing the sea devil who took his crew and his ship only for dan to wipe out 60 devils minutes later and crack jokes about it then the episode ends with a doctor repeating a koshamus classic by happily allowing someone else to die instead of her having to sacrifice herself or having to be forcefully removed like the character usually has to be it's a painful episode to sit through it's lining fast yet intensely boring with a paper-thin plot most of the episode is spent with the characters describing the events you can see for yourself and the doctor continues to spout enough exposition to fill an entire book series probably the only good part of this episode is the course correction regarding dan and his love interest diane at the end of flux she unfairly blamed him for everything she went through and it felt like a strangely hostile ending so it's good that they're fixing it now but everything else in legend of the sea devils is beyond atrocious so i'd easily give it an f-rank just like either the daleks before it the narrative makes no sense the sea devils are both written and designed badly making them a completely non-existent threat you don't fear at all the supporting cast is weak and the celebrity historical format is wasted tasman finds itself awkwardly taxed on without providing any actually satisfying answers or progress still remaining in no man's land literally it's actually quite a fitting penultimate episode for the chimney era because it's a story that sums up all his issues as a writer and now it comes down to the bbc centenary special which is already said to be a complete mess of member berries with a bare bones plot as usual with chimney hey remember ace remember tegan orange space suit ashad vinder hey stewart the daleks and the master are back i clapped i know what that is and special thanks to my as bantium level patron fallon cortez and all my gold level patrons calvin daniel shilito france horn ak line vortex hernan verzog and luke underscore sy thank you so much for your support you

Channel: Harbo Wholmes

Views: 96,202

Keywords: doctor who, doctor who Flux, doctor who chibnall, doctor who series 13, harbo wholmes, harbo wholmes doctor who, harbor wholmes, the doctor, dr who, jodie whittaker, jay exci, the fall of doctor who, doctor who video essay, doctor who new series, doctor who david tennant, daleks, harbo doctor who, jay exci doctor who, doctor who special, doctor who sea devils, doctor who pirates, doctor who thasmin, legend of the sea devils review, doctor who review, 14th doctor

Id: JE6CwR669Rg

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022