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Speaking on a bonus feature for the Blu-ray release of The War Between the Land and the Sea (via Cultbox), Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies – also writer and producer on the spinoff – revealed this wasn’t the plan at all. The original version didn’t have a happy ending for Russell Tovey’s Barclay, who’d be left in the human world while Aquakind was forced into a reseveration. Barclay was meant to be the one who pulled a gun on a litterer, furious that humanity had learned nothing from what had happened. “That was originally going to be Barclay,” Davies explained. “That was the ending.”
“It was a very, very bleak ending,” Davies continued. “No-one’s there forcing us to put happy endings on things, but this is a dark ending. They’re [Aquakind] all slaughtered. They’re all put onto a reservation and hunted and we [Humankind] win.” Plans changed when Tovey was cast, and Davies reconsidered. “We had scripts ready in advance. But the more we loved Barclay, we started going, ‘That’s a tough ending, isn’t it?’ It’s like, ‘Wow.’ And then I began to think of the Accord thing.” Davies’ “Accord thing” was a bond between Barclay and his Aquakind lover, allowing him a happily ever after.
What Does This Mean for Kate Lethbridge-Stewart?
At first glance, this change doesn’t seem particularly important. But there’s one key difference between Barclay and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and it’s not just that Kate is leader of UNIT. Unlike Barclay, she’s a returning character; an established figure in Doctor Who lore who appeared in the main show during the Moffat era, and who has served as connective tissue for different incarnations throughout NuWho. The Barclay scene would have been dark, but the Lethbridge-Stewart one carries so much more weight.
We’re already getting hints that UNIT will appear in the Doctor Who Christmas Special. The War Between the Land and the Sea leaves UNIT’s boss in a very dangerous place indeed, one where she’s so much more isolated and alone, and where she appears to be breaking under the pressure. Worse still, the Aquakind crisis has taught Kate she can’t depend on the Doctor, meaning she’s likely to take matters into her own hands. The same series finale confirmed Kate’s own therapist believes she shouldn’t be on duty, but Kate abuses her power to overrule her.
The only question, though, is whether or not Doctor Who will actually run with this development for Kate. It wasn’t originally in the plan at all, which raises the possibility Davies didn’t think it through quite as much as viewers have; that he simply thought the scene was a cool one from a thematic point of view, and it didn’t matter to him who pulled the gun. If that’s the case, it would be a massive missed opportunity for his Doctor Who era.
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