Doctor Who The War Between the Land and the Sea, Digi Mart USA News: After months of uncertainty surrounding Doctor Who’s future, the long-running sci-fi series is slowly starting to make all the right noises about moving beyond the divisive Disney era. The period that largely saw Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor leading the charge felt like it was over about as quickly as it began, despite consisting of two seasons, five specials, and a spinoff.
The spinoff in question, The War Between the Land and the Sea, still hasn’t hit Disney+. It has been released in the UK via the BBC iPlayer, but the show’s US rollout has stalled to the point of looking increasingly unlikely to ever happen, despite the fact that it’s presumably still part of the official Doctor Who canon.
Created and written by former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies, Land and Sea was intended to be the first of a string of UNIT spinoff miniseries, all with the prefix of The War Between. He has spoken about the idea in his recently released memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television.
Land and Sea brought with it the satisfying clash of old and new. The new UNIT team, revamped for the Disney era, faced off with classic-era Doctor Who villains, the Sea Devils, in a gritty and politically charged standoff between two species native to Earth.
The show came with a depressing conclusion that was embedded with its own sense of hope, at least for its main character, Barclay Pierre-Dupont (Russell Tovey). The door was left open for Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) to reprise her role in similarly mature adventures, changed by what she experienced in humanity’s battle with the Sea Devils.
With the Disney deal done, and Land and Sea being a Disney/BBC collaboration, the format is unlikely to return. However, Davies has confirmed that it was the plan to make more The War Between stories, and has even shared the names and narrative ideas that were in the pipeline.
“If the Disney deal had been successful,” Davies says, “we would have done a different story every year.” Examples he gave included The War Between the Earth and the Moon, The War Between the Men and the Women, and The War Between the Cleverer Than Not, citing the latter as “frankly the story of our society now.”
Just as Land and Sea came with political themes surrounding climate change and pollution, Davies’ other ideas also sound rooted in grounded concepts. Earth and Moon, Davies explains, would have featured a “tyrannical American president, at the end of his days, about to face impeachment and prison.”
Where the pitch starts to venture into sci-fi territory is when the president in question takes over the Moon and aims nukes at Earth. Meanwhile, Men and Women would reportedly have been built on a narrative of gender politics, while Cleverer Than Not would probably have been similar to Doctor Who’s “Lucky Day,” which dealt with wild conspiracy theories and misinformation.
The BBC’s deal with Disney to co-produce Doctor Who was driven by money. Disney’s financial resources were intended to boost the visual quality of the show and help push it further in marketing and promotion.
The only clear success was that the Disney episodes looked visually spectacular, though the author says they missed the charm of the mid-budget sets and character designs.
The show struggled to define its identity with Disney’s involvement. It sat somewhere between a soft reboot and a standard continuation of the Jodie Whittaker era.
Combined with other factors, viewers abandoned the show in large numbers.
If Disney truly believed in its ability to take Doctor Who to the next level, a more substantial, longer deal would have been expected. Davies clearly thought the partnership would go beyond the initial arrangement, as shown by his comments about what season 3 would have looked like and what other The War Between projects would have brought.
Davies confirms The War Between was intended to be a yearly series. After Land and Sea, he had at least three additional ideas for other UNIT miniseries, suggesting he planned for at least four years of the BBC/Disney partnership.
Disney cut ties with the Doctor Who franchise well before that.
