“What happens when the Doctor isn’t here to save everyone?” is a question Doctor Who has asked many times over the years–and even its past spinoffs like Torchwood have pondered the question. But now, it’s time to ask it again… and the answer is so dangerous it’s going to take a whole new spinoff show to find it.
Announced today during Doctor Who‘s San Diego Comic-Con panel, The War Between Land and Sea (a phrase that came up briefly during Ncuti Gatwa’s debut season earlier this year) will follow an international crisis on Earth, when the Sea Devils–the ancient underwater race introduced in the 1972 classic “The Sea Devils”, and most recently returned in the 2022 slightly less classic “Legend of the Sea Devils”–emerge from the oceans and reveal themselves to humanity on a global scale. Without the Doctor to help, UNIT steps in as humanity’s first and last line of defence… as war 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 series will star Jemma Redgrave and Alexander Devrient, reprising their roles as UNIT leader Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and Colonel Ibrahim from Doctor Who‘s recent season, respectively. They will also be joined by Feud and Being Human‘s Russell Tovey and Loki‘s Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the main cast. However, unlike Redgrave and Devrient, an announcement released to press by the BBC and Disney does not acknowledge who they are playing.
Both Tovey and Mbatha-Raw have previously appeared in Doctor Who. Tovey played Midshipman Alonso Frame in the 2007 Christmas special “Voyage of the Damned”, one of the few survivors aboard the doomed starship Titanic, and briefly reprised the role as a fling of John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness 2010 special “The End of Time, Part 2”. Mbatha-Raw, meanwhile, regularly appeared throughout the 2007 season of Doctor Who as Tish Jones, the sister of companion Martha Jones. Given that Martha went on to appear as a member of UNIT in multiple appearances after she left the TARDIS, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Mbatha-Raw is playing Tish again–but so far its seems both appear to be starring in new roles.
Filming on The War between Land and Sea will begin next month, with the miniseries set to air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the U.K., streaming exclusively internationally on Disney+, at a later date.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
