The Sea Devils is the third story of season nine of Doctor Who, and was first broadcast in 1972. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and Roger Delgado as the Master. It is the third of the Pertwee Six-Parters.
It starts with a sailor manny trying to send a Mayday signal, but A View to a Kill won't be made until 1985. He then tries to send an SOS but Abba won't release that song until 1975. He gets cut off by the sting of the incidental music, and then a POV monster advances upon him until the camera fades to black... which could refer to a number of films or songs, none of which had been made by 1972.
The Doctor and Jo are also in a boat, off to visit the Master in his "permanent residence from now on" which is a big castle. They are let in by Colonel Trenchard, and as they talk to him about "wanting to see the prisoner" I can't help but think it would have been more effective to keep the revelation that "the prisoner" in question is the Master back a bit for a surprise reveal. Either that or the Doctor and Jo should have sat down to watch an episode of The Prisoner on Trenchard's TV set - although I expect seeing Doctor Who characters watching a different TV show would have been a bit too postmodern for 1972, mew...
Instead Trenchard shows them the Master trying and failing to hypno-eyes a manny.
He takes them in to see the Master, and the three of them start gossiping about Trenchard behind his back as soon as he leaves the room:
"He's quite a decent sort, really. Used to be the governor of a colony once, so he tells me.""Very small colony, wasn't it? In fact, I believe they claimed independence soon after he arrived."
That definitely sounds like the sort of manny you'd give the job of guarding the world's most dangerous criminal to, mew. But as the general who appointed him to the position put it: 'I must obey.'
It makes me wonder which colony Trenchard could have been the governor of, and I think the most plausible explanation is that he was the Governor of Northern Ireland in the Doctor Who universe. The Doctor asks the Master where his TARDIS is and the Master refuses to tell him, believing (possibly correctly) that the Doctor would use it to escape Earth, although the Doctor claims it is only to ensure that the Master cannot escape.
As the Doctor and Jo turn to leave, the Master asks the Doctor to visit him again for a chat. It leads me to ponder the direction not taken here, how interesting it could have been if the Master had remained as a prisoner to be consulted by the Doctor whenever he needed help with a particularly difficult alien invasion or crazed computer, in the style of Hannibal Lecter. It could also have been fun for us to see the Master's many escape attempts. 'I am not a number, I am the Master and you will obey me!'
I suppose it could only have made thematic sense for as long as the Doctor was also a 'prisoner' of a sort due to his Time Lord-imposed exile, and know that will not last for many more stories beyond this one.
The Doctor almost shakes the Master's paw but stops himself at the last moment, and we will have to wait all the way until Logopolis before we will finally see a manly handshake between the two.
After they have gone the Master lols. This is because, as we see only when the Doctor and Jo have left the castle-prison completely, Trenchard is really his henchmanny. The Master is investigating a missing ships plot - the one foreshadowed by the first scene - and he asks Trenchard about getting some "admiralty charts."
The Doctor is also trying to get in on this plot, asking a manny about it and thus finding out about a nearby naval base, which he knows must be significant due to the law of conservation of narrative detail. The Doctor then bribes the manny to let him take his boat to...
H.M.S Seaspite (thanks convenient establishing shot), where Captain Hart sees him arriving and telephones for the "Master-at-Arms" (that this is not a cunning alias being used by the Master is, I make it, the third missed opportunity of the story so far). Captain Hart's mannys then capture the Doctor.
The Master's diabolical plot is revealed to be to watch a bit from an episode of Clangers* on his TV set (so not too postmodern for 1972 after all), and hence with one short scene overshadow everything the Doctor does in this entire programme in the minds of Doctor who fandom forevermore.
This scene could almost be considered extraneous padding, except that it helps to develop the relationship between the Master and Trenchard a little bit further as we see the Master's exasperated expression give away what he really thinks of his henchmanny.
The plot resumes as the Master identifies a fort in the middle of the triangle of missing ships, and Trenchard tells him the fort isn't abandoned.
The next scene cuts to the mannys at the fort. One of them says "there's something funny about this place" just as some scary incidental music starts up - maybe he can hear it? He gets a gun and goes hunting the POV monster, and this goes about as well as you would expect... for the POV monster, since within seconds the manny screams from off camera so that his friend hears and runs to find him ded. We then get a glimpse of the monster that is in the same room with them.
The Doctor speaks to Captain Hart and tries to take over the missing ships plot from him. To establish that he is a completely different character from the Brigadier (who isn't even in this story), Captain Hart resists giving any help to the Doctor, even after Jo arrives with their UNIT identification.
The Doctor very quickly identifies the same triangle as the Master, but even this isn't enough and the Doctor and Jo are forced to leave, with the Doctor's parting shot only confusing Captain Hart even further:
"If Horatio Nelson had been in charge of this operation, I hardly think that he would have waited for official instructions!""Yes, a pretty impulsive fellow... if one can believe the history books.""History books? Captain Hart, Horatio Nelson was a personal friend of mine."
"Good grief. Poor chap's as mad as a hatter."
Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you're of the view that if the Doctor and Jo had gone home at this point then the next five episodes, consisting of the Master and Trenchard doing the Sea Devils plot without them, could have been an improvement) the Doctor has already acquired a boat, so he and Jo go to the fort anyway.
Once they are inside and investigating, the monster blows up their boat (offscreen, because these monsters are conscientious that the show is operating on a BBC budget) so they are stranded there.
The Sea Devil has clearly had enough of being a POV monster, because it comes out and watches them search for a telephone and we get a look at it, although the Doctor and Jo don't.
They find the ded body of one of the mannys, and then they hear something coming towards them. We are obviously meant to think it is the Sea Devil, because this is the cliffhanger - but if it wasn't then we would find out almost straight away that it isn't, which explains the unusual way in which this scene was shot to show us the Sea Devil first to plant the idea in our minds, while at the same time trying to cover up the fact that we know there is a second manny but we have not seen them going
* Note for UNIT dating: Season 2 of Clangers was first broadcast in 1971, so unless the Master was watching it on a repeat (or upon its being broadcast on a foreign television station), of which there have been many, then The Sea Devils must be set some time after The Rock Collector was released on VHS in 1993.
Another possibility is that the Master taped it off the TV in 1971 using a video recorder he brought back in time from the future to record his favourite shows with (while the Master appears to not know what the Clangers are when he says "It seems to be a rather interesting extra-terrestrial life form," he could just be trolling Trenchard).
In summary: this bit doesn't help us to date the UNIT era at all.
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