'Doctor Who' Spinoff 'The War Between The Land And The Sea' Confirms Ruth Madeley And 'Torchwood' Reprisal
The first cast photo was unveiled Friday for the first spinoff since 2016
Oh this is going to be fun. Doctor Who has released the cast photo for its upcoming spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea, following this week of read throughs and having been only partially revealed with headshots at the franchise’s San Diego Comic-Con panel in July. Yes that’s partially. The new cast photos confirmed one familiar face and revealed another, from an unexpected place.
The casting of series vets Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in new roles and Jemma Redgrave and Alexander Devrient as UNIT leader Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Colonel Ibrahim were announced at San Diego Comic-Con. The return of Ruth Madeley as Shirley Anne Bingham, who was the chief scientific advisor in the 60th anniversary specials “The Star Beast" and “The Giggle”, but was absent when Fifteen and Ruby Sunday returned to UNIT for “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” and “Empire of Death”. In fact the position was now filled by child prodigy Morris Gibbons, played by Lenny Rush. Madeley originally came to showrunner (and spinoff creator) Russell T. Davies having worked together on Years and Years.
When Davies’s first read through photo was shared and analyzed, not every face was discernible, as the focus was on the script itself. Which means there’s a very good chance Colin McFarlane would be visible with better focus. In addition to his many domestic acting credits on series Americans wouldn’t be familiar with, he has quite a bit of experience voice acting in preschool series like Bob the Builder, Thomas and Friends, and Chuggington. He was Commissioner Gillian Loeb, James Gordon’s superior and predecessor in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, with Gordon ascending to the position in the time between the latter and The Dark Knight Rises. He played Ulysses in the fourth and fifth seasons of Outlander, and has even been on Doctor Who already, as Moran in the ninth series Twelfth Doctor episodes “Under the Lake” and “Beneath the Flood” (because the first four stories of that series were two-parters). Most pertinently, he appeared in the third series of Who spin-off Torchwood, the five-episode miniseries subtitled Children of Earth. However, unlike Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi, who played John Frobisher there and would never be able to reprise his role for plot-related reasons, McFarlane, who appeared as General Austin Pierce, will. This puts him on the UNIT cast side as Tovey isn’t playing Midshipman Alonso Frame, and Gugu isn’t playing Martha Jones’s sister Tish here. Their new characters were not revealed. McFarlane celebrated the unveiling, tweeting “Yes the cats out of the bag! Had to keep this secret since February!!” and calling the miniseries “EPIC!”.
Davies wrote on Instagram how he was last seen fighting the 456, now leading the way into a bigger conflict, but at what cost? That conflict, as the synopsis puts it emerges “When a fearsome and ancient species emerges from the ocean, dramatically revealing themselves to humanity, an international crisis is triggered. With the entire population at risk, UNIT step into action as the land and sea wage war.” The Sea Devils, an ancient race that have been slumbering beneath the oceans, wake up to the polluted state of the oceans and are not happy. Pierce, being an American general, is the first indication of how deep the international involvement the war will take.
The War Between the Land and the Sea is directed by Dylan Holmes-Williams, director of last season’s “73 Yards” and “Dot and Bubble”. The former episode was written by Davies, who wrote in a nod to the spinoff with a line at the start of the episode when Fifteen and Ruby admired the Welsh coastline. The Doctor said “The rocks and the water, it never ends – the war between the land and the sea”. Davies is the miniseries’s co-writer as well, with Who veteran Pete McTighe, who wrote Thirteenth Doctor-era episodes “Kerblam!” from series 11 and “Praxeus” from series 12, as well as the wraparound segments of the Tales of the TARDIS for The Mind Robber and The Curse of Fenric.
A co-production between the BBC and Disney Branded Television, The War Between the Land and the Sea will be released on BBC iPlayer domestically, and on Disney+ where available for the rest of the world, the first spinoff of the Whoniverse era to have that distinction. Davies also teased more casting announcements to come.
Sources: Doctor Who, Colin McFarlane, Russell T. Davies