While the description for The War Between the Land and the Sea, mentions an environmental conflict, production of the Doctor Who spin-off also reflected environmental concerns.
Showrunner Russell T Davies had this to say about the five-episode spin-off series:
“There’s a race that lives beneath the oceans – they wake up, and they see the state of the oceans, that we have put it in. We have wrecked the place, and it is war – war on an epic scale.”
In a chaotic scene filmed in Cardiff City Centre for the spin-off, this the ocean race, the Sea Devils, dump trash deposited by humans in the oceans onto humans on dry land.
#dwsr The aftermath of the sea devil rubbish attack pic.twitter.com/RvHGK5dqIv
— Doctor Who Filming Locations (@set_dw) October 15, 2024
Alexander Devrient, who plays Colonel Christopher Ibrahim in the series, described to Radio Times how the environment was a consideration for production practices.
“We would all come in with trains, we would travel back with trains, and share cars. There were a lot of electric cars around. [We were] paperless, having your scripts on your iPads or your phones, and when you come on set, you’re just standing there with your little machine just scrolling through.”
“Lots of these little things – bringing your own water bottles, having labelled water bottles that you’re reusing. And cutlery, of course – it’s recyclable plates and cutlery.”
“We actually had a workshop – it was about an hour and a half – before we started shooting the spin-off, where we where we sat with the main cast and a gentleman came and he showed us how they were going to reduce the carbon footprint shooting on The War Between the Land and the Sea.”
“I can’t give anything away, but [the show] goes heavily goes into the way that we treat our planet and the consequences that it can have if we don’t treat it right.”
Written by Russell T Davies and Pete McTighe and directed by Dylan Holmes Williams, The War Between the Land and the Sea will transmit on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Disney+ later this year.