Sea Devil

The name Sea Devil refers to a fictional race of amphibious reptile-like beings in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The Sea Devils, like their land-based cousins the Silurians, were scientifically advanced, and lived during prehistoric times in an aquatic civilization. At some point, the Moon approached close to Earth, threatening to cause geological upheaval, and both the Sea Devils and the Silurians went into self-induced hibernation to survive.

Which period of Earth's prehistory the Sea Devils and Silurians come from is not entirely clear. The name Silurian is a misnomer coined and used by humans, arising because the race was identified as belonging to the Silurian period when first encountered in the Third Doctor serial Doctor Who and the Silurians. The Doctor, in the 1972 serial, The Sea Devils, mentions that Silurians should more properly be called Eocenes. However, that term appears to be equally inaccurate. The Silurians are seen using dinosaurs as guard animals, and by the Eocene, dinosaurs had long become extinct (although there is some merit to the suggestion that the primitive Silurians co-existed with dinosaurs and their domesticated versions survived with them). In some of the New Adventures novels, the term "Earth Reptile" is offered as the "modern" term for them.

Sea Devils are scaly, cold-blooded reptilian humanoids, with large eyes and snouts, resembling humanoid dinosaurs more than the Silurians do. Also unlike the Silurians, they do not have a third eye, and rely more on hand-held weaponry. In their first appearance in the Third Doctor serial The Sea Devils, they are woken from their hibernation by the renegade Time Lord known as the Master, who persuades them to reclaim the planet from the human race. Despite the Doctor's efforts to convince them otherwise, the Sea Devils eventually decide to go to war, and the Doctor is forced to destroy their base. It is revealed, however, that there are many colonies still in hibernation around the world.

The Sea Devils next appeared in the 1984 serial, Warriors of the Deep, where they allied with the Silurians, in a second attempt to reclaim Earth from the humans. This attempt took place in 2084. Curiously, on this occasion the creatures used the terms "Silurians" and "Sea Devils" to refer to themselves, despite these terms previously being purely human phrases.

They also made appearances in the Doctor Who spin-off novel Blood Heat, which featured an alternate reality where the Silurians conquered Earth, and in the Big Finish Productions audio play Bernice Summerfield and the Poison Seas.

Appearances