Day 317: The Sea Devils Episode 6

The Sea Devils is ostensibly a sequel to Doctor Who and the Silurians. Both are by the same writer and concern the same idea: what if there was a race of intelligent beings who occupied the Earth before humanity? There are issues, however, with this approach. For a start there is the large risk of Malcolm Hulke, the writer, repeating himself with these themes, something which he manages to avoid by barely raising them. But by doing this, he doesn't give himself the opening to have the concept of individuals of different morals within the species as he's been forced to instead rely on the prior occupation of Earth as a means to justify the ends of monsters wishing to invade Earth and destroy humanity.

Thus, Hulke is forced to go other places to put through his trademark of morally ambiguous characters. The Master's allies and stuffy politicians take these places but they lack the certain fierceness that can be brought out normally with these archetypes, instead reduced to wandering around and spouting off ideas that we've heard before. So we are faced with a story that, whilst good, treads water with respect to ideas raised. One can hope that the next couple of stories will be full of ideas as we continue on this journey.