Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: doctor who, the war between the land and the sea

Doctor Who: RTD's Interesting Spinoff Timeline; "VPN It!": McTighe

Russell T Davies on when The War Between the Land and the Sea was first pitched, and Pete McTighe on how Disney+ viewers can watch it.

It's not a complete day without another Doctor Who drama in a teacup. That's what Clickbait is for! That's why you're reading this. Well, if you're not in the UK, you still can't watch spinoff miniseries The War Between The Land and The Sea on Disney+ because it hasn't been released yet, and the BBC seems to be taking a "to hell with it!" approach and not only broadcast it on television around Christmas, but now they've gone ahead and released the half-hour making-of documentary on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel. You get to watch them make a spinoff you still can't see! Yay? The documentary also interviews showrunner and co-writers Russell T Davies and Pete McTighe, who spill a lot of tea on it. Apparently, Davies pitched the spinoff to the BBC before the 60th Anniversary specials. "I had this idea separately first," Davies told Radio Times.

"It's worth saying how long ago this production begins," Davies said. "I must have written "The Star Beast" and The War Between as the launch, as this is what we're going to make. And this is our ambition. We then had to learn all this time how to make a programme with this budget and how to settle into Bad Wolf Studios. So we kept on intending to make The War Between — and never quite getting it. After Season One and then finally after Season Two, we did it."

McTighe wrote Episodes 2 and 3 of the spinoff and did some of it on the UNIT set in the studio during breaks while filming the Doctor Who season 2 episode "Lucky Day" in November 2023. "I've been working on the show since 2023," McTighe told Doctor Who Magazine. "After I handed in my first draft of 'Lucky Day,' my episode for Season 2 of Doctor Who, Russell called me in for a meeting and said 'Read this!' and he gave me Episode 1 of The War Between the Land and the Sea that he'd already written, and he said 'I'd love you to come on board and write some more episodes with me.'"

As for when fans can watch The War Between the Land and the Sea, McTighe helpfully said, "I hear that it's happening soon. I don't know — I don't have inside info, but all I've been told is that it's happening soon. So I would imagine… But, you know — guys, just VPN it! Or buy the Blu-ray. The Blu-ray's got lots of cool extra stuff in it. The Blu-ray has got deleted scenes in it. It's got the documentary — the making of, which is really, really great. I'm hoping there's a longer cut of that coming out sometime because there was so much footage. We were shooting footage the whole time. It was great."

The Blu-Ray of The War Between The Land and The Sea is out in the UK on February 23rd if you want to order it. That would be the legal way to watch it. Who knows? Maybe the deleted scenes will patch up the long list of plot holes that litter the series, but probably not.

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