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Stuart Mascair

20 November 2013
 a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 324: The Sea Devils, Episode Six

Dear diary,

I’ve been praising Michael E. Briant’s direction right the way through this story, but this final episode really does give the impression that he could become the new Camfield for the series. There’s a small-scale shoot out with the Sea Devils at one point in this episode, in which I made a note about how good it looked, with the creatures chasing Jo and Captain Hart out of the naval base and towards a hovercraft, but then a little while later we get a full on battle!

It put me in mind directly of the UNIT/Cybermen shoot-out at the end of The Invasion, and there’s a lot of similar directional choices made here. It’s clear that they’ve got the boys from HAVOC on hand, because there’s Sea Devils flipping themselves off rooftops and doing little somersaults when required to fall over from a shot. Most impressively, there’s a sequence in which the Sea Devils are shot at with some pretty heavy artillery, and the explosions are going of very close to the actors in the costumes! There’s some 8mm film shot on location included on the DVD which - taken from a different angle - really shows just how close they were. It’s a dangerous scene to film, but it looks fantastic on screen.

The action isn’t completely confined to fighting, though. I should have guessed, really, that a Jon Pertwee story set this close to open water would involve a hovercraft and some speedboats somewhere. In the same way that the Third Doctor looks so right when he’s tinkering away with the device earlier on in the episode, he looks fantastic when bombing across the waves in pursuit of the Master. Less effective is their later rise back up from the Sea Devil colony, where the pair end up floating around in their orange waterproofs - the Master in particular looks very cuddly!

Having played something of a second fiddle to the story’s monsters for a few episodes, we’re back to the version of the Master that I so love today, in which he’s charming and persuasive, and really just very cool. There’s a scene in which he convinces a soldier that he shouldn’t be held prisoner in which you’re really sold on the idea of the man’s hypnotism (it’s another example of Michael E. Briant’s direction being top notch - the close up on Delgado’s face during the scene is wonderful).

Later on, he manages to escape the clutches of the law once again - and he makes off with the hovercraft! The only issue I take with this is the fact that he’s escaped via the clever use of a mask. If he carries one with him during all this, then surely he could have worn one earlier in the story and avoided detection during his little field trip from the prison? He’d have saved himself a lot of hassle…

I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by The Sea Devils. It’s been one of those DVDs on my shelf that I’ve never watched for absolutely ages - mostly because it’s a Third Doctor story. Then, having enjoyed Doctor Who and the Silurians so much, I worried that a follow-up tale would end up being a real let-down by comparison. As it is, I’ve really enjoyed the tale, and this last episode has been the perfect way for it to sign off.

The next story is another of those ones that I know very little about, but a couple of people this week have shown a slight… distaste towards it when they realise where I am in the marathon, so I’m enjoying today’s high while I can…

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