A new Doctor Who spin-off promises to keep up the recent season’s queer momentum. Created by Doctor Who showrunner and queer TV royalty Russell T Davies, The War Between The Land And The Sea will be led by out actor Russell Tovey and Loki’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

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Davies announced the five-part series at San Diego Comic Con over the weekend. According to his description during the live panel, the series will have strong environmental themes, with long slumbering Sea Devils waking to discover what humanity has done to their oceans. 

The series revolves around the fictional Unified Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), a military organization that monitors and responds to paranormal threats facing the Earth. While the roles of Tovey and Mbatha-Raw’s characters within UNIT are still unspecified, the two actors are joining series veterans. Jemma Redgrave will reprise her role as UNIT Commander-in-Chief Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Alexander Devrient will return as Colonel Ibrahim.

“When a fearsome and ancient species emerges from the ocean, dramatically revealing themselves to humanity, an international crisis is triggered,” the official synopsis reads. “With the entire population at risk, UNIT step into action as the land and sea wage war.”

The series title is a reference to the episode “73 Yards” from the most recent season of Doctor Who. In the opening, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his companion Ruby (Millie Gibson) are transported to Wales. When Ruby asks to confirm their location, the Doctor says, “That smell, that green, that coastline… Ruby, oh… the rocks and the water, it never ends – the war between the land and the sea.”

Dylan Holmes Williams, the director of “73 Yards” along with “Dot and Bubble,” will helm the new series, and Doctor Who screenwriter Pete McTighe is co-writing the spin-off with Davies.

“I’m so lucky to work with such a magnificent cast,” Davies said in a statement following the announcement. “And this is a huge, muscular, thrilling drama which will shake The Whoniverse to its foundations. When the Doctor’s not in town, the whole of humanity is in trouble.”

This spin-off is not Tovey’s first foray into the Whoniverse. In the 2007 Christmas special “Voyage of the Damned,” he played midshipman Alonso Frame on the starship Titanic, and his character later went on a date with the bisexual lead of another spin-off series (Torchwood), Captain Jack Harkness.

While it’s unlikely he’ll be reprising that specific role, here’s hoping his new character is also queer. Given the most recent season had the Doctor locking lips with Rogue (Jonathan Groff) in his first gay romance, it wouldn’t exactly be a stretch.

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