The War Between the Land and the Sea - new series starts Sunday 7 December 2025 on BBC1 at 20.30

[IwantToRetire]

I thought this was going to be a new SF drama and got quite excited.

But turns out to be a Dr Who spin off, so less excited.

Cant see a thread about, so adding this.

Only review I have seen has spoilers so wont post link but this is the iPlayer link.

2 episodes this sunday, 2 the following and just one Sunday after that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002mt0s

He had all that money and he still managed to make a self-indulgent "HUMANS BAD! OMG PLASTIC BAGS!!" cliche ridden schlock where we can't even understand what happened at the end without an explainer.

I would agree on the excessive self indulgence in recent years. I just think the money makes it worse.

It may simply be time for a new RTD with a passion for Who to take it forward and to develop the spin off. (I’m pretty sure I’ve heard RTD make such comments himself about someone new picking up the torch).

We started watching this together as a fun thing and ended up pretty much hate watching it it was so bad.

DS1 who is a massive whovian couldn't even finish it. What a complete waste of money and talent.

Makes you think how good things like Torchwood and the Sarah Jane adventures were.

I think the Doctor has had her/his day now. I don't see where the series fits any more.

The thing that got me was that it seemed ok for the people in the sea to decimate the Antarctic and destroy humanity

Yes, obviously. Because - HUMANS BAD!! ONLY HUMAN DAMAGE TO THE OCEANS/WORLD COUNTS!! ONLY HUMANS ARE MEANIES TO OTHER SPECIES!! 🙄

(🙄at RTD, not you 😏)

Yes I know I was stating the obvious but it wasn’t exactly nuanced 😀 (but it was annoying RTD)

I do like Russell Tovey

just seen episode 1
we will see

Severance was an annoying plot device anyway, using genetic material from Salt’s failed eggs to somehow make a virus that blocks gills (which the eggs don’t have yet) but can easily spread zoonotically through injection into a human via physical contact with an aqua host that has no physical contact with other aquas (and then not even make either of the first two ill but kill almost everyone else).
I’m no virologist, but I don’t think that technology even exists for effective viral transfer between species, zoonotic disease spread is notoriously rare, even with similar species. The closest I can think is cowpox/smallpox but it takes an amount of time for the virus to spread enough in the original species host to spread it to the other species.

I think he just needs a long lie down in a dark room for about 20 years just like they did before. **

Silly plot device and questionable science, maybe - but the story drew on a fact as old as time. How many populations (generally labelled indigenous) have been wiped out, more or less, by disease carried by more powerful marauding incomers? That aspect could hardly have been more true to life.

Well that last episode was depressing. Thanks for explaining here, I didn't follow at all it seems. So many questions.

Why did the bodies all float to the top? How did the virus spread so quickly?
Why is Barkley a hero when he ran off to the sea and abandoned his daughter?
If the aqua people are so advanced, why didn't they have health care facilities to fight the virus?
Why did they stop melting the polar caps, when it will wipe out a chunk of humanity and protect them from future attacks?
Why did Salt change male when angry? It was random and never mentioned again.
Why didn't the man just pick up the bottle when Kate pulled the gun? She had to ask another 3 times!

He became a bloody fish man.

Holy crap.

It couldn't get any worse.

This arc lets the Whoniverse down massively.

The fish people are interconnected through algea so the virus spread that way which was why it spread so fast. It was a new virus so they didn’t have any immunity or time to study it. No idea why they floated up so quickly, they had barnacles on them whuch surely would take time to grow? He was become a fish person so could only survive in the sea, he didn’t have a choice. They only have 20% of the population left so needs to focus on rebuilding their societies so don’t have time to consider the humans.

But not all of them were fish people - there were two species, one seemingly fish like (whilst humanoid!) and the other amphibian (whilst also humanoid). The virus apparently transmitted via algae across two different species, behaving in the same way despite being carefully engineered to work on one of them. Must be the fastest moving algae known to man to spread the disease that fast and that deep - not too many algae at the depths of the fish people.

As for why is it OK for Barclay to abandon his family for the proverbial “tornado of lurve” and why Salt became male when angry - dear old Russell may be “mr diversity” but like most men of his ilk, sex stereotypes run deep. I’ve always assumed this was why the first woman Who was so badly written - instead of Romana we frequently had screaming Jo Grant.

I thought it was just the fish people that died not the others but I wasn’t warching that closely.

Finished it yesterday after a 48 hour binge (with gaps!). I had no idea what was happening at the end, they seemed to show the word Accord with Barclay’s brain scans, as if it was somehow printed there! Have now read the explainers and I kind of know what they were aiming for.

I didn’t understand why they swam off together to presumably go to the ‘hunting grounds’ haven where Salt says they’ll all be killed by humans. Also she’s clearly back on good terms with her species given she came back as the ambassador at the end. That was also confusing as I thought she was on the run from them.

I have to say it started off with better promise than it ended but I like Russell Tovey.

Plenty of people on here saying Kate’s relationship was rushed, but they had built up to that during their last few Unit appearances.

6.5/10 with maybe a half point boost to 7/10 for RT’s shower scene 😶😂

Talking of Kate, I have a major gripe.

She is the head of UNIT. Very important person. Yet she's marching around in front of enormous picture windows in her flat, for any onlooker to spy on her.

Sure enough, she is attacked. Her boyfriend dies.

Then we see her - walking around on her own? At night? In London? Absolutely ridiculous. Even without the attack, she would have had security with her all the time, especially at a time of war.

True …

Just watched the movie Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) on Prime after bing watching The War Between the Land and the Sea earlier this week.

I also know that Russell T Davies has watched Aquaman because this series is a complete rip off of the movie in places.

If you've seen the series, watch this movie and tell me I'm wrong. One of the last lines of the movie is even "the war between land and sea"!

I'm stunned.

Interesting! Perhaps RTD is running out of steam...

The thing that struck me was the timings.

The Aquaman film was released 2023 and the announcement about the series was 2024.

So you'd expect that it must have been written and subsequently pitched in line with the release of Aquaman.

Add to this the fact Davies made a song and dance about renaming the classic Dr Who species 'Sea Devils' as Homo Aqua on the grounds that the old name was racist. Homo Aqua means Aquaman! It's almost a deliberate in joke.

@RedToothBrush

Watching that now on Netflix, interesting.

Audrey’s in rentaghost on BBC4 at 1915 with Christopher Buggins documentary on first