Jodie Whittaker first appeared as the thirteenth incarnation of the Time Lord on BBC's Doctor Who in 2017, appearing in her first full series as Thirteenth Doctor in the eleventh series in 2018. She continued in the role in the twelfth and thirteenth series, but this year, Whovians are gearing up to say farewell to Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor with two more specials beginning with the Legend of the Sea Devils, set to air on April 17th, 2022, Easter Day. Recently, a full trailer was released revealing Whittaker's Doctor taking on not one but two legendary foes: Madame Ching (Crystal Yu) and the Sea Devils.
The first special, Eve of the Daleks, aired on New Year's Day and many fans are eager to know more about what happened to the Thirteenth Doctor's companion-turned-love-interest Yasmin "Yaz" Khan (Mandip Gill) after she finally acknowledged her feelings for the Time Lord on-screen. That means that the next special, Legend of the Sea Devils, has many plot threads to untangle about the two women and their personal relationship with each other, especially since the Doctor is historically bad with feelings.
But will there be time for Yaz to explore her feelings for the Doctor in the next episode, Legend of the Sea Devils? The BBC’s summary of Whittaker's penultimate episode as the Thirteenth Doctor reads:
In a swashbuckling special adventure, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) come face to fin with one of the Doctor’s oldest adversaries: the Sea Devils. Why has legendary pirate queen Madame Ching come searching for a lost treasure? What terrifying forces lurk beneath the oceans of the nineteenth century? And did Yaz really have to dress Dan up as a pirate?
Madame Ching is based on a real historical figure. Also known as Ching Shih, she was a real pirate queen who was active in the South China Sea from 1801 to 1810. Born to humble origins, she married a pirate and took control of his pirate confederation of between 40,000 to 60,000 pirates with the support of his adopted son after his death. As not only the most successful female pirate but one of the most successful pirates in history, her ships battled with the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and Qing China.
Sea Devils Return to Doctor Who
The famous pirate queen Madame Ching's appearance on the show is a throwback to the iconic historical episodes of the series at its inception in 1963. No Whovian can forget the Doctor's trip in the third series to the Globe Theatre in 1599 in the episode "The Shakespeare Code," or the fourth series episode "The Unicorn and The Wasp," when the Tenth Doctor meets Agatha Christie.
However, the famed pirate queen won't be the only antagonist at play in Legend of the Sea Devils. When Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor appears in the Easter special, it will be to face off against an enemy first seen during the Third Doctor’s (John Pertwee) era in a 1972 serial called "The Sea Devils," an aquatic bipedal reptile related to another ancient species in Doctor Who, the Silurians. Both appeared again in 1984 and then disappeared for a while, but the Silurians returned during the Eleventh Doctor's (Matt Smith) tenure in 2010 while the Sea Devils were ignored. Since Sea Devils haven't been seen during the new Doctor Who era, many fans are excited.
Check out the trailler below: