'Legend of the Sea Devils' (Story Code 13.08) by Ella Road and Chris Chibnall

“Pirate Sea Devils in Nineteenth-Century China!” - The Doctor

”We’re never gonna get a beach holiday are we?” - Yaz

In 1807, ‘pirate queen’ Zheng Yi Sao, also known Madame Ching, follows a treasure map to a village in China, site of a statue of a humanoid aquatic lizard: a Sea Devil. One of the villagers, Ying-Wai, tries to stop Madame Ching from chipping away a map carved on the statue’s plinth - but he is too late, and the pirate queen’s actions cause the stone to shatter, releasing a real Sea Devil from inside… The TARDIS lands on a beach nearby, where the Doctor and Yaz (in sensible attire) and Dan (in comedy pirate gear, as dressed by Yaz) detect a geo-magnetic disturbance, which the Doctor theorises caused the TARDIS to go off-course. Hearing screams, the trio race to the village to investigate and encounter the Sea Devil, having brutally slain the villagers with a sword that glows with poisonous blue energy. Yaz and Dan try catching the creature in a net, but it easily frees itself and then leaps aboard a huge flying pirate ship that has just arrived in a cloud of fog. After the ship flies away on anti-gravity devices, the Doctor and her friends meet Ying-Wai’s son, Ying Ki, and Madame Ching, who is searching for the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar, believed to have been found by Captain Ji-Hun. Aboard his pirate ship, the Chief Sea Devil rallies his crew and then summons the Hua-Shen, a gigantic sea monster, to deal with the humans… Dan wanders off to talk to Ying Ki, who vows to avenge his father by going after Madam Ching. Dan and Ying Ki swim out to the pirate queen’s ship, which they find strangely deserted; they are quickly captured by Ching and strung upside down, but Dan manages to convince the pirate queen to let them join her crew... Meanwhile, the Doctor and Yaz use the TARDIS to nip back to 1533, materialising aboard Ji-Hun’s ship in time to witness the captain throwing his crew overboard. When the Chief Sea Devil appears in a green mist, Ji-Hun swears his allegiance – but this changes when the Hua-Shen appears and attacks the vessel, and the two captains engage in a swordfight. Swiftly retreating to the TARDIS with Yaz, the Doctor takes her ship back to the Nineteenth Century, where they materialise on the ocean bed inside an oxygen-filled force-field. Unable to find any trace of wreckage of Ji-Hun’s ship, the Doctor scans the surroundings – just as the ocean floor crumbles away and the Hua-Shen leviathan bursts free. Grabbing the TARDIS in its huge jaws, the creature drags the blue box down into the dark depths… Concerned that her ship’s navigation equipment won’t work, Madam Ching tries using celestial navigation – only to watch as the stars begin shifting in the sky above. When asked why she is searching for Ji-Hun’s lost ship, Ching explains to Dan and Ying Ki that her crew and children are being held hostage by the Black Flag Fleet, and she needs the treasure as release payment. Under impending attack from the Hua-Shen, the trio fire a salvo from the ship’s cannon – only to watch in horror as the sea monster throws the cannonballs back at them! Elsewhere, the Doctor and Yaz climb out of a reclining TARDIS and find themselves in the Sea Devils’ underwater base. Admitting to the Chief Sea Devil that she has met his species before, in the future, the Doctor asks what happened to Ji-Hun’s ship; in reply, the Chief Sea Devil takes his prisoners to an undersea cave, where his ship - formerly Ji-Hun’s - is currently docked. Learning that the Chief is searching for something called a ‘keystone’, the Doctor bluffs that she knows its location, and uses this to secure a tour around the hijacked vessel, souped-up with Sea Devil tech and used to instil fear in the “land-crawlers”. The Chief Sea Devil shows off his other prize: Ji-Hun, still alive and imprisoned within a stasis-booth. The captured pirate captain reveals that he was tricking the aquatic reptiles to protect his crew and the keystone, a powerful Sea Devil device hidden amongst his treasure. The Doctor tries continuing her bluff, but the Chief Sea Devil’s pet sea monster has since detected the keystone aboard Madame Ching’s vessel. Improvising, the Doctor activates a control bank, creating a vortex that transports the Sea Devils’ ship up to the surface, where it emerges alongside Ching’s vessel. Evading their captors, the Doctor, Yaz and Ji-Hun swing across on ropes to join Ching and her new crew. However, the Chief Sea Devil is in hot pursuit, and he grabs Ying Ki, who wears the orange-glowing keystone around his neck: the boy’s ancestor served with Ji-Hun, and he was entrusted with the keystone, which became a family heirloom. After learning that the keystone - a flutonic crystal - was powerful enough to imprison the Chief Sea Devil inside the statue, the Doctor and her gang are helpless to prevent the lizard pirate captain from regaining the object and teleporting to his ship. The Doctor realises that the Sea Devils plan to use the keystone to flip the Earth’s geomagnetic poles and flood the planet, an act of chaos that will drown everything living on land and enable the Sea Devils to reclaim their planet. The pirate Sea Devil crew attack Ching’s ship, and a sword-fighting battle quickly ensues: Dan and Yaz make quick work of their opponent, while captains Ching and Ji-Hun team-up to see off another gang of pirate reptiles. The Doctor faces off against the Chief Sea Devil, and after some spectacular swashbuckling she disarms him by sonicing his deadly energy sword; but before the Doctor can stop him, Ji-Hun stabs the reptilian pirate captain with his sword, in a merciless act of revenge. With the Sea Devils’ world-changing device still working, the Doctor reactivates the vortex to transport Ji-Hun’s ship back down to the undersea base. Leaving Dan, Ji-Hun, Ying Ki and Madam Ching to hold off the Sea Devils with energy swords, the Doctor and Yaz make for the control core, which is now crackling with angry green energy. With two minutes to go, the Doctor works on short-circuiting the power supply and blowing up the base. The Doctor also tries expressing her feelings for Yaz: whilst she feels the same as her friend does about her, the Doctor won’t get involved because her time is running out. Ji-Hun tells Madame Ching to take his treasure and free her family and crew; he then joins the Doctor and Yaz in the control room, where he insists on taking over the task of connecting the power cables. The Doctor and Yaz race back to the TARDIS to rejoin Dan, Madam Ching and Ying Ki. The Doctor dematerialises the TARDIS just as the Sea Devils’ base and ship are caught in a huge explosion… Safely back aboard her ship, Madam Ching confirms she has enough treasure to meet the release payment; she also takes responsibility for Ying Ki, offering him a place on her crew. The Doctor, Yaz and Dan make their goodbyes, and use the TARDIS to jump to the present. Sitting on the beach, Dan calls Di, and is happy to hear she has missed him too. Gazing at the sea with Yaz, the Doctor explains her fear of getting hurt by those she loves, and asks instead that they both enjoy what they have while they still have it. At Yaz’s insistence the Doctor skips a stone on the water and makes a wish: that their time together goes on forever…


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), John Bishop (Dan Lewis), Crystal Yu (Madame Ching), Marlowe Chan-Reeves (Ying Ki), Craige Els (Chief Sea Devil [Marsissus])**, Arthur Lee (Ji-Hun), David KS Tse (Ying-Wai), Andrew Cross (Sea Devil), Mickey Lewis (Sea Devil), Richard Price (Sea Devil), Chester Durrant (Sea Devil), Simon Carew (Sea Devil), Jon Davey (Sea Devil)

Directed by Haolu Wang
Produced by Tracie Simpson and Alex Mercer
Executive Producers Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens and Nikki Wilson
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
17th April 2022 @ 7.10 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz and Dan

*This special is fifty minutes long

**Whilst the Chief Sea Devil was named as 'Marsissus' in publicity material, he was not credited with or referred to by that name in the televised episode