The Cruel Sea

“I know we’ll all miss Cynthia”
”Susannah”
”Whatever”
- Wife 1 and Wife 14

The Cruel Sea lives up to the Ninth Doctor’s era of darker stories, with this being one of the most graphic in terms of art and story. The Doctor and Rose finally land on an alien world, Mars. The planet, as elucidates the Doctor, has since been turned into a large tourist trap, complete with a cranberry juice sea, unbeknownst to the inhabitants of Alvar’s cruise ship, the sea is alive…

If The Waters of Mars was based off this graphic novel, then they did little to do it justice. The feel of the story overall is one of a properly constructed story. The comic itself gives what Doctor Who should be all about, plenty of dark twists and turns and a little bit of farce. That said the farcical dialogue in some ways feels natural to the story, and so examples of the professions of Doctors Latimer and Godwin help along the feel that this is not so much alien as just into the future.

The cruise is partly to celebrate Alvar’s new marriage and partly to commemorate his upcoming birthday. He will be 144. No he’s not a Timelord, he’s an extremely old human, to whom upon the Doctor first meeting him gives the suggestion of euthanasia in regards to his clearly decayed state. It would be advice his first wife would have wished to act on later.

On his somewhat strong suggestion to let Alvar go, the seemingly dead man orders he be thrown overboard, whereby the Doctor meets a duplicate of himself. Meanwhile odd goings on are occurring on deck, wives are falling apart into cranberry juice…

Graphically the story is very unsettling, as in several cases the sea distorts what we see as normal, usually in making duplicates, the sea would attack in the form of reflections, leading to the unsettling cliff-hanger with Rose about to be eaten by her own reflection. Later the pencilling of Wife 1’s demise is worthy of Stephan Moffat, with those three panels alone making me hope this will see a similar conversion as The Lodger and Blink.

The story itself is compellingly dark, being fuelled as some of the best stories are, on the acquisition of wealth. The selfish and acerbic Wife 1 shows her role as Alvars financial advisor is well placed as she makes sure no trace of suicide notes are left behind by a recently deceased wife thinking it might affect the shares of Alvar’s air company. That’s right, he owns air.

Robert Shearman (‘Dalek’), strings together a delicious and unsettling story that brings together the themes of acquisition, finance and ethics, indeed the depiction of the sea is a metaphor for the sanctity of life, and indeed the sea’s subsequent response shows the consequences, albiet with a touch of Sci-fi fantasy thrown in, to what should happen to ignore it. It’s a pity it’s never made it to screen.