When a fearsome and ancient species emerges from the ocean, dramatically revealing themselves to humanity, an international crisis is triggered. With the entire population at risk, UNIT step into action as the land and sea wage war.
There is a homo-aqua x human relationship but they both have the sapience and sentience of a human equivalent. In other witds they pass the Jack Harkbess test.
Kirby uses they/them pronouns and this is respected by everyone. An “alien” species (in quotes because they are native to earth) are frequently called “things”. When they find a specimen of a dead Homo Aqua they examine their genitals and use that to base their idea of sex within homo aqua species. A Homo Amphibian person is talked about, she appears femme and presumably uses she/her, a person asks Kate if it would be better to talk “woman to woman”, he then corrects himself by asking if the Homo-Amphibian is a woman to another man instead of asking the alien person themselves. A lot of presumed gender stereotypes and presumed sexual dimorphism that aligns with humans’. Homo Aqua and Homo Amphibia can morph into males and spike their testosterone as a way to appear more threatening to predators. A human cis man asks “so she’s a man now?”.
No but someone has had so many death threats that he must check his food and drink to make sure he isn’t poisoned, he is drugged by someone swapping his poison detector. It may trigger similar paranoia about food in veiwers with a sensitivity to it.
UNIT is essentially space cops plus they are completely outside of the law. There is a scene where Barclay becomes the ambassador for the homo aqua species and Kate Lethbridge Stewart digs into every single record he has ever had, every picture he ever shared on the internet, his government files, etc. She tries to threaten him with this. They also take his black ex-wife and child in for questioning so they function a lot like cops. In some episodes of doctor who they are either portrayed as viewing themselves as morally correct (more recently) or the opposite of the doctors morals (older seasons), often killing innocent people and aliens or committing genocide in the fallout of their decisions to “keep earth safe”.
This deals with fantasy land rights and colonialism, I thought they handled it badly even had a white saviour trope/allegory, where Barkley, a human, falls in love with an aquakind person and that is the reason he helps them fight for their rights, which without him they wouldn’t have. It very much portrays him as “saving them” and saving his aquakind partner, even if it should be common decency to treat an Indigenous race with respect and basic courtesy. It definitely feels like no Indigenous people where consulted, despite this clearly portraying a sci-fi allegory to Indigenous peoples.
SPOLIERS The humans and aqua kind both threaten eachother with genocide. The main victim of actual genocide are aquakind and this is never resolved. Humans secretly give the aqua kind a virus which kills 90% of the race. Aquakind also are being hunted by humans for sport and trophies which is shown. Barkley then grows gills and joins Salt, they never actually address that genocide of aquakind is still happening, much of their race/s are dead and Salt and Barkley will likely be hunted. No mention of consequences for the corporations that littered and polluted the water or the people that commuted a genocide of the aquakind. Not a “minority”, but a marginalised identity, a woman and mentally ill person is portrayed as being mentally unwell and physically dangerous toward a stranger and blackmailing her therapist so she isn’t taken out of work due to this mental health crisis. The writers described this as a “girl boss moment” when in reality it shows her being actually genuinely capable of harming someone. This is not only misogyny, but stereotyping mentally ill people as inherently dangerous or morally wrong when we are just people and more likely to be victims of abuse than perpetrators.
Towards homo-aqua kind by humans. It is very much an allegory to Indigenous people trying to fight for our land rights and the genocide of Palestinians by Israeli settlers.
After losing a partner Kate goes through grief and frequently sees their partner in memories of them doing things around the house. Barkley deals with grief of losing contact with his loved one and depression. They are reunited. They aren’t specifically PTSD but they are forms of mental illness or temporary grief these characters go through.
Homo-aqua and homo-reptilia give birth to eggs not live babies. It is brought up and the eggs are even shown. No active egg laying or childbirth shown.
Someone loses their romantic partner then begins to literally see him in replays of memories around the house they shared. This could be classed as a dissociative disorder or similar.
Someone gets death threats and protesters telling him to kill himself. He doesn’t but telling anyone to kil themselves makes you legally culpable if they do, plus it’s a really s****y thing to do.
Dogs and fish are killed, mentioned or left off screen by cutting away before harm is directly shown. E5 One of the homo-aqua are shown strung up on a boat after being hunted, very similar to images of hunted marine life.
Without giving too much away, in a scene near the end where there is a meeting between humans and homo-aqua, look away after it cuts to a bald-headed man in the shower as he projectile v*s. Mainly visual and just water, but still not pleasant.