David Bridges
“What occurs when the Physician isn’t right here to save lots of everybody?” is a query Physician Who has requested many instances over time–and even its previous spinoffs like Torchwood have contemplated the query. However now, it’s time to ask it once more… and the reply is so harmful it’s going to take a complete new spinoff present to seek out it.
Introduced right this moment throughout Physician Who‘s San Diego Comedian-Con panel, The Struggle Between Land and Sea (a phrase that got here up briefly throughout Ncuti Gatwa’s debut season earlier this 12 months) will observe a global disaster on Earth, when the Sea Devils–the traditional underwater race launched within the 1972 basic “The Sea Devils”, and most lately returned within the 2022 barely much less basic “Legend of the Sea Devils”–emerge from the oceans and reveal themselves to humanity on a world scale. With out the Physician to assist, UNIT steps in as humanity’s first and final line of defence… as battle rears its head, threatening to plunge the world into chaos.
Written by Russell T. Davies and Discovery of Witches and former Who scribe Pete McTighe, the five-episode sequence will star Jemma Redgrave and Alexander Devrient, reprising their roles as UNIT chief Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and Colonel Ibrahim from Physician Who‘s latest season, respectively. They may even be joined by Feud and Being Human‘s Russell Tovey and Loki‘s Gugu Mbatha-Uncooked in the primary solid. Nevertheless, not like Redgrave and Devrient, an announcement launched to press by the BBC and Disney doesn’t acknowledge who they’re enjoying.
Each Tovey and Mbatha-Uncooked have beforehand appeared in Physician Who. Tovey performed Midshipman Alonso Body within the 2007 Christmas particular “Voyage of the Damned”, one of many few survivors aboard the doomed starship Titanic, and briefly reprised the function as a fling of John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness 2010 particular “The Finish of Time, Half 2”. Mbatha-Uncooked, in the meantime, commonly appeared all through the 2007 season of Physician Who as Tish Jones, the sister of companion Martha Jones. On condition that Martha went on to seem as a member of UNIT in a number of appearances after she left the TARDIS, it wouldn’t be all that shocking if Mbatha-Uncooked is enjoying Tish once more–however to date its appears each look like starring in new roles.
Filming on The Struggle between Land and Sea will start subsequent month, with the miniseries set to air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer within the U.Ok., streaming solely internationally on Disney+, at a later date.
Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to anticipate the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and every part you should learn about the way forward for Physician Who.
Daniel Mercer
