After months of uncertainty surrounding Doctor Who's future, the long-running sci-fi series is slowly starting to make all the right noises about moving beyond the divisive Disney era. The period that largely saw Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor leading the charge felt like it was over about as quickly as it began, despite consisting of two seasons, five specials, and a spinoff.
The spinoff in question, The War Between the Land and the Sea, still hasn't hit Disney+. It has been released in the UK via the BBC iPlayer, but the show's US rollout has stalled to the point of looking increasingly unlikely to ever happen — despite the fact that it's presumably still part of the official Doctor Who canon.
Created and written by former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies, Land and Sea was intended to be the first of a string of UNIT spinoff miniseries, all with the prefix of The War Between. He has spoken about the idea (via Bleeding Cool) in his recently released memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television.
RTD's other ideas for The War Between storylines
Land and Sea brought with it the satisfying clash of old and new. The new UNIT team, revamped for the Disney era, faced off with classic-era Doctor Who villains, the Sea Devils, in a gritty and politically charged standoff between two species native to Earth.
The show came with a depressing conclusion that was embedded with its own sense of hope, at least for its main character, Barclay Pierre-Dupont (Russell Tovey). The door was left open for Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) to reprise her role in similarly mature adventures, changed by what she experienced in humanity's battle with the Sea Devils.
With the Disney deal done, and Land and Sea being a Disney/BBC collab, I doubt more shows with this format will ever see the light of day. (The current one barely has). However, Davies has confirmed that it was the plan to make more The War Between stories, and has even shared the names and narrative ideas that were in the pipeline.
"If the Disney deal had been successful," Davies says, "we would have done a different story every year." Examples he gave included The War Between the Earth and the Moon, The War Between the Men and the Women, and The War Between the Cleverer Than Not, citing the latter as "frankly the story of our society now."
Just as Land and Sea came with undeniably political themes surrounding climate change and pollution, Davies' other ideas also sound rooted in surprisingly grounded concepts. Earth and Moon, Davies explains, would have featured a "tyrannical American president, at the end of his days, about to face impeachment and prison."
Sounds familiar, right? Where the pitch starts to venture into sci-fi territory is when the president in question takes over the Moon and aims nukes at Earth. Meanwhile, Men and Women sounds like it would have been built on a narrative bedrock of gender politics, while Cleverer Than Not would probably have been something similar to Doctor Who's "Lucky Day," which dealt with wild conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Davies' The War Between plans show what the true ambition of Doctor Who's Disney deal was
The idea behind the BBC's deal with Disney to co-produce Doctor Who was ultimately driven by one thing: money. Disney's superior financial resources were intended to not only boost the visual quality of the show, but also help push it to the next level in terms of marketing and promotion. The only real success was that the Disney episodes did look visually spectacular. That said, I actually missed the charm of the mid-budget sets and character designs.
Regardless, the show couldn't decide on its identity with Disney's involvement. It sat somewhere between a soft reboot and a standard continuation of the Jodie Whittaker era. All of this, combined with other reasons, meant viewers abandoned the show in droves. Maybe Disney's borderline tentative deal with the BBC should have been a warning sign.
If Disney truly believed in its ability to help take Doctor Who to the next level, I think a more substantial, longer deal would have been put in place. Davies clearly thought the partnership would go beyond the initial arrangement. This is supported by the fact that he has spoken about what season 3 would have looked like, and now what other The War Between projects would have brought with them.
The key thing to analyze here is that Davies himself confirms that The War Between was intended to be a yearly thing. After Land and Sea, he had at least three additional ideas for other UNIT miniseries. Therefore, I think it's safe to assume he planned on, at the very least, four years of the BBC/Disney team-up. Sadly, Disney cut ties with the Doctor Who franchise way before that.
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