Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils Review - 6 Ups & 7 Downs

It’s fair to say Thirteen is the biggest pacifist of the modern Doctors (when she’s not humanely executing spiders via a slow and torturous toxic gas). As a result, there’s little room for action set pieces in this era of the show. How exciting, then, that this episode was slated to feature an extended swashbuckling sequence in which the Doctor duels the Sea Devils with a cutlass… Oh, she’s dropped the cutlass. And she’s back in the game… and she’s gone and dropped it again. Look, she’s sliding down some stairs. Wait? Didn’t she just slide down those stairs a minute ago?

This scene was a mess. We know this Doctor doesn’t like to fight, but did we need her to be so incompetent? Is it so hard to give poor Jodie a badass hero moment? Luckily, Yaz has been taking fencing lessons on the side and, as we know, Dan is a stone-cold killer, so they’re able to bail Thirteen out of this thousand-cuts-a-minute disaster.

This scene was just sad to watch. If Pertwee were here, he would have karate chopped them all overboard and that would be the end of it. Come to think of it, Dan would get along well with Three…