Disney Is Doing the World a Favor by Not Letting You See That ‘Physician Who’ Spinoff But

Once we took a have a look at the opening episodes of the new Doctor Who spinoff The Battle Between the Land and the Sea a few weeks ago, there have been a number of nuggets of potential swimming beneath its in any other case largely murky floor. However now that the present has come to an finish, we all know for a reality: that potential is useless and buried and has solely sunk additional into the depths the longer the present went on.

The remaining three episodes of Battle Between, after its premiere spent a substantial amount of time taking part in up the political relationship between the revived Sea Devils—reborn as “Homo Aqua”—and humanity, spending their time squandering the distinctly unsubtle, but nonetheless intriguing, local weather change messaging that sat at that plot’s core with a view to deal with establishing a quickly burgeoning romantic relationship between Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Uncooked) and Barclay (Russell Tovey).

Sparked by the previous saving the latter after a diplomatic mission to Homo Aqua’s territory beneath the waves was disrupted by a double agent unleashing a bomb to kill the human and aquakind attendees alike, despite Mbatha-Uncooked and Tovey’s chemistry, the romance that all of a sudden turns into the first driving topic of Battle Between comes off as a Nice Worth Form of Water. Barclay’s infatuation with Salt above the rest is just not actually given any time to develop, placing him on an instantaneous 0-100 escalation, nevertheless it’s Salt who suffers probably the most ignominies within the course of, now not introduced as Barclay’s political equal and the advocate of Battle Between‘s most radicalized notions of the local weather disaster, and as a substitute flattened right into a strolling embodiment of the “born horny yesterday” trope, thematically and narratively taken out of the image for a lot of the present’s center act as soon as Barclay rescues her from UNIT detention.

This jarring pivot in focus is broadly emblematic of Battle Between‘s most damning of points: the collection merely can not commit, from second to second, on each stage, to an concept of what it needs to be or say, rendering it fully inconsequential from each a thematic perspective and a narratively logistical one in its broader place within the Physician Who universe. In some methods, this was a poison capsule baked into the present’s very premise—as a rule, a Physician Who story concerning the Physician’s absence in the end has to end in little or no influence outdoors of that specific story, each as a result of it calls into query what it takes for the Physician to contain themself in a given disaster and since it calls into query simply how a lot a derivative collection can really feel supposedly “necessary” to Physician Who‘s established order going ahead.

The Battle Between may by no means ship on the thought of aqua and humankind negotiating an amicable, symbiotic strategy to their shared existence on earth, as a result of it might shunt Physician Who‘s depiction of the “actual” Earth a step even additional past our personal actuality. However as a substitute of taking part in inside that tight constraint to inform a contained however nonetheless fascinating story, Battle Between tried to go large, solely to be unable to ship on that scale in a passable manner, abandoning something that gave it weight because it hobbled in the direction of a muddled finish.

A number of instances within the collection, either side declare to one another that the titular struggle is coming, that it’s right here, that it’s over, however we by no means actually get to see that battle, as a result of Homo Aqua, after elevating uncomfortably true issues about humanity’s function in local weather change, needs to be first rendered unforgivably villainous—which is finished within the weird opening sequence of the ultimate episode that depicts a retaliatory act by Homo Aqua summoning, capturing, and consuming each canine on the planet, a state of affairs that’s raised inside a matter of minutes after which by no means touched once more—after which successfully eradicated as an ongoing concern, executed so through an ill-explained engineered virus, dubbed “Severance,” that in the end kills all however 10% of aquakind as shortly because it’s launched within the again half of the present’s last episode.

Humanity’s express genocide of Homo Aqua can be a fascinatingly darkish level to finish the present on, however Battle Between doesn’t really care. The extermination and capitulation of Homo Aqua are executed and resolved within the again half of the present’s last episode, giving Battle Between little or no time to have its human gamers wrestle with the ethical price of what it’s executed (a number of transient, awkwardly inserted flashforwards suggest that what stays of Homo Aqua will get its comeuppance on the direct people accountable for Severance’s deployment, however that’s about it). As an alternative, it continues to deal with Barclay and Salt, the previous rewarded for his allyship with what’s now a minority species by being slowly remodeled into an aquakind/human hybrid, the only real particular person allowed to dwell among the many remnants of Homo Aqua on the expense of leaving his human life behind.

This lack of care extends throughout all of Battle Between‘s narrative threads. The influence of Homo Aqua’s radical makes an attempt to shift humanity into motion are dropped as shortly as they’re launched. Episode two climaxes with Salt dumping each piece of water-bound waste onto land, successfully burying the planet in garbage and severely disrupting the logistical bedrocks of society, however by episode 5, that problem has been cleaned up within the background, by no means to be touched once more. The collection’ continued failure to interrogate UNIT’s function as a corporation that’s seemingly gleefully obsessive about weaponizing a surveillance state solely compounds the problems raised by collection co-creator Pete McTighe in his 2025 Doctor Who episode “Fortunate Day,” climaxing not with a self-reckoning, however with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart threatening her personal therapist with the publicity of her husband’s infidelity (why does UNIT have entry to that form of particular person surveillance? The present doesn’t care; it’s simply cool hero spy stuff) if she doesn’t let her preserve having a task within the ongoing negotiations, a win for our hero, and by the present’s finish, it’s constant sufficient that Kate simply begins threatening gross invasions of privateness as a jokey apart.

It’s Kate that Battle Between really ends on, in a really weird scene that’s emblematic of Battle Between‘s incomprehensible concept of tone or message. Having seen off Barclay and Salt to dwell their new underwater life collectively, she comes throughout a runner on the seaside who casually tosses his water bottle as litter beside her. The ultimate pictures of Battle Between—the ultimate pictures of Physician Who‘s Disney period, the ultimate pictures of the franchise till this time subsequent yr—have an more and more offended and manic Kate pull her gun on the runner, repeatedly screaming that he choose up the bottle as her finger inches nearer to the set off.

Tonally it instantly follows up an prolonged, dialogueless sequence of Barclay and Salt’s reunion set to a Goldfrapp cowl of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” so it’d be nearly humorous if the present wasn’t all of a sudden attempting to deal with it as a severe, darkish second. It’s a weird finish notice on Kate’s character (for now, a minimum of), launched 13 years in the past because the level-headed, “science leads” future stepping away from UNIT’s militarized previous. Nevertheless it’s additionally the literal final minutes of the present all of a sudden lurching again to an concept it had broadly deserted for many of its runtime, as if it lastly remembered that it as soon as yearned to be a present that truly had some extent to make, and that by addressing it in its dying gasps, the journey to get there meant one thing.

It’s a symbolic notice for Doctor Who‘s awful year to exit on, reflecting the tip of an period that had a lot promise and potential when it started simply two years in the past solely to get slowed down in an aimless malaise that muddled the collection’ capacity to essentially decide to commentary and reflection of the world we dwell in by its sci-fi lens. It’s becoming, maybe then, that the less-than-amicable breakup between Disney and the BBC has resulted in a lot of the world not legally having the ability to see Battle Between till some nebulous level subsequent yr, when it’ll probably be dropped in its entirety with little in the way in which of fanfare: a present with nothing to say, buried within the deep to by no means be considered once more.

The Battle Between the Land and the Sea is now streaming in its entirety within the UK on BBC iPlayer. The collection will stream on Disney+ internationally a while in 2026.

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