The Sea Devils - Episode 6

The reprise of the cliffhanger starts off with the Doctor fighting the Sea Devils before being knocked out by one. This is where the episode should have ended but instead we got the strange cliffhanger that we did. Despite this slightly poor reprise it but the action moves along quickly enough for us to forget this.

The scene where Jo and Captain Hart are trying to escape through an escape hatch is made enjoyable because Walker is now acting like a scared child. It’s the mirror opposite of how he was acting in the previous episode. He’s back to his old self before too long when he eating and drinking and wanting to blow the sea devils out of the water. Walker has been such a loathsome character and it feels like he had been in the show for the entire six episode run rather than just these two.

Captain Hart now feels like he’s on the Doctor’s side. He’s fighting the sea devils and is doing all the things that anyone on the Doctors side should be doing. There’s one moment where he’s using a bit machine gun and is aiming at the sea devils. I was thinking that it’s the sort of thing that Jon Pertwee should be doing.

There is a good action sequence with the Doctor chasing the Master via hover boat. This was one of two scenes that involved the pair of them. The second one was as the sea devils base explodes and the pair of them are floating on the water. The location scenes have been fun from start to finish and its as if the best was saved until last. The last few moments of the episode are of the Master going off in the hovercraft with the Doctor looking on. I thought that this was a disappointing way to end the episode but that’s not the worst thing in the world.

There are the usual things to like about this episode such as the scene where the Doctor and the Master work together with the Doctor trying to do something that will throw a spanner in the works. Another thing that appears is a nice stunt jump and then there is someone who is asked to guard the Master but quickly falls under the Masters hypnosis.

If I had one critiscm of this episode is that it doesn’t feel like the sea devils are the main priority. It seems like it’s more about the Doctor and the Master and the battle at the navy base. It doesn’t feel like a final episode which is always a bit of a worry for me because I would have thought that they would want to build up to something. That said I still think that as a six part adventure its easily the best one of the season so far. The location footage is what is most memorable about this story and also the Sea Devils makes this a memorable story. Sadly I’ve just noted what is coming next and its ‘The Mutants’ oh well the good times had to come to an end at some point.