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Back in 2009 James Cameron gave us a huge hit Avatar telling the story of an Everyman who finds himself encountering an exotic new species and acting as the go between in a story with obvious themes of environmentalism, militarism and displacement. There of course was even a little romance too between our male human hero and our female alien.

Fast forward to 2025 and Russell T Davies has dreamed up this highly highly original series which of course bares not the slightest relation to the James Cameron hit film franchise!

Man has polluted the oceans for too long. Industrialisation and pollution have wrecked Earth's seas, and the planet's original inhabitants, the Sea Devils (you can stick the new name), have finally had enough - sending a strong mission to reclaim what's theirs. Earth's answer: Barclay. Yes... Barclay.

After the lacklustre run of 'Doctor Who' in recent years, there was genuine hope. We were spun a link to 'Children of Earth', out of sheer desperation it seems, because the framework may be similar but the quality certainly isn't.

I expected three things going in: a sermon on plastics, all boxes diligently ticked, and enough lingering shots of Tovey's biceps to qualify as a separate subplot. It didn't take long for every expectation not just to be fulfilled but driven home with the grace of someone trying to put an SD card back into a phone using a steam roller.

And then we hit the gripes. If Russell T Davies is still on the crusade about straight actors playing gay roles, it's a bit rich watching him do a full about-turn the moment it becomes inconvenient. Consistency seems to have left the building.

Then there's the Sea Devils themselves. I always understood them to be reptiles - classic series basics - not a shoal of mardy fish with attitude. If you're going to rebrand them as "homo aqua", at least get the species right. We now have fish instead of reptiles.

The budget is ever-present, and I'll admit some shots look terrific, but for all the money thrown at the screen, the storyline just wandered off somewhere and never came home.

And that name - honestly, has Russell been dipping into Acorn Antiques? There's a scene where Miss Babs asks Derek about his new girlfriend: "What was her name again... Marie Therese Francine Doubois?" Barclay Pierre-Dupont wouldn't look out of place on that list.

Having watched the excellent 90-minute update of 'The Sea Devils' first, this sadly only underscored the shortcomings. This is, unfortunately, just not very good.

Disappointing.

4/10.

If you've ever wondered what it would look like if a budget insurance commercial and a fish market had a mid-life crisis together, look no further than The War Between the Land and the Sea. This series is less of an epic clash of civilizations and more of a damp squib that leaves you feeling like you've been slapped in the face with a cold mackerel for six hours straight.

The "Plot" (Using the Term Loosely) The people who live on dirt are mad at the people who live in the puddle. That's it. That's the whole show. For a series promising a "war," most of the action consists of people in questionable rubber suits standing in front of green screens that look like they were rendered on a toaster. The dialogue is so stiff you could use it to build a pier, featuring gems like, "The tides are turning!" and "We must protect the surface!" Groundbreaking stuff.

The Visuals The special effects are truly "special." The underwater scenes look like they were filmed through a jar of murky pickle juice. The "Sea People" look less like terrifying aquatic warriors and more like they had a tragic accident at a glitter factory and then tried to wash it off in a bathtub full of blue Gatorade. When the Land and Sea finally do meet, the "war" looks like a very aggressive water aerobics class held in a parking lot.

Final Verdict: The pacing is so slow you'll find yourself rooting for global warming just to end the conflict sooner. By the time the finale rolled around, I wasn't interested in who won the war; I just wanted someone to hand me a towel and a refund for my time.

If you're looking for high-stakes drama and breathtaking visuals, go watch a documentary about seaweed. It has more character development and better lighting than this soggy mess.

Excellent ecological message, good action, overflowing emotions, water everywhere. Things are layered and complex, characters evolve, and action is not linear, as opposed to most classic US sci-fi treatment. Very British in its treatment of the world, even with the British humour. Obviously not perfect but good enough.

The War Between the Land and the Sea is a masterclass in how to waste a premise. It drags itself along with leaden dialogue, lifeless performances, and a plot so thin it feels improvised five minutes before filming. Nothing feels earned, nothing feels urgent, and the so called war has all the intensity of a committee meeting.

The messaging is not just heavy handed, it is smug and repetitive, as if the writers assumed the audience was either stupid or hostile and needed to be bludgeoned into agreement. Characters exist only to deliver lectures, then vanish into scenes that go nowhere. The pacing is excruciating, the tone confused, and the production feels cheap in ways that no amount of CGI fog can hide.

It is not bold, it is not thoughtful, and it is certainly not entertaining. It feels like a failed Doctor Who offcut stretched into a series and aired out of obligation rather than confidence. Watching it is less a viewing experience and more an endurance test.

What this show has:

• good premise that isn't utilized well
• a highly compressed super rushed story that should have been at least 8 episodes long
• love story sideplot which eventually takes over the central spot in the narrative for whatever reason
• moral lesson about how polluting sea is bad with absolutely no subtlety at all
• decent acting, budget and visual effects

What this show doesn't have:

• war (it was actually a series of meetings, and also some garbage was thrown)
• nuance (who would have guessed it, humans are the bad guys)
• authenticity (there was nothing unique or unpredictable about this show)

Skip, unless you are a hard-core sci-fi fan or you have a fantasy about dating a fish.

Four episodes in, the 2nd batch is a bit slow and expected. More of a 5/10, if you want to rally adults to the Doctor Who mindspace (It's no Torchwood !), but very good for kids. EDIT : Episode 5 delivers ! It's bittersweet but well-paced and intriguing = good. 8/10

I'm looking forward to watching the conclusion. It's been very moral, as always, providing us all with endless subjects of debate about humans through ONE of great urgency.

It insists on "everyday people" making rational choices RIGHT NOW if they care at all for their grandchildren. It also shows how people are duped and pitted against the greater good in the interest of the few, while being told the opposite.

Typical "end of the year" british gift. Me likey !

How bad is this? Wooden acting, terrible script and just downright rubbish.

I have not watched such a poor series in many years.

I cant see this lasting any longer than one season.

Who ever wrote this needs to find another line of work.

In fact who ever allowed this to be broadcast on television needs to have a word with himself.

I had hopes for this to be good but unfortunately after the first episode it turns into a soap opera. Just ignore locations and costumes. The acting and the script is a soap opera.

Then I checked who wrote this script and it all made sense.

If you like soap operas and sci fi this might me your thing but I had to turn it off before the end of the third episode.

The only missing thing for an inclusive cast is an LGBT character.

I really wasn't expecting anything extraordinary from yet another Doctor Who spin-off and I was almost ready to give up on it while watching the first episode but the cliffhanger there didn't let me to. I have to admit RTD surely can make an entertaining show and maintain the agenda at hand at the same time - here he chose the global polution of our waters as the central topic and he could not have made a clearer message with it.

To tell you the truth I don't fully understand why is this miniseries exists at all. What was the purpose of it? To remind us that people are filthy, greedy and despicable creatures that this Earth had ever witnessed who would stop at nothing to get what they want and stoop so low that we would really need to think of renaming humans that because of their inhumane nature? Well, we all know that already but it's always nice to see it formed coherently on the screen. Too bad it was formed so bleakly ununique and uninspiring here.

Let me elaborate on that - the story quite literally reuses the same ideas from that classic Doctor Who episode about the Sea Devils. It also rehashes that same mistaken identity scenario that's been used in like a million other scripts, it makes the main protagonist, the underdog mister nobody, to get to be somebody and to become a mediator between the two worlds, who, of course, has to fall in love with the opponent in this conflict and turn to their rescue - and that's not even counting a dozen more clichés that happen during the five episode run of this miniseries. Who would have thought that even two separate ideas from Waterworld (1995) would be reused here as well? I believe if you can't provide a viewer with just one teeny tiny original thought then why even bother writing a script in the first place, let alone making it into a four-hour miniseries.

All that got me through this mess was some good acting, especially on Jemma Redgrave's part, superb visual effects - the plastic apocalypse scene stands out here and could technically be the only truly original moment in the whole thing, and the occasional mentions of the Doctor whose involvement (even as a short cameo) in the story could have possibly made this miniseries just a little bit better but overall I think this is a total waste of time. Oh, and the title is too long too, sounds like the name of H. G. Wells' book which also does not say much about originality, you know.

Honestly, The War Between Land and Sea has started off way better than I expected. The characters are interesting, the practical effects look great, and the story already has me hooked. I know it's not Torchwood, but I'm actually really curious to see where this one goes - it's got its own vibe, and I'm here for it.

Russell Tovey and Jemma Redgrave have been brilliant so far. Their acting is top quality, and they bring a lot of heart to the show. Every scene they're in just feels solid.

If I had to nitpick, some of the CGI on the fish creatures is a wee bit questionable, and part of me does miss the classic Sea Devils/Homo Aqua look - but that's just me being nostalgic.

Overall, it's a strong start, and if the rest of the episodes keep this up, we're in for a really good run.

Doctor who movies and these mini series always suffer from the same thing. The people who control the franchise who deliver weekly episodes get some big budget and think they can step into the big leagues.

Sure they peppered this with two solid actors Russel Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. But the rest of it sucks. Most of the other actors are just cringe, the photography is incredibly boring, the directing is boring, the script is insanely boring, the delivery is slow.

The music is insanely over the top to try and create some sort of drama because it is not happening on screen.

Some messaging with a sledge hammer. Which is basically just swapping gender roles, which comes off more as playing pretend than acting.

Have to mention Jemma Redgrave as she is one of the major actors, she is supposed to be a famous British actor, here she is supposed to be some sort of leader, but she comes off as a housewife told to look stern I assume she considers it her "manly" leadership look but has zero acting ability on display.

Silly plot contrivances abound.

I think the whole thing maybe could have worked if the script had someone who knew what they were doing I have come to realize that RTD needs to be surrounded by good people or he sucks and this sucks.

The sea devils look awesome, the music needed a vastly better home than this series.

I think the whole franchise makes so much money via Toy sales or whatever that they can rock up with the B team on big projects like this because they dont care.

They should have outsourced the whole production to a proper group who new what they were doing and had a decent track record.

Well done Beeb, what has been portrayed before in Aquaman 2, is regurgitated in this tv series, with a nod to the environmentalists wish fulfilment. Yes Nature will bite back if we go on mistreating it. The production values and screenplay are good +, probably a satirical view on world leaders, and business self interests.

This is like bad sushi. It stinks like it's been left out in the sun all day.

It's the Doctor Who spinoff absolutely no one asked for or wanted.

Bad in every way. It's just so badly written. The new UNIT is deathly dreary, and there's nothing compelling here.

RTD needs to read the room and find a kernel of originality or deliver something new and interesting. Instead we've got sexy fish (sorry "sexy") and a warning about climate change.

I gave this a go, even after reading the reviews.

Waste of time, so predictable, do not watch this rubbish.

Why do you need to write so much, just to say the show is terrible?

If you liked this, you are the reason we get this swill.

Keep doing it BBC, next time I won't even look at anything that you produce.

Well, on the plus side it looks fairly good.

However, the script is woeful, the worldbuilding is pathetic and the acting is mediocre.

It did make me laugh several times though. Though I'm not sure the producers & writers had laughing at it in mind when they wrote this drivel.

I might watch the second episode for more chuckles if I get very very bored at some point.

So far it's interesting. The story is decent. I was a bit worried when I saw it was connected to Doctor Who. The last few seasons of that weren't great.

But it has minimal connection. The Doctor is mentioned a couple of times but it's superficial. It detracts slightly from the story but not much.

I like the premise. Of course a race living in the sea would be annoyed about the pollution so making sense so far.

The heart is in the right place, but this is coming across as weakly scripted and simplistic. Characters are one dimensional and scripts are typically Russell T Davis dumb.

I think it must have been written for 12 year olds. Any series of this score needs to be grounded in reality, this clearly isn't.

A Dr Who spinoff in which a lowly admin guy gets vaulted into the team negotiating with sentient all-powerful sea creatures. Ultimately becoming ambassador representing the human race. It's an environmentally friendly, family friendly, middle-of-the-road romp. It's perfectly okay, and watchable. Given its pitch, it will neither break the sci-fi mould nor offer much more than a camp commentary on day-to-life.

What I liked

The overall idea is interesting.

The interplay between the female sea devil and the male lead.

Despite the issues, I do want to see Episode #3...mostly because of the point above.

What was reasonable

The direction of each scene/episode was functional, if not inspiring.

The sea devil structures in the water were a nice idea...they looked very low budget, but I appreciated the effort.

The sets/costumes/vehicles and such were all reasonable. Some aspects, again, looked pretty low budget...but were decent enough.

What I disliked

It's BBC/RTD - so expect clumsy, contrived identity politics and a wagging finger about pronouns.

The overpowering "dramatic music" is desperate to insert itself at any opportunity.

Some "dramatic" moments had me chuckling about how tinpot it all was.

The writing, scripts, dialogue, and implementation were below average.

There is no sophistication - the show sets itself up to be very average and sadly, fails to reach that level.

Although I want to see episode #3 - that desire is not without guilt and resignation.

:Sub-Mariner comic story.

Early Appearances (Golden Age/Silver Age): In his very first stories, Namor often attacked American ships because he was enraged by how "surface dwellers" were polluting his home. A specific early Silver Age instance in Sub-Mariner (1968) #25 involves Namor finding an entire Atlantean outpost deserted of life due to a gas explosion caused by waste dumped in the sea by surface men, which prompts him to consider war.

Aquaman DC comics The 2018 Aquaman film heavily incorporates the issue of ocean pollution and rubbish dumping as a central plot point and the primary motivation for its main villain, King Orm.

Plot Connection to Ocean Dumping Villain's Motivation: The film's antagonist, Aquaman's half-brother Orm (Ocean Master), seeks to wage war on the surface world because humanity has been using the ocean as a "dumping ground," poisoning the marine life and fragile environments.

The "Warning Shot": As a declaration of war against surface dwellers, Orm creates massive tidal waves that crash onto beaches worldwide, depositing tons of garbage, sewage, refuse, and even warships on the shorelines.

Visual Representation: The movie uses explicit, sobering visuals of plastic waste, oil spills, and general pollution to make Orm's anger feel justified to the audience, highlighting a real-world environmental crisis.