GALLERY

CAST

Regular Cast

Russell Tovey (Barclay Pierre-Dupont), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Salt), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart), Colin McFarlane (General Austin Pierce), Francesca Corney (Sergeant Hana Chakri), Adrian Lukis (Sir Jonathan Hynes), Waleed Hammad (Colonel Tariq Hashim), Barbara Probst (General Dominique Dussolier), Gethin Alderman (Homo Aqua), Charles Sandford (Homo Aqua), Alexander Devrient (Colonel Christofer Ibrahim), Cat Gannon (Kirby Pierre-Dupont), Ruth Madeley (Shirley Bingham). Ann Akinjirin (Barbara Pierre-Dupont), Jennifer Jones (BBC Newsreader), lys Metcalf (UK Reporter), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Vincent Franklin (Prime Minister Harry Shaw), George Robinson (Steve Chesney), Hannah Donaldson (Captain Louise Mackie), Catherine Garton (Corporal Jane Hart), Mei Mac (Min Tso), Lucy Vandi (Dr Kadie Bangura), Benito Curteanu (Marko Novak), Stewart Alexander (General Oscar Gunsberg), Antonia Bernath (Rose-Marie Hunt), Edward Wu (Chinese Newsreader), Zina Ida (Russian Newsreader), Waseem Mirza (UK Newsreader), Shanice Archer (USA Reporter), William Gaminara (Ted Campbell), Ray Sesay (Sierra Leone Delegate), Samuel Oatley (Tide), Samuel Edwards (Sergeant Abrams), Gethin Alderman (Homo Aqua), Charles Sandford (Homo Aqua), Samuel Edwards (Sergeant Abrams),Carolin StoltzLandry (Psychiatrist), Adelard (Chappie Bristow), Antonia Bernath (Rose-Marie Hunt), Manpreet Bachu (Ravi Singh), Adam Howden (Jogger), Alexander Tol (Willem), Iniko Bello (Eddie Elliott), Devesh Kishore (Dr Bannerjee), Russell T Davies (Idea Originator)

CREW

SYPNOSIS

Barclay stands alone, Salt is lost, UNIT is powerless, and the oceans rise as the war reaches its climax. While traitors conspire, can Barclay find Salt before it’s too late?

PLOT

In a coastal area somewhere in England, a woman and her husband watch news coverage of events regarding Barclay Pierre-Dupont. She asks him if he wants tea, and goes to make it when a Homospondyl emerges by the sea and uses a conch to call their pet dog – and all the other pet dogs of the area – down to the water where they and other Homospondyls wait with a net.

Sometime later, Sir Jonathan Hynes argues with Tide about the fact that Aquakind have taken and eaten their pet dogs. Shirley and Kate watch proceedings from their operations room in Imperial house, but Kate is distracted by a hallucination of the recently-deceased Ibrahim.

At a meeting with her psychiatrist, Elizabeth, Kate explains that she keeps seeing Ibrahim whenever she is at work or at home – recollections of past events – and she asks for her dosage of paroxetine to be doubled to 40mg. Elizabeth tries to refuse this and opts for signing Kate off as currently unfit for work, but Kate blackmails her into silence and obedience with the fact that she knows Elizabeth’s daughter is the result of an affair with her husband’s best friend.

By the Thames, workers install signs telling people to keep away from the water, and Kate has a phonecall with Shirley about the next meeting with Tide and Barclay’s current state of health. Meanwhile, Dr Bannerjee talks with Barclay about the impressiveness of his survival after being so deep in the water.

Barclay is then escorted by a secure van back to his hotel, amidst a barricade of angry protesters (some pro-Barclay and some anti-Barclay), where everyone apart from staff and UNIT guards have been evacuated. Barclay continues to live in the hotel, having to scan everything he eats or drinks before consumption to ensure his own safety.

Corporal Hart informs Kate that investigation of the assassination of Sir Keith Spears has turned up another mention of Severance. They are interrupted by Professor Iniko Bello of UNIT’s Tactics and Planning division arriving in the operations room with Shirley, who explains that all this time the diplomatic talks have been a distraction from Aquakind whilst they melted the ice caps of the planet. With the escalation at hand, Bello explains that Antarctica will melt twice as fast and that the Prince Friedrich Ice Shelf has completely melted away in the space of six hours.

In the next diplomatic meeting, Salt defends their actions to Sir Hynes by pointing out that humanity’s actions already melt the ice caps, whilst also insisting that humanity has five years to deal with cleaning the waters of the planet.

Barclay is securely taken across Westminster Bridge to a pub where he is able to privately meet with Kirby and Barbara. Whilst Kirby games on one of the arcades with one of the UNIT guards, Barclay and Barbara discuss the situation with the ice caps, and how Kirby and her have been offered a living in a safe-house location for their own protection. Barbara stresses that Barclay will be able to come visit them, whilst Barclay laments his inability to determine his feelings for Salt or locate her. Barclay confides in Barbara that some of the UNIT guards are aligned with him, including one – Willem allowing him to seek out of the hotel every night to sneak down to a place in Herne Bay called St Emelia’s Bay to try and call for Salt in the water. Barbara and Kirby both comfort him.

Unbeknownst to Barclay, Willem is actually loyal General Dussolier and General Gunsberg, and has been reporting into them about his excursions to St Emelia’s Bay. Dussolier notes that the French government has put bafflers in the water along the coast of the English Channel to sonically interfere with Aquakind communication, and this might be part of why Barclay has been unable to contact Salt. Gunsberg queries her on if there is any way to negate this so that Salt can locate Barclay and they can use Severance.

Going to Downing Street, Kate asks PM Shaw for a signature on some documentation, using the opportunity to have a private chat with him in which she queries him about Severance. He tries to dodge carefully around the topic, though Kate presses him slightly on the presence of the phrase in some of his communications. Kate tries to plead with him to let her understand what Severance is, and insists that there is always a “way out”, but Shaw sticks to his feigned ignorance. On her way out, Kate espouses her belief that Shaw’s governance will be a failure in which “the economy will collapse within six months” and that he will be voted out – whereas she will still be in a position of power, heading UNIT.

Kate’s promise of a reckoning for Shaw prompts Shaw to text Gunsberg, who then puts his operation into motion, texting Willem. Willem delivers Barclay his dinner with a spiked drink, sneakily replacing Barclay’s scanner with a phony one so that he is unable to detect the alteration. With Barclay unconscious, Willem uses his camera blocker to allow other operatives to enter undetected, and with them, he administers the Severance virus into Barclay, replace the spiked glass with a clean one, gets the operatives out, and disposes of all signs of the operatives having been there before returning to the door just in time for Barclay to wake up and come out of the room again for the night.

In the early morning hours down by the bay, Salt appears and Barclay reunites with her, kissing her, and presumably passing on the virus. Salt begs Barclay to believe her that she never knew her diplomatic mission was a sham meant to allow Aquakind time to drown humanity, and tells him to go back to his people and tell them “to ask for Accord.” – stating that the word “carries ancient weight that every one of [her] kind will have to respect.”

Back at the UNIT operations room, Barclay relays this to Kate, Shirley and Corporal Hart. Steve Chesney interrupts with the suggestion that they avoid consulting the governments of the world and sneak the message of Accord into the data signal of their general diplomatic communications with Aquakind, using Steve’s eye-tracking tech to avoid detection by anyone else. Kate okays this plan, seeing it as the best option given that the governments of the world are currently contemplating firing nuclear strikes upon the seas to deal with Aquakind, though she does warn them all that they could be arrested for treason.

Kate gets her soldiers to turn off the cameras in the room to hide all evidence of their plan, and tells one of them that she will monitor their communications for the next thirty years to ensure that they have told no one about this action; whilst Steve, having prepped the hidden message, gets Sergeant Hana Chakri to send it out across all the oceans of the world.

Over the next days, Aquakind does not respond, and Shirley ponders if the Accord message has sent them into hibernation. Steve reports that the oceans actually went silent before the Accord message went out.

Dead Homospondyl corpses surface not long after on the coast of Dragonera Island, at the coast of Browns Bay and at Antigone Bay; whilst a Chinese reporter and a UK reporter report on the surfacing of hundreds of corpses even as far in as the Thames.

Barclay panics about Salt, and on the phone, insists on speaking with Kate. Meanwhile, Kate, Shirley and Hana arrive at a lab where Dr Kadie Bangura explains that they were killed by some form of biological infection that causes an excess buildup of scales on Aquakind skin that clogs up their gills, resulting in drowning. Dr Bangura also states that there is no sign of the virus itself, leading Kate to realise that the virus must have been carefully designed and that this is what Severance is. Hana reports that the fatality rate in Aquakind is believed to be 90%.

Steve then contacts Kate to let her know that they’ve received a distress signal in Aquanese, and Hana and Willem come to take Barclay back to the Empress Hall. Barclay arrives to the room full of delegates, and with even PM Shaw present, having demanded a seat in the room. The tank is filled and the waterlock is opened, allowing Salt to return alongside two Homospondyls. Salt solemnly informs the room that they have won the war, confirming that only one in ten Aquakind have survived the virus. She also tells the room that those in the room who hoped to win the war for the sake of taking her people’s technology will find that it has been buried deeper in the oceans than they will ever reach, and that her people can tell who designed the virus – and that one day a reckoning will come for them. A fearful Dussolier leaves the hall.

Barclay is made to offer a trench in the Pacific Ocean as a save haven for Aquakind, with humanity offering to protect their boundaries from “pollution and sound and viruses”. Salt says that her people will accept this offer if humanity gives their land its ‘true name’ – a hunting ground. Terrified of humanity, Salt and her associates leave using the Waterway, and then, under enormous strain, the Tank begins cracking. The delegates flee the Empress Hall as it gives way; with Hana having to lead a distraught Barclay out of the room. Rose-Marie Hunt rushes forwards as they leave, asking for comment, and Barclay glumly says: “We won. How about that? Tell them we won.” The tank gives way, just as everyone is clear of the room, and the doors are pulled shut.

In the corridor outside, Kate mulls to Shirley that she needs to find somewhere to leave, with Shirley remarking that she asked her husband Lawrence but he said no – which Kate accepts as they’ve never gotten on with each other. Shirley then notes that the Doctor has not been present, and Kate recollects something he once said to her about him not shaping the human race. Hana then rushes up to them with a call from an insistent Dr Bannerjee.

Barclay is being taken by the hotel when he is suddenly diverted into a car driven by Kate as the protesters break through the barricade and try to swarm him. Whilst he has a phone call with Barbara and Kirby that leaves them utterly upset, Kate drives him to St Emelia’s Bay, where he is reunited with Salt in the water. Completing some form of unclarified hybridisation, he gains gills, and swims off with Salt out into the sea.

In a mid-credits scene, Kate spots a jogger on the beach littering as she walks away, and insists on him picking it up, to such an extreme that she pulls out a gun, readying her finger on the trigger, potentially about to shoot him…

NOTES

This story marks the second time Northern Ireland appears in the Doctor Who universe, having not appeared in any form of media beforehand, apart from flashbacks in Beautiful Chaos. Therefore, after 62 years, all 4 countries that make up the UK have now featured on-screen. The land that would later be known as Northern Ireland was also previously visited by the Eighth Doctor in the audio story The Battle of Giant’s Causeway, but this story takes place before the partition of Ireland.

Worldbuilding

The Vietnamese ambassador wants it on record that they believe any objections to the eating of dogs are racist.
Kate believes she has PTSD.
Elizabeth, Kate’s psychiatrist, increases Kate’s paroxetine dosage.
Harry Shaw refers to Brexit as an example of a severance.
Shirley Anne Bingham’s husband is called Lawrence.

Continuity

Kate has hallucinations of Christofer Ibrahim, who died in The Deep
This isn’t the first time that humans have resorted to slaughtering homo reptilia instead of attempting to co-exist with them. The first time they did was the Early Silurians to the fury of the Third Doctor in The Silurians; leading to the counterstrike of Middle Silurians and Sea Devil Warriors in Warriors of the Deep, and giving Restac, the xenophobic military commander of some Late Silurians, to declare war on humans in Cold Blood.
Kate and Shirley muse on the phenomenon of the Doctor not turning up for momentous occasions in Earth history involving contact and/or conflict between humanity and other species. Although the reasons given are different, this echoes Gwen Cooper’s similar thoughts on the matter in Children of Earth: Day Five.

TRAILER