The Sea Devils - Episode 2

It’s quickly revealed that the mysterious figure is just Clark. His involvement is minimal because after he is knocked out (nicely) by the Doctor, he doesn’t appear much. It does make the cliffhanger seem like a throwaway one which is somewhat annoying. There are some quite well realised scenes in the early stages of this episode, largely involving the Sea Devils and the incidental music. Talking of the Sea Devils we get a proper scene with one of them and it doesn’t show them in a good light. I think that this is quite clever because it shows the Doctor as the lone voice of reason whilst everyone wants to bomb them in future episodes. It also continues the trait of Pertwee’s Doctor where he wants to find the peaceful solution even after being shot at.

Captain Hart continues to show displeasure at the Doctor’s actions. It would be fun to have had a scene with the Captain and the Brigadier. It would be worth it just to see the look on the Brigadier’s face with a ‘I know how you feel’ look. I think it’s perfectly normal to have this sort of scene in my head.

There’s an interesting bit when the Doctor refers to the events of Doctor Who and the Silurians but what makes it interesting is that the Doctor informs us that they should have been called Eocenes which is their correct name (apparently). It seems like it’s the sort of correction that a newspaper puts in when they’ve printed something wrong. It doesn’t really pop up later on in the story so it doesn’t really seem to have much point really.

It didn’t take long for the Master to get his plan going and he’s in pretty much the majority of the episode. In fact the final scene is the highlight when he’s fighting with the Doctor in a sword/gun fight. It ends with the very real possibility that the Doctor might die. I know I have complained in the past about this plot device because we know that it wont happen but it would be intriguing for 1972 audiences to wonder just how the Doctor was going to survive this one. It was a great cliffhanger to a rather strong episode. It progressed things enough so that it didn’t feel like padding but still feeling like we were going somewhere plot wise.