Who Reviews Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils by DJ Forrest

Written by Malcolm Hulke

Published in 1974

Target Books

Doctor Who and the Sea Devils took me back to my childhood in more ways than one. I vaguely remembered the episode, but it was the book that brought me back to summer holidays and book shops on the beach, with novels ‘read in a day’ with black and white illustrations tucked into a few chapters here and there. So, for that reason alone, I enjoyed leafing through the book seeking out the black and white sketches of the Doctor and the Master. However, I did often chuckle at the Venusian Karate Chops, which even now writing it up makes me laugh out loud.

OK, it was a long time ago and to all intents and purposes, writing the moves of defence by the Master and indeed the Doctor does lead to some tongue in cheek moments. It also seems that the Master lost much of his early ‘look into my eyes’ hypnotic approach, opting for a much more up to date and believable hypnosis by using satellites and phone signals, (Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords) and the four knocks, which played into our psyche for ever more afterwards.

Back in the Sea Devils story, the ‘look into my eyes’ approach sucked in a lot of soldiers to do The Master’s bidding, but it took Trenchard, who wasn’t hypnotised, a while longer to realise he’d been duped by the Master, and too late to prevent a take over by the Sea Devils in the prison.

The Sea Devils seemed far clumsier than the Silurians if this is who they were cousins of. You could understand their annoyance at the way Man dominates the Earth and abuses all that he touches but the way they retaliated seemed suicidal. As much as their approach to Man sending in ships and sinking them all to protect the seas; when they came up onto the shore, they seemed like ‘fish out of water’ and had very little protection, and it wasn’t going to take much to ‘wipe them out’.

In the earlier stories it seemed that the Doctor also adopted the ‘no second chances’ approach. If they weren’t going to see reason, then destroying a few enemy aliens along the way seemed a justifiable reason. Obviously, the Doctor wasn’t going to destroy based on killing for nothing, it would all be justified.

I did enjoy this story and it was a quick read novel in much the same way as The Tenth Planet currently is. Malcolm Hulke keeps the momentum going throughout.