The Sea Devils are returning in the Doctor Who Spring 2022 special - and here's all you need to know about the Doctor's classic enemies. Current Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall is a fan at heart, who grew up during the '80s watching the classic series. He initially resisted the temptation to bring back classic monsters with season 11, but since season 12 he's been diving deep into Doctor Who's lore to bring back a range of monsters such as the Eternals, the Sontarans - and now the Sea Devils.
The Spring 2022 special will feature the Sea Devils, in a pseudo-historical adventure in which the Doctor teams up with a Pirate Queen. According to an official synopsis, the Doctor, Yaz and Dan will find themselves in 19th century China, "where a small coastal village is under threat – from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching (Crystal Yu) and a monstrous alien force which she unwittingly unleashes. Will the Doctor, Yaz and Dan emerge from this swashbuckling battle with the Sea Devils to save the planet?" A brief trailer gave viewers a glimpse of the Sea Devils, who bear a design that honors the classic series - while modernizing it quite effectively. But who are the Sea Devils?
The official synopsis may describe the Sea Devils as alien, but it's not entirely accurate. In Doctor Who lore, humanity was not the first sentient race to evolve on Earth - it was the second. Homo reptilia evolved during the age of the dinosaurs, with two main evolutionary branches of the species - the so-called "Silurians" (a misnomer) and their aquatic cousins the Sea Devils, noted for their heat-based weapons. The homo reptilian scientists became aware of a rogue planetoid that was ing dangerously close to the Earth; they believed its gravity would tear the atmosphere away from the planet temporarily, and they placed themselves in cryogenic suspension until the event was over. But they had miscalculated; the planetoid didn't tear the atmosphere away at all, but instead settled into a stable orbit, becoming the Moon. The reptilians who had once ruled the Earth slept in suspended animation for millions of years, their technology never resetting because the conditions it was designed to detect - the atmosphere being briefly removed and then returning - never happened.
The Silurians first appeared during the Jon Pertwee era, in 1970's "Doctor Who & the Silurians." The Sea Devils were introduced two years later, when the Renegade Time Lord called the Master awoke a colony of the aquatic reptiles in an attempt to destroy the human race; the Sea Devils struggled to think of humans as anything more than apes, and intended to take their planet back by force. The Doctor was forced to sabotage Sea Devil technology to destroy their base before they could awaken their kin all over the world. Fourteen years later, in 1984's "Warriors of the Deep," Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor came up against a combined Silurian and Sea Devil campaign to retake the Earth, and again was forced to wipe them out. It's exciting to see these classic monsters return - especially given it will be exactly 50 years since they first appeared.
Doctor Who's Sea Devil stories have typically forced the Doctor to make some pretty dark decisions. Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor is unusually militaristic, and indeed in she apparently committed genocide - although it seems to have simply been clumsy writing. But there is likely to be only one way to stop a genocidal war between the Sea Devils and the Pirate Queen Madame Ching - one that will force the Thirteenth Doctor to confront those tricky questions of morality head on. The Doctor Who Spring 2022 special is likely to be very dark indeed in thematic .