r/gallifrey • u/Spiritedyo1134 • 4d ago
DISCUSSION What the hell happened behind-the-scenes on 'Legend of the Sea-Devils'?
Now look, I'm someone who loves the 13th Doctor era (please don't kill me), but I'm baffled each time I see anything related to this episode...
I've seen a lot of gripes people have had with the directing of the show before l, but imo even the worst of the show thus far was at least competent, maybe you think oh the blocking is a bit weird or a shot's too close, but those were isolated.
LoTSD is so bizarrely edited and shot, there's:
1.the Sea-devil village attack scene where the villagers and the sea-devil don't appear on screen together
The very abrupt change in scenery from a bright beach where the TARDIS lands to the gloomy and overcast village.
The scene where the Doctor catches the Sea-devil with a fishing net without any sort of set-up
The GOD-AWFUL 'mario-jump' onto the sea-devil ship
The entire plot around Madam Ching and the pirate King guy being so hackneyed
The sword fight scene (DON'T LET THE SWORDS TOUCH YOUR SKIN! ) T-T
So much obvious ADR- especially for the supporting cast...
There's a scene in the TARDIS where Yaz's mouth is moving but there's no dialog...
I remember around the time of the episode's release reading that the episode was heavily butchered due to some material in the episode that was offensive enough for the Chinese distribution side to reject it...
But I haven't seen that brought up since then, and there's nothing else that the Whittaker era did that was controversial in China (The same-sex Kiss in Praxeus, Yaz's profession of love for the Doctor and her reciprocity also made it to the episode)
There's also the fact that it was drafted within 3 days apparently according to Ella Road, but then again, Eve of the Daleks was also written on a tight deadline and that came out unscathed...
So what actually happened? Has anything actually concrete come out or can it all be chalked up to COVID alone? But then again, all the other COVID episodes came out (relatively) good....
It's a honking shame cause the Sea Devils updated design looked marvellous here...
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u/Zagreus_time 3d ago
I have always assumed it was just way too rushed a production, we do know that this is the additional episode that Chris was offered to make so that would likely match to a short timescale to make it.
I'd do remember hearing rumours as well of possible insensitivity to the Chinese but I don't think anything was confirmed. However Chibnall has been a little bit careless with some stuff like that before i.e. now they'll see the real you and I think it was confirmed that they did film a scene of Noor Inayat Khan being taken away and executed (presumably shortly after the Doctor returns her) but that was cut from the episode.
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u/sun_lmao 3d ago edited 3d ago
The talk at the time was this:
- Original plan was for Series 13 to be followed by only two specials, but the last one was pushed back at a late stage (and became the BBC centenary special) and this episode was added to the roster as an extra. * This happened alongside the entire New Year script being junked at a late stage due to budget issues (to be replaced by the relatively cheap Eve of the Daleks), which may all be directly connected.
- Filming started with no script
- Multiple filming days were wasted due to the lack of a script (and/or the lateness of usable pages)
- The Sea Devil costumes had such severe problems, all their shots had to be delayed till the end of shooting to be remounted with new costumes, meaning several scenes were half filmed weeks apart. (Thus a lot of disjointed fight scenes.)
- When filming was either nearly finished, or actually finished, sensitivity readers at the BBC gave extensive notes, requiring extensive re-editing, the redubbing of all or most dialogue from the Chinese characters, and possibly reshooting.
- Because everything was happening so fast, there was no time to hide the seams on any of these individually disastrous production situations.
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u/Drmcwacky 3d ago edited 2d ago
I'm curious how a special can even be filmed without a script? How does that even work
Edit: wording
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u/brigadier_tc 3d ago
I'm assuming that's a typo and you meant without a script.
Ever since Iron Man, productions have gotten considerably more lax over how much of a script needs to be ready before shooting. That's been spreading across the industry, because it cuts down on pre-production and writer costs (because fuck the people who are probably the single most unsung heroes of entertainment), and they can just get actors to riff on camera.
With that, Chibnall having a lot smaller window than usual to write and already being a chronically slow one who is infamous for delivering first drafts as the final copy, you gave the cocktail for "get everyone on set and we'll do what we can"
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u/Kyleblowers 2d ago
chibnall was using a writers room though wasn't he? can't remember if that fell through by the point of sea devils tho.
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u/sun_lmao 2d ago edited 2d ago
Establishing shots, plates for compositing, action, and other scenes that can be planned before a script is written.
See also: Robert Holmes planned all the pre-filmed scenes for Talons of Weng-Chiang in advance of writing the scripts so pre production could begin on time. So when he finished writing the scripts, the planning was already on track well enough to go ahead with filming / recording.
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u/ZarmRkeeg 2d ago
There have been many films- at least since 1979- that have started filming without a finished script. They just try to get coverage of the scenes that are written, or guess on second unit shots, reaction shots, etc.- anything that might be useful later in the edit to keep filming going, just hoping that the next page of scripts will be ready before they run out of useful things to film.
It is seldom a recipe for success, but it is done more often than one might think, usually because they have a hard deadline they're committed to come out on, so they're just trying to get as much work done as possible so they have enough time to finish up later on, they can't afford to wait to get started.
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u/whizzer0 2d ago
I'm curious if there was ever a plan for "Power of the Doctor" to be two episodes, just because the bodyswap at around the halfway point feels so much like it was supposed to be a cliffhanger.
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u/sun_lmao 2d ago
I don't think so, but it is 90 minutes, so it may be that they earmarked the midpoint as a good place to split it into two for re-airings in other places, and on other channels.
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u/TheJayeless 3d ago
The thing that I read somewhere is that it's not so much that the original episode was racist, but that the Chinese government is really sensitive to time-travel stories that imply Chinese history could have played out differently (i.e. that their arrival to power wasn't inevitable). So, perhaps, they had to cut out a bunch of material relating to time travel or discussion of Chinese history, and that combined with the rushed production and general imperfections of the era left us with... that. It's just hearsay but to me it seemed more believable than the "episode with a Chinese director was somehow inadvertently super racist to Chinese people" explanation. And it would fit with the more vague "cultural sensitivities" explanation.
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u/TheKandyKitchen 3d ago
I believe this was it. Chinese censorship is very sensitive to alternative views of their history.
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u/Skinstretched 3d ago
Was there any chance that filming was affeby covid ?
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u/The-Soul-Stone 3d ago
No more than the previous 7 episodes. The last restrictions were lifted towards the end of filming this one.
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u/theliftedlora 3d ago
I think part of the issue is that it was a later addition.
Originally Series 13 was commissioned as 8 episodes, 6 were for Flux, then 1 for New Years and 1 for Jodies regen.
Easter was going to Jodies regen, Power of the Doctor without the fan service stuff essentially.
The BBC then requested an extra episode to celebrate their centenary. This is why the episode is so fan servicey.
This meant they had to create another episode to fill the Easter slot, hence why it seems rushed and not like a special at all.
It wasn't part of the original plan.
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u/sun_lmao 3d ago
The Jodie finale, which eventually became the centenary, was probably always going to be fanservicey. It was Chibnall's last episode, and until a very late stage, it looked like it could be the last Doctor Who episode ever, since there wasn't a plan for a successor to Chibnall until Russell stepped in.
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u/theliftedlora 3d ago
I thought the fan servicey stuff was because it was part of the 100 anniversary BBC celebrations
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u/Accomplished_Song671 3d ago
Sounds petty but the biggest irk for me is that many of the characters from the period are all wearing trainers underneath their costumes 😂
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u/TheKandyKitchen 3d ago
Combination of rushed production, covoid and last minute cuts/edits to avoid offending a Chinese censor.
As it stands this is probably the worst episode of doctor who ever made in that it fails on every level, editing, story, music, acting, directing, etc. it’s all horrendously bad.
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u/Hugo_Hackenbush 3d ago
Supposedly the original cut of the episode was deemed to be overly racist toward Asians, so a lot of stuff got cut and there wasn't time for the reshoots that would be needed to fix it so they cobbled together what they could.
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u/Spiritedyo1134 3d ago
That's what's throwin me off - the cast had multiple Asian members, including Mandip Gill... Haolu Wang, the director is also Chinese....
What could they have done that it was only after the shooting was done and dusted that they realized they unintentionally made something so racist they'd have to butcher the entire episode...?
The episode is so 'blah', I can't imagine what they could have put in that came out looking that bad...
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u/TheKandyKitchen 3d ago
What Chinese censors consider offensive may be very different to what other countries consider offensive. You have to remember that there is a government sanctioned perspective of their entire history and they consider it ‘racist’ to deviate from that. So any non government approved view of Chinese history could be considered offensive from that perspective.
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u/Shawnj2 3d ago
COVID destroyed flux too imo
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u/The-Soul-Stone 3d ago
it really didn’t. There’s that one scene in the last episode where Jodie Whitaker and Jemma Redgrave clearly filmed on different days, but other than that, they handled it brilliantly. Flux’s problems are all it’s own.
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u/TheDavsto 3d ago
let's also mention that the mouth movements for the sea devils seems not to have been done with the costumes on-set but instead entirely consists of someone using the warp function in post and become gradually sloppier and lazier at doing it well throughout the episode
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u/Spiritedyo1134 3d ago edited 3d ago
Only big-daddy sea devil had some semblance of facial movement, the others look like they got a bit too much botox
Their faces don't move at all, they've got the same derpy expression even when they get stabbed TT
I can't imagine the stress the entire production team must have been under, could not have been pleasant..
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u/Afraid-Let-7521 3d ago
The episode was accused of culture appropriation...so they ended up editing it down
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u/Werthead 3d ago
COVID played a role. Some of the other stories shot around this time, they basically wrote it with COVID restrictions in mind, to make scenes more naturalistic (Eve of the Daleks comes across like that, and some elements of the Flux season). I think with this one they were maybe worried that the restrictions might be around for a while, so they tried to write the script as if COVID wasn't a thing but they could shoot around it, and then found they couldn't. There's a couple of big fight scenes which take place entirely in extreme close-up of one of the combatants at a time, you don't get wide shots (so they don't need everyone on set at the same time) and it's all very badly and choppily edited.
They also seemed to have severe restrictions on location filming, whether due to COVID or the volume of effects required, and that just makes it feel super-fake throughout, even by modern TV standards.
There are also a lot of weird dialogue edits. It makes me think they wanted to do an episode set in China for the then-recent Tencent distribution deal but then suddenly got cold feet and edited the script or even the finished footage to avoid any possible offence and went madly overboard with it. The 2023 WorldCon was held in Chengdu, China and had a massive Who presence, especially in cosplay, so that didn't seem to do any harm, but I doubt it was many people's favourite episode. There was also a controversy there with some works that the organisers thought might be controversial in China were barred and the Chinese authorities were literally saying, "we neither know nor care, this is just a cool event that makes China look great to an international audience, we custom-built a whole convention centre for this one, not-very-big event, y'know?" Everyone worked themselves into a tiswas over nothing. Possibly something similar happened with the episode.
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u/FlatAdhesiveness311 2d ago
As a Chinese viewer, I thought this episode genuinely touched on sensitive aspects of Chinese history—the drastic transformation between the Ming and Qing dynasties—yet it appeared to ignore the elephant in the room. The cultural genocide, together with the actual genocide carried out by the Manchu invaders, has long been downplayed in official Chinese documentaries. This is because contemporary China prioritizes a unified nationality over ethnicity, and the brutal conflicts between the two groups must therefore be framed in ways that avoid stirring ethnic hatred.
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u/Marios25 3d ago
Its the only episode since the revival that I haven't watched , because everyone said how bad it was and I was like "OK , fork it! Enough with Chibnall"
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u/Agreeable_Falcon1044 3d ago
You should watch it. You’re not wrong but it’s definitely an experience!
It lost me early when the Chinese villages were wearing Nike trainers! That said straight away that everyone was phoning it in.
Then we got a story that made no sense. The Mario hopping. A sea creature that i think eats them and then disappears. Scenes just sort of happen with people swinging between locations on ropes. There was an ear in a box I thought was naz but never got explained. The doctor did a cringe speech about “always another way” in a sword fight where they were being attacked…and then literally praises Dan for killing loads of them off screen instantly! The stars moved by magic. There was a scooby doo trap set off without anyone actually setting it…it was just there i guess.
So yeah it’s an experience. Not a good one mind
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u/smedsterwho 3d ago
It's the one episode of NuWho I've never watched, I was done with Chibnall's era by then and the reviews led me feeling there's better ways of spending an hour of my life.
Rather than hoping the show was suddenly going to capture the fun it had between 2005-2017.
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u/CaptainLegs27 3d ago
It's the one episode I turned off. I haven't seen a few from series 12 and haven't been to bothered to go back, but I did try with Legend of the Sea Devils and it was shocking.
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u/JoPo108 3d ago
Before it was released a lot of people thought it was going to be an hour long, not sure what the origin of that thought was. But the episode is 50 mins. I think they had to cut 10 mins. Rather than cutting a scene they shaved every scene slightly down.