Did I intend to immediately watch The Sea Devils after The Curse of Peladon? No.  Yet there’s something quite cozy about Doctor Who under Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning that’s quite hard to resist.  The Sea Devils is Malcolm Hulke’s script for the ninth season and largely it’s a retread of Doctor Who and the Silurians in the form of a sequel with the added weight of Roger Delgado as the Master.  What holds this serial back is that Hulke despite clearly wanting to reckon with the character choices made at the end of Doctor Who and the Silurians, isn’t writing a serial with the UNIT team.  Instead there are characters from the Royal Navy and the government to criticize and Jon Pertwee as the Doctor does criticize them but a lot of this feels like a retread.

Now for a retread, it’s a very good retread.  Michael E Briant as a director once again does great with the location work, getting a far better location to work with than Colony in Space’s dull quarry, getting to set up plenty of action shots.  Delgado as the Master being included means we get some deepening of the Doctor/Master dynamic as old friends turned enemies, and a great sword fight at the end of Episode Two.  And of course Pertwee and Manning are at the top of their game together, so this is a serial that’s a good time.  The Sea Devils themselves also have a cool enough design, even if things really play out so much like Doctor Who and the Silurians with less personality.