Doctor Who and the Silurians

Episode 1

The title immediately presents us with a couple of obvious talking points.

Hannah: Oooh. Well, two things. First of all, is that the first time the title has been "Doctor Who and the...", instead of just "The Silurians"? It's "Doctor Who and the Silurians", which is a lot of title.
Me: Yes, and it's also the last time; Malcolm Hulke was following the sixties convention of scripting stories as "Doctor Who and the...", and nobody corrected the mistake when the title captions were being made.
Hannah: Oh, well done. And I think I know who the Silurians are; I think they're the underground lizard people.
Me: There's also a new producer.
Hannah: Oh yeah, you said the other one only lasted two stories. Who's the new one?
Me: Barry Letts. He's going to be with us for the rest of the Pertwee run, and he also directed The Enemy of the World.
Hannah: Ah, okay. So things look promising, then.

When the story opens with a couple of potholers exploring some underground caves, Hannah takes this as a sign that she's right about the identity of the Silurians. But before the potholers can get much further, they're suddenly attacked by a dinosaur.

Hannah: Ah, it's an animatronic lizard. They've accidentally stumbled into that attraction in Wales.
Me: You mean the Doctor Who Experience?
Hannah: No, I mean Dan yr Ogof. The one with all the dinosaurs.

Elsewhere, the Brigadier sends an urgent call for the Doctor and Liz to join him at the atomic research centre on Wenley Moor.

Hannah: The Doctor's kept all that clothing he stole, then.
Me: Maybe he replaced it with something similar, like he's done with the car.
Hannah: I know the Doctor likes to keep busy, but it doesn't feel fair that he's at the Brig's beck and call. And doesn't Liz have a day job she should be going back to?

The Doctor drives Liz down the high street in Bessie, his newly-acquired vintage car.

Hannah: Oh, the Doctor in traffic! This is just weird!
Me: What do you think of Bessie?
Hannah: She's very yellow.
Me: She feels like a surrogate TARDIS in many ways; another vehicle for him to care about, now that he can't use the other one anymore.
Hannah: Yes. And tinker with.
Me: Do you have anything to say about the license plate?
Hannah: "WHO 1". I like it.
Me: Do you?!
Hannah: I don't know. It could have been better; it could have said "TARDIS".
Me: So you're happy with his name being "Doctor Who"? I mean, it's right there in the episode title and everything.
Hannah: No. It's the Doctor.
Me: So why--
Hannah: I'm not saying I think it makes sense, but... why not? Obviously the Doctor didn't choose the number plate, the production team chose the number plate.
Me: Yes, but within the fiction of the programme...
Hannah: Yes, it's a ridiculous number plate considering that's not his name; he's calling himself "Dr John Smith" for his stint on Earth. Still, he's called himself "Dr Who" in German before, so I suppose I can live with it.

The research facility is run by Dr Lawrence and his number two, Dr Quinn.

Hannah: Why is that amusing?
Me: There was an American drama series in the nineties called Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
Hannah: I don't think I know that one. Wasn't there a Quincy?
Me: That was a medical detective show.
Hannah: What was Dick Van Dyke's medical show?
Me: You're thinking of Diagnosis: Murder.
Hannah: Yeah! Was there a guy in that called Quinn? It's been a long time since I used to watch it.
Me: I have no idea. Anyway, this Dr Quinn is played by Fulton Mackay, the strict prison warden from Porridge.
Hannah: I think we've mentioned him before. Has he been in it already? Or am I thinking of Dad's Army?
Me: He was in a couple of episodes of Dad's Army, yes. He was fantastic in Porridge, though.
Hannah: So is jam. I really want some porridge now.

The establishment mostly consists of a single device: the cyclotron.

Hannah: Oh, it's like a Large Hadron Collider type thing! A great big scientific machine, deep underground because they don't have any mountains.

After Liz starts to feel dizzy ("Significant headache!"), it turns out that the personnel have been developing an unusually high rate of mental illness lately. The episode concludes with the Doctor descending into the caves, where he finds himself menaced by the subterranean dinosaur.

Hannah: I haven't got much to say this time; I was paying attention too much to the story. I'm just waiting to find out what's going on.
Me: Any thoughts so far?
Hannah: The music is quite good, again. But I suppose it's always consistently good, except when it's bad.
Me: Er, yes. We might come back to that later.
Hannah: (noticing the credits) Oh, it's not Dudley Simpson! It's changed?
Me: For the moment, but he'll be back in the next story. This composer is Enid Blyton's nephew.
Hannah: Oh, okay. (pause) Are you lying?
Me: No!
Hannah: Alright; I suppose she has to have family. I mean, why not be related to her?
Me: He also wrote and composed "Bananas in Pyjamas".
Hannah: Really?
Me: Yes, it's his best-known work.
Hannah: When I was a child, the dentist used to give me Bananas in Pyjamas stickers.
Me: They must have been very easy to peel.
Hannah: Don't make me hit you.

Episode 2

It's not long before the unique soundtrack kicks in and Hannah starts to notice some of the more "distinctive" elements of the score.

Hannah: Ah yes, everyone loves a good bassoon.

After the Doctor has returned safely, the UNIT team discuss the situation over refreshments in the conference room.

Hannah: I'm happy to see a tea/coffee scene while they're thinking up a plan. I'm also happy that nobody has got Liz to make the drinks; if any man asked her to do that, her retort would be so sharp they'd bleed.

And no, Hannah doesn't recognise Paul Darrow as Captain Hawkins; she's had no experience of either Blake's 7 or Jack FM. Luckily there's an injured Silurian on the loose in the countryside, which is bad news for UNIT but at least it gives us something to talk about.

Hannah: That's interesting. Point-of-view camera work. Is this the first time it's been used?
Me: No. Remember The Daleks? The first time we ever see a Dalek is from their perspective.
Hannah: I mean, I haven't seen The Blair Witch Project, but...
Me: Oh, it was all based on this. This is definitely where they got the idea.
Hannah: I can't tell if you're being serious.

Dr Quinn has already made contact with the cave-dwelling Silurians, hoping to keep the scientific glory of the discovery for himself. Hannah, for her part, is more concerned about Carey Blyton's kazoo.

Hannah: Okay, I see what you mean about the music now. Random nonsense. What's the point of the gongs?
Me: I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, I'm just saying it's...
Hannah: It's bloody weird. Is that a glockenspiel?
Me: There's an argument that this is what Doctor Who should always sound like: otherworldly and different from anything else on television. But yes, even by those standards it's a bit of an oddity.
Hannah: Now I feel a bit weird about praising the music last time.
Me: The first episode was set almost entirely in the research facility, so the music wasn't quite so bizarre. We're spending a lot more time in the caves now, so it's getting a bit more exotic.
Hannah: This control room is a very cool set. It reminds me of an electric fire. I like the ambient noise; it's like the background machinery noises from Halo. I used to listen to the Halo soundtrack on repeat when I was writing my uni essays.
Me: Ah, now, Halo was definitely inspired by this...
Hannah: Stop it.

The Doctor recommends closing the base, but Dr Lawrence refuses to put his career at risk.

Hannah: Why are these base directors always more interested in profits and achievements than the safety of their employees? It was the exact same thing with that gas director in Fury from the Deep; people have died, and yet they're all content to struggle through and shout at people to make them find a solution anyway, even if it endangers more people. Even when you're faced with a massive financial or scientific loss, who would really be that stupid?

When a local woman is found in a barn, paralysed with fear, the Doctor makes a brilliant diagnosis: "She may have seen something."

Hannah: No, I'm sure she just felt like collapsing.

The Doctor and the Brigadier realise that the creature is still there, but they've already left "Miss Shaw" behind to do some forensic tests. (Shouldn't it be "Dr Shaw"?)

Hannah: There's been a murder! Why haven't they already searched the barn? Completely implausible.

The episode ends with Liz alone in the barn as a Silurian bears down on her.

Hannah: That's the same cliffhanger as last time.
Me: Well, not quite.
Hannah: It's someone getting attacked while they're on their own.
Me: Yeah, but this time it's Liz. Completely different.

Episode 3

Hannah: The Silurians' first-person vision is like looking through a kaleidoscope; they've got two segments at the bottom and a red one at the top. Surely it can't be very practical for them?

Liz is shaken from her encounter with the Silurian, but doesn't experience the same uncontrollable terror that affects everyone else who sees them.

Hannah: Why hasn't she gone all scared? All the other people have gone into shock. Is she too rational to be terrified?

Dr Quinn arrives on the scene.

Hannah: Dr Quinn's hat is stupid. It really is ridiculous; it's like Hartnell's hat, but bigger and fluffy.
Me: It looks nothing like Hartnell's hat!
Hannah: It's like a tea cosy, but with no shape to it.
Me: How can it be like a tea cosy if there's no shape?
Hannah: Well, it's not, then. It's just a bowl.
Me: Like a bowler hat?
Hannah: No! It's like a... sack.

While UNIT is searching the moors, Dr Quinn activates a Silurian signal device.

Hannah: It really does just sound like a squeaky metal swing, but sped up.

The music isn't any more melodic than the sound effects. In fact, it's not always easy to tell the difference.

Hannah: Dramatic squeaky crap.
Me: You like the music, remember?
Hannah: No.

Dr Quinn's office contains a globe that represents the world before the continental drift.

Hannah: Ah, it's Pangaea!
Me: You have a degree in archaeology; does this all stack up?
Hannah: I don't know the dates, if that's what you're trying to point out.
Me: Well, for one thing, the Silurian era was 430 million years ago, not 200 million years ago, and there was no life anywhere on land during that period either. So the Silurians aren't actually Silurians, strictly speaking.
Hannah: What are they really?
Me: Every time they make a return appearance they get renamed to whatever the writer thinks is more accurate, like Eocenes, and then that's always wrong as well.
Hannah: Yeah, or Homo reptilia. They're not part of the Homo genus; it's just wrong!
Me: Probably easier to just go with Silurians.

Dr Lawrence is fed up with UNIT getting under his feet and threatens to have the Brigadier transferred to "some simpler duties, more within your scope."

Hannah: Bitch.

Dr Quinn is harbouring the runaway Silurian so the Doctor pays a second visit to Quinn's cottage, hoping to persuade Quinn to trust him before it's too late.

Hannah: It's just backwards and forwards to his cottage. Why doesn't he stay there?
Me: There's already one houseguest.
Hannah: The Doctor's really tall now; he's physically imposing as well as intelligent. He could just force his way in, tie him up and search the house until he finds the Silurian.
Me: That's probably not the best way to get someone to trust you.
Hannah: Maybe not, but it gets the job done.

In fact, Hannah has a lot of problems with this set-up (in particular, the question of how Quinn encouraged a Silurian to come home with him, how he forced it to stay, and why it didn't immediately escape after killing him, instead of hanging around the cottage until the Doctor turned up), but then we get our first proper look at a Silurian.

Hannah: They look a bit fishy.
Me: As in suspicious?
Hannah: As in flared head-stuff, gills, fishy lips. Less reptile, more fish.

Episode 4

Major Baker explores the caves, but gets trapped when he steps in a puddle of bubbling liquid.

Hannah: This is a very strange cave system.
Me: It's got prehistoric reptiles living in it, so I'm not really sure what you were expecting.
Hannah: Realistic rocks would be a good start.

A group of Silurians turn up and immobilise him.

Hannah: They walk strangely.
Me: So would you, if you had webbed feet.
Hannah: No, they move their arms around, as if they're dancing.

A man from the ministry, Masters, has arrived to investigate the recent developments at the facility.

Hannah: He's famous.
Me: That's Geoffrey Palmer, famous for Butterflies, As Time Goes By and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, although I don't suppose you've seen any of those. More likely you recognise him from either the Bond film he was in, Tomorrow Never Dies, or the episode of Fawlty Towers where one of the guests dies, or as Field Marshal Haig in the final episode of Blackadder. Or possibly as the captain of the Titanic in "Voyage of the Damned", the Christmas episode with David Tennant and Kylie Minogue.
Hannah: Is he pouring coffee into a plastic cup?!

The Silurians interrogate Major Baker.

Me: Do you recognise who's doing the Silurian voices?
Hannah: Of course not. Oh, is it Kroton man?
Me: It's Peter Halliday, the one who played Packer in The Invasion.
Hannah: They sound like the voices from The Krotons, but slightly less South African.

The Doctor tries to warn the Silurians about the military attack on the caves, but gets locked up for his trouble.

Hannah: That Silurian looks like he's having some kind of fit. He's just standing there shaking his little head-gem at...
Me: "Head-gem"? That's a third eye! That's why their first-person vision has three segments, and the top one is red.
Hannah: I know, but it just looks like a plastic gem embedded in their forehead.

The Silurians want their planet back but the Doctor is keen to broker peace between the humans and Silurians, which Hannah recognises as being the same story as "Cold Blood" in the Matt Smith era. The Silurian stubbornly makes a counter-offer: "This planet is ours. It always has been."

Hannah: And that's the important line.
Me: Malcolm Hulke wasn't too keen on the new Earthbound format for the show, claiming that it only left two story ideas available - alien invasion or mad scientist - so the script editor Terrance Dicks asked him to write a story about an indigenous alien threat who want their planet back.
Hannah: I like it, it's a good way to avoid getting too repetitive. It's been done very early on, though; we've had one alien threat so far, and now we're only two stories in and it's "We're going to blow your mind; it's going to be aliens, but they're not." I've always thought it was a really good idea.

The cliffhanger sees a young Silurian trying to kill the Doctor with his third eye.

Hannah: They don't slap people, they just stare them to death. I'm really enjoying this, because I already know the story and I like it; I don't know this particular story, but I know the gist of it and I like that the Doctor just throws himself in there and tries to be the piggy in the middle. This music is still bizarre and jarring, though.

Episode 5

The UNIT troops are trapped in the caves, so they try using the field telephone to contact base.

Hannah: I love the fact that they're trying to use a phone downstairs, in the caves.
Me: Downstairs?
Hannah: Underground. Same thing.

Back in the conference room, Liz has changed into a rather fetching red outfit for this episode.

Hannah: It's an interesting choice, having one of the main characters dressed in the same fabric as the backdrop.

The Silurian leader wants to Give Peace a Chance, but an impetuous young Silurian opts for genocide instead.

Hannah: He sounds like an angry teenager. "I don't want fish and chips for dinner! I want pizza!" He was promised all kinds of things before he went to sleep, and now he's woken up and there are apes all over his planet and someone's taken away his primordial swamp pony.

The young Silurian releases Major Baker, but not before infecting him with a disease that will wipe out millions of humans.

Hannah: Ah, I'd wondered what they were going to do to make it last another two episodes. So they've planted a disease on him, and sent him back to the surface to commit genocide? That's not nice.
Me: I think that might be a bit of an understatement.

The elder Silurian releases the Doctor so that he can find a cure ("Oh good, they get to look down a microscope again"), but then Junior uses his third eye to kill the leader.

Hannah: No, don't kill the good one! So they can do all kinds of things with their mind-eye? They can wake people up, they can injure or kill them, they can make force-fields... I suppose it's possible that they're just interacting with their technology to make the force-field. But still, how can it do so much?

The Doctor tries to contain the bacteria, but it's too late; the infection has already started to spread.

Hannah: I wasn't expecting that to happen; that's quite a turn. Quite a good one. Well, obviously bad, but good in storytelling terms.

Episode 6

The Doctor needs to shoo the Brigadier out of the lab so that he can get on with finding a cure.

Hannah: "Get out of here, and take your stick with you."

Meanwhile, the Silurians are spying on the Doctor from their base in the caves.

Hannah: How can they see everything, everywhere?

Masters has returned to London (apparently not being familiar with the concept of "quarantine") and arrives at the ministry in a taxi.

Hannah: Is the driver famous?
Me: Not unless it's Fred Housego. Why would the taxi driver be famous?
Hannah: I don't know. He's just got very significant sideburns.

Masters spreads the Silurians' disease throughout London; half the population are dropping dead in the streets within minutes, but he's still refusing to collapse.

Hannah: He's really hanging on!
Me: He's definitely beating the odds. He was infected before he left the research facility, and that must have been hours ago.
Hannah: If he doesn't die, I hope they make him feel very sorry about infecting all of London; they told him there was a disease, and that he shouldn't leave. So much death.

The Doctor claims his life covers "several thousand years".

Hannah: Does it? Does it?! Is he exaggerating to make himself look more impressive to her?
Me: Sure, let's go with that.
Hannah: Either that, or they're just making his age up as they go along.

The Doctor is abducted from his lab by a group of Silurians after they burn through the wall.

Hannah: This is just so bizarre.
Me: The music?
Hannah: Yeah, but also seeing the Doctor go cross-eyed and fall on the floor.

Episode 7

Hannah is fascinated by the decor in the conference room.

Hannah: Has someone pooed on the wall? Why does it look so brown?
Me: It's the seventies. Everything's brown.

The Silurians force the Doctor to set up a device in the power complex that will destroy the Van Allen belt, heating up the planet so that the human race will die out and leave Earth for the cold-blooded Silurians.

Hannah: Apart from having microwaves that can only destroy the Van Allen belt, it's quite an interesting idea for destroying humanity.
Me: Well, I'm glad you approve.
Hannah: It's not like they're saying "we turned the sun up" or anything like that, because then I'd be out of here. But destroying some of the sunlight filtration, alright; that's fine.

For the first and only time, we see the Doctor observing Casual Friday.

Hannah: The Doctor looks very strange in a plain white t-shirt and jeans. I mean, why? I know he was wearing a white lab coat earlier, but I assumed he was wearing it over the top of his regular clothes; was he really wearing that underneath?

The Doctor sabotages the nuclear reactor, and with the complex about to explode, the Silurians decide to piss off back to the cave and resume their hibernation. The Doctor advises the humans to evacuate, but there's no way out because the Silurians have jammed the lift in a fit of pique.

Hannah: "Bollocks. I think we've made a mistake."
Me: You'd think they would have built an emergency staircase or something.

Not for the last time, the Doctor saves the day by tinkering around with the neutron flow. Down in the caves, the young Silurian takes responsibility for the survival of his race and sacrifices his life so that he can put the others into hibernation.

Hannah: So that naughty teenage Silurian actually volunteered to stay and die? That doesn't seem in keeping with his character. He killed the leader because he wants to be in charge; you'd think he'd be the first one to get inside the box and survive.
Me: Why? He's just doing what he thinks is best for his people.
Hannah: True; I think it's probably my characterisation of him that's clouding my opinion.
Me: But that's the whole point of the story, isn't it? They're not evil as such; they're the same as us. The humans and the Silurians are both villains in this story; they can't live together peacefully because neither of them will give each other a chance. None of them are unsympathetic, but none of them come out of it looking particularly good either.

Out on the road, the Doctor is having car trouble. He takes a small vial of red liquid out of his pocket and pours it into the radiator.

Hannah: Was that a little vial of blood?
Me: How likely is it?
Hannah: Well, that's exactly what it looked like.
Me: You think Bessie runs on human blood?
Hannah: Not human, necessarily.
Me: It could be anything. Some kind of car medicine or something.

The Brigadier blows up the Silurian base, and after witnessing this act of genocide, the Doctor leaves in disgust. Not a feel-good ending.

Hannah: But the Brigadier told them to seal the base! He just said "seal", like make a rockfall happen around it so that nobody can get in or out. He didn't say they were actually going to blow it up, so I'm not sure what's actually... are we supposed to believe that they've killed them all?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: But that's not what the Brig said! It's very dark. All of this is a lot darker, and... it's just not funny.
Me: It wasn't meant to be funny!
Hannah: I liked it funny. Obviously I don't want slapstick, and I don't want jokes left, right and centre when they're dealing with slightly more serious issues, but it's just a bit... I don't know.
Me: Well, Pertwee is playing it a lot straighter than Troughton. Besides, the show is supposedly being pitched at a slightly more grown-up level than before, so we've got proper human drama and politics in here.
Hannah: I'd be interested to know how many Silurians there were altogether. How many were in those hibernation chambers? Are there more across the planet? Are we going to find more throwback species? Oh, and there's something they never told you about: why were people going crazy?
Me: Just from shock. Until about halfway through the story, anyway, and then everyone forgets about it.
Hannah: I don't find that believable in the slightest; some people would get shocked, but not everyone who sees them. And the people who worked in the nuclear reactor room; what were they being exposed to that made them go mental? They said loads of their scientists were having breakdowns, but not all of them went into the caves. What happened to the man who went weird and was drawing on the walls? They made out that it was hugely important; they had a guy who was drawing cave art all over the walls, and then the exact same thing happened to one of the soldiers, but they never explained it. I feel like they've left a massive great hole in the story.

The Score

Hannah: I love the Silurians, I love the idea of them, but I found the story a bit middling. The central story is very interesting; I like the idea of different cultures who both have an equal claim but can't reconcile their differences. But the rest of the story was a bit lacking. Things that seemed important at the beginning were forgotten and never resolved; they tried to do loads of things, but they didn't quite finish it. I love the concept and I love the "aliens" but some parts seemed rushed and not quite right, and the music was just... I don't even know the right word for it.
Me: Experimental?
Hannah: Very experimental! It made the Silurians feel very alien, but it was annoying and jerked you out of the story sometimes. It's supposed to help the mood, but mostly the mood was wishing you could make that squeaky thing shut up. For a seven-part story, I would have loved to have seen more about the background of the Silurians.
Me: It was heavily expanded in the novelisation, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters. We have a copy if you're interested.
Hannah: What a surprise; we've got everything.
Me: There's a prologue set during prehistoric times; it shows them going into hibernation, and makes them feel more like real people with a proper civilisation. They've got names and everything.
Hannah: Even with the television version, there was so much more that they could have fit in. I like how much the story makes you think, and I would have loved to give it an 8, but I don't think it quite got there.

7/10

Me: What do you think of Jon Pertwee's Doctor?
Hannah: I don't like him as much as Troughton. He seems a lot more strict and boring.
Me: On his own merits, though?
Hannah: He doesn't seem very alien, so he's not particularly engaging or interesting to me; he doesn't feel like an alien adventurer, just a clever person who works with the Brigadier. Which is fair enough, but I feel it's going to get a bit dull and repetitive if we're going to be stuck on Earth in the same period and there's nothing to lighten the mood. It's a more realistic and gritty Doctor, and I understand that it works and he doesn't have to be silly all the time, but I find it boring. There are parts where he feels like the Doctor we knew before, like his negotiation with the Silurian leader and his scientific tests, but a lot of the time it doesn't feel right; it's a serious story, but it's still missing a touch of Doctor-style humour. There's no Jamie to mess around with, no jokes being told, no random things in his pockets. I miss the light relief. This Doctor seems a lot more serious, despite the yellow car.

We felt compelled to watch Musical Scales, the DVD documentary about the "experimental" soundtrack, and learned that Carey Blyton rang the director late one night whilst working on the score and enthusiastically played a crumhorn down the phone.

Hannah: Oh, so that's how it got approved; the director said "yeah, whatever, I'm going to bed." It's like when you bought those expensive pillows because you asked me when I was asleep.