Doctor Who and the Silurians
| 052 – Doctor Who and the Silurians | |||
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| Doctor Who serial | |||
 A Silurian | |||
| Cast | |||
Others
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| Production | |||
| Directed by | Timothy Combe | ||
| Written by | Malcolm Hulke | ||
| Script editor | Terrance Dicks | ||
| Produced by | Barry Letts | ||
| Executive producer(s) | None | ||
| Production code | BBB | ||
| Series | Season 7 | ||
| Running time | 7 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||
| First broadcast | January 31–March 14, 1970 | ||
| Chronology | |||
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Doctor Who and the Silurians is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in seven weekly parts from January 31 to March 14, 1970. The story is the first appearance of a recurring family of Earth-dwelling reptiles. The title is sometimes reduced to the intended title The Silurians.
Plot
Synopsis
An experimental nuclear power research centre built into a network of caves in Wenley Moor is experiencing mysterious power drains and a high incidence of mental breakdowns. UNIT are called in to investigate, and the Third Doctor and Liz meet Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart at the plant. While exploring the caves, one of the workers at the centre was killed, with wounds that look like giant claw marks, and his companion's mind has been traumatised to the extent that he can only scrawl primitive cave drawings of reptilian creatures on the walls of the ward. Lawrence, the Director, resents UNIT's presence and feels that it will interfere with the working of the plant, which is trying a new process to convert nuclear energy directly into electric power. Off in a corner, Dr Quinn, the Deputy Director, argues with Miss Dawson, his assistant, when she protests that they should stop "them" from taking the power. Major Baker, the security chief, believes there is a saboteur in the centre, and the Doctor discovers that the logs of the nuclear reactor's operation have been tampered with.
When the Doctor makes his way into the caves, he is attacked by a dinosaur-like creature, but it is called off by a strange whistling sound. The Brigadier decides to explore the caves with armed men. Baker fires at a humanoid figure he spots in the caves, and is attacked by the dinosaur-like creature, but it is again called off by the same sound. The Doctor returns to the centre with Baker, taking samples of the blood that was drawn when Baker fired at the humanoid. Examining the blood, the Doctor finds similarities to the "higher reptiles". In the meantime, the humanoid has reached the surface and stumbles into a barn to hide. Quinn goes into the caves to a hidden base, where he demands the knowledge he was promised. He is told that he must first see to the wounded humanoid and is given a signal device which emits the sound heard earlier.
The humanoid is discovered by a farmer and his wife, and attacks them. The farmer dies of a heart attack, but the wife survives and identifies her attacker. Liz, investigating the barn, turns to see a reptilian biped, who knocks her unconscious and flees. When Liz awakes, she tells the Doctor and the Brigadier, and the latter orders a manhunt across the moor, just as Quinn arrives at the barn. Making an excuse, he leaves and summons the humanoid with his device. When the Brigadier and the Doctor discover the humanoid's tracks, they end in tire marks.
The Doctor goes to Quinn's cottage, and notes that it is remarkably hot, like a reptile house. Quinn replies that the thermostat is broken. Quinn does not react well to the hints the Doctor is dropping or to his veiled attempts to get him to co-operate, and asks the Doctor to leave. Breaking into Quinn's office, the Doctor finds a globe that depicts the Earth's continents as they were 200 millions of years ago, which the Doctor identifies as during the Silurian epoch. Back at the cottage, Miss Dawson tries to persuade Quinn to tell the Doctor everything, but Quinn is adamant that he will keep the wounded Silurian captive until he is given the advanced scientific knowledge he wants. Later, when the Doctor goes to the cottage to once again try to reason with Quinn, he finds the scientist dead in his chair. The Doctor retrieves the signal device from Quinn's body and is surprised by the Silurian, who is still there. The Doctor attempts communication, only for the Silurian to run away.
Baker, still convinced that the answer lies in the caves, overpowers the UNIT man guarding the sickbay and enters them by himself. He is soon captured by the Silurians and interrogated as to the capabilities of the humans. The Doctor and Liz explore the caves following Baker's route and open the entrance to the Silurian base with Quinn's signal device, where they find Baker in a locked cage. He tells them that they must warn the surface. The Doctor and Liz leave undiscovered, but not before they see a Silurian being revived from hibernation by a machine, explaining the energy drains that the reactor has been experiencing. Meanwhile, Masters, the Permanent Under-Secretary in charge of the centre, arrives for a personal inspection, and Lawrence complains to him about UNIT's interference. The Doctor decides to tell them all about the Silurians in the caves, urging a peaceful contact instead of the Brigadier's proposed armed expedition. However, this falls on deaf ears when Miss Dawson reveals that Quinn was killed by the Silurian he held captive.
The Doctor goes to warn and reason with the Silurians, but they put him in a cage as well. An older Silurian seems to be willing to listen to the Doctor, but a younger one wants to destroy the humans and retake the planet. The UNIT troops soon find themselves trapped, with stone walls inexplicably appearing to block off their passage. The younger Silurian attacks the Doctor psychically with a glowing third eye, but the older one puts a stop to it. The older Silurian tells the Doctor how their race retreated underground when they saw the Moon approaching Earth millions of years before. The hibernation mechanism malfunctioned, and they did not revive until a new power source — the nuclear reactor — was discovered. The Doctor manages to persuade the older Silurian to release the Brigadier and his men, but the younger Silurian orders Baker infected with a virus before he is released. When the older Silurian discovers this, he releases the Doctor, giving him a canister of the virus so he can discover a cure. The younger Silurian kills the older one for this act.
At the centre, the Doctor warns everyone to stay away from Baker, who collapses with the virus. Masters, however, decides to return to London, unaware that he has also been infected. Baker is taken to a local hospital without the Doctor's knowledge and dies there. The Brigadier holds Baker's doctor and nurse at gunpoint to prevent them from leaving and spreading the virus while the Doctor returns to the centre to work on the cure. The Brigadier and Liz try to warn London, while all of the centre's staff are inoculated with a stopgap vaccine. All, that is, except for Lawrence, who refuses. Masters, in the meantime, has reached London and eludes the search parties desperately looking for him. The virus begins to spread and the deaths begin, the infection even reaching France. Lawrence eventually dies from the virus, complaining in his last moments that the affair has ruined his career.
The young Silurian decides the Doctor must be killed before he finds a cure. The Doctor has indeed found one, and as he writes down the formula, the Silurians attack the centre and stun him with their third eyes, taking him away. Liz, however, discovers the formula and it is soon being mass produced and distributed. The Silurians have a back-up plan, however. They intend to use a weapon to destroy the Van Allen Belt and make the Earth's environment hostile to humankind, and will force the Doctor to connect the reactor to provide power to the weapon. UNIT troops are lured into the caves and commence a battle with the Silurians while the younger Silurian takes the Doctor to the reactor control room along with Liz and the Brigadier. The Doctor, however, overloads the reactor and tells the younger Silurian that the area will be irradiated for at least 25 years. The Silurians disengage from the battle with UNIT and reenter the caves to hibernate until the danger has passed. Since the mechanism is faulty, the younger Silurian will stay awake to operate it and sacrifice his life. The Doctor and Liz, meanwhile, repair the reactor, and go to the underground base, where the younger Silurian realises he has been duped into sending his race back to sleep. He attacks the Doctor in a rage, but is killed by the Brigadier.
Later, on Wenley Moor, the Doctor tells Liz that he proposes to revive the Silurians one by one and try to reach a peaceful compromise between them and humanity. However, the Brigadier has other orders, and the Silurian base is blown up. The Doctor is horrified at this act of genocide, but Liz tells him that the Silurians would never have agreed to come to terms. The Doctor, still disgusted, drives off.
Continuity
This story marks the first appearance of the Doctor's roadster, Bessie.
This story marks the first time the Doctor is seen to be seriously at odds with his UNIT colleagues, although it will not be the last.
The Doctor remarks in this episode, "You know, I'm beginning to lose confidence for the first time in my life - and that covers several thousand years." This comment adds to the many conflicting ages for the Doctor provided in the television series over the years.
Earth reptiles
The term "Silurian" is never actually used by the creatures themselves; only by humans. Its use resulted in many letters from scientists and geologists who argued that it was impossible for a reptilian lifeform to have existed in the Silurian era. In the later The Sea Devils, the Doctor admits that the name "Silurian" is inaccurate and states they should more properly be called "Eocenes" (which again is an unlikely candidate for the creatures' own era). However, the misnomer Silurian has stuck. For example, in Warriors of the Deep both they and the Sea Devils use "Silurian" to refer to themselves (even when no humans are present) - presumably because the audience knows them as this, as within the fiction of the programme, it's unlikely the creatures would even be speaking in English.
The Sea Devils, the aquatic cousins of the Silurians, would appear in The Sea Devils (1972). The Sea Devils, in turn, would appear together with the Silurians in Warriors of the Deep (1984).
The Virgin New Adventures novel Blood Heat features an alternate universe where the Doctor died in captivity during the events of this serial and Earth was subsequently conquered by the Silurians. Silurians also appear in the Big Finish Productions audio play Bloodtide.
Production
- After the previous story, producer Derrick Sherwin was transferred to the television series Paul Temple, and the BBC intended for Barry Letts to become producer. However, Letts was committed to another production, and could not be released until after the location work on Silurians was completed. Script editor Terrance Dicks and his assistant Trevor Ray shared the production responsibilities for the location work.
- The incidental music for the serial was composed by Carey Blyton, who would also contribute music for Death to the Daleks (1974) and Revenge of the Cybermen (1975).
- This episode is the first using colour studio cameras. The previous serial, Spearhead from Space, was the first in colour, but was shot entirely on location (i.e., outside the electronic TV studio), and on film (as opposed to videotape, the standard method for recording Doctor Who).
- Whilst working on Bessie, the Doctor sings a rendition of "Jabberwocky".
Alternative titles
Working titles for this story included The Monsters and The Silurians.
This was also the first and only time the name "Doctor Who" was used in the title of a serial on-screen (although Episode 5 of The Chase was titled "The Death of Doctor Who" on-screen). Although it was common in production paperwork to prefix "Doctor Who and..." to the story title at the time, the prefix was usually dropped when the director ordered the titles from the captioning department for transmission. However, this was not done for this particular story.
The reasons why this happened are not entirely clear. Director Timothy Combe states that he was presented with a story called Doctor Who and the Silurians and that it was always intended that the serial go out with that name. However, as Doctor Who historian Andrew Pixley points out, this was Combe's first serial as a full director and there was effectively no producer at this time, as noted above. In addition, the rehearsal scripts for the serial simply have The Silurians as the title. Pixley theorises that Combe was unaware of the standard production practice and gave the order to the captioning department for the "proper" title as he believed it to be at the time.
Whichever the case, production paperwork from this point on stopped the practice of adding the prefix, perhaps as a measure to prevent the "mistake" from happening again.[1]
See also: Doctor Who story title debate
Casting
- Actor Paul Darrow, best known for his later role as Kerr Avon in Blake's 7, appears in a minor role as Captain Hawkins. Darrow would return to the series playing Tekker in the Sixth Doctor serial Timelash. Fulton Mackay also appears in this episode. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.
- Geoffrey Palmer who played Masters also appears in another Third Doctor story The Mutants and in the Tenth Doctor episode Voyage of the Damned.[2]
Commercial releases
The original 625-line PAL videotapes of the serial were wiped by the BBC for reuse, although they retained 16mm monochrome film prints. In 1993, the colour signal from an 525-line NTSC version of all seven episodes (except for part of the beginning of episode four) was used, along with traditional colourisation techniques, to colourise the film prints for the VHS release which was in July of that year.
On January 14, 2008, a fresh restoration of the story was released on DVD as part of boxed set called "Beneath the Surface" with The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep. The DVD contains commentary provided by actors Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney, Peter Miles, Geoffrey Palmer, director Timothy Combe, producer Barry Letts, and script editor Terrance Dicks.
In October 2006, the story's original soundtrack was released on CD as part of the 'Monsters on Earth' tin set, again alongside The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep, with linking narration from Caroline John.[3] The CD was then individually re-issued in January 2008.
In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in January 1974 under the title Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters. In this adaptation, the Silurians were given names like Morka, Okdel and K'to. The novelisation was also translated into Dutch, Finnish, Japanese and Portuguese. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by actress Caroline John was released on CD in September 2007 by BBC Audiobooks.
References
- ^ Andrew Pixley (2006-06-30). "Re: The Doctor Who Serial Titles Debate". Outpost Gallifrey (registration required). Retrieved 2006-12-19.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ ""Kylie Boards Titanic!"". BBC. 2007-07-11. Retrieved 2007-09-19.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ http://www.timelash.com/tardis/display.asp?1462
External links
- Doctor Who and the Silurians at BBC Online
- Template:Brief
- Template:Doctor Who RG
- Doctor Who Locations - The Silurians
- Doctor Who and the Silurians at the Doctor Who Tardis Index File on Wikia