7 episodes
Aired between 31st January 1970 and 14th March 1970
Written by Malcolm Hulke
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Timothy Combe
Synopsis
Two men, Spencer and Davis, make their way down a rope into a cave system. They believe it's an undiscovered cave and are clearly happy about finding it, until they hear a loud roar from deeper inside the tunnels. The two of them explore and come across a ferocious monster.
It claws Davis to death and Spencer flees in terror.
Over at UNIT HQ, the Doctor is doing his own modifications to a vintage yellow car that has been bought for him. He affectionately calls it "Bessie". Liz Shaw enters the room and tells him that they've been ordered to go down to Wenley Moor to a research station where they're having trouble with missing scientists.
The Doctor huffs and tells Liz that nobody orders him to do anything he doesn't want to and goes back to tinkering with "Bessie". He soon changes his mind though when Liz mentions the fact that there are lots of cave networks about and he can go exploring. The Doctor changes his mind and tells Liz he'll drive them down.
When they get to Wenley Moor, they find the Director, Charles Lawrence has called a meeting of all staff. He tells them all in a very strict way that UNIT have been authorised to investigate the disappearances of the scientists.
He orders that they are to be given every courtesy, but is clear that he expects them to be gone sooner rather than later as it will interfere with the work.
Once the meeting is over, the Brigadier greets Liz and the Doctor, and introduces them to Dr Lawrence, Dr Quinn, his chief scientist. and Major Baker, the stations security chief. The Doctor asks what the station is here for. Dr Quinn tells them that this is the place for the Cyclotron, a huge proton accelerator. He says that the station is there to experiment using the Cyclotron to create unlimited nuclear energy. The machine has been recently suffering some unexplained power losses though, and the staff have begun to show high incidents of mental breakdowns and accidents.
The Brigadier orders Liz to look at the personnel records to try and identify trends in the breakdowns, Baker is ordered to increase the security on the place, and the Doctor is given the task of exploring the power cuts. He offers to whip out his sonic screwdriver and dismantle the Cyclotron, but Lawrence is adamant that he will not do anything to upset their work. To keep close to the scene, the Brigadier commandeers the meeting room as his office.
Dr Quinn takes them to the Cyclotron operations room. The Doctor is concerned at the fact that the experiments are still being conducted even though power losses are reported. The losses seemingly make the process unstable and if handled incorrectly, could send the station into meltdown, blowing up like an atom bomb. Quinn agrees with the Doctor, but says that only the Director can give the order to stop the Cyclotron. It's an order everyone knows that Dr Lawrence is too stubborn to make.
As they are talking, Liz suddenly comes over dizzy. She soon recovers but cannot explain it. She decides to go and see Dr Meredith (the centre's physician) to check on the personnel records. The Doctor remains in the control room and he chats with Dr Quinn about the local caves nearby. Quinn mentions that he's a keen potholer, but he's banned from the caves following a scientists death in there. Someone was with him, but they went mad with grief and are confined to an infirmary in the station. Quinn suspects that whatever happened to them down in the caves has been covered up by Dr Lawrence.
The Doctor asks if there's any discernible pattern to the power losses, but Quinn doesn't think so. He directs the Doctor to the experiment log where everything should be noted. The Doctor studies the log and determines that some of it is incomplete. It turns out that it's because Spencer, the scientist in the infirmary was the one who normally updated the log. Quinn is happy with that explanation, but the Doctor points out that even though that's the case, some of the data has been torn out of the book deliberately.
Over in the infirmary, Liz talks to Dr Meredith. He is distinctly unhappy about UNIT personnel coming in and trying to cast doubt on his work. He doesn't want to let Liz see Spencer, nor the Doctor when he turns up, but is forced to when they cite their credentials.
Meredith takes both the Doctor and Liz to see Spencer, who is drawing pictures on the wall as they enter.
Dr Meredith explains that its the only thing that keeps Spencer from being violent, so they let him do it. The Doctor tries to talk to Spencer, but the man turns and attacks the Doctor, nearly throttling him to death. The Doctor manages to calm the patient down until he goes back to drawing on the wall. Dr Meredith and Liz look worried but the Doctor is fine. He is fascinated, stating that something made Spencer's mind regress millions of years ago to being a caveman, drawing crude pictures of reptiles on the walls.
Now the Doctor has left the Cyclotron control room, Dr Quinn and his assistant, Miss Dawson argue about their next course of action. Miss Dawson tells Quinn to make "them" stop taking the power from the Cyclotron for a little while. Quinn says that he's already tried but they're not listening. He says that the potential knowledge gain outweighs the risk.
Major Baker meanwhile checks up on all the UNIT personnel, and finds that the Doctor's file is totally blank. He wants to investigate further, but the Brigadier forbids it.
Another power failure grips the cyclotron, drawing the Doctor back to the control room. As Quinn talks the scientists through the procedure to safely shut it down, one of the staff goes mad and is forced to abandon his post. The Doctor rushes in and takes over, successfully shutting the machine down without incident.
Once the Doctor has double checked the medical histories with Liz, he becomes convinced that the cyclotron room is the focus for the illnesses. Given the condition of Spencer, he believes the answer lies somewhere in the caves. He confirms it when they look at Davis' postmortem report - he was found with claw marks on him.
His mind made up, the Doctor changes into some overalls and goes to the caves. It's not long before he finds the place where Spencer and Davis were attacked. He hears the distant roars as well and as he investigates, he is confronted by a huge dinosaur.
Just as the Doctor's goose is cooked, the dinosaur is called off at the last moment by a strange bleeping sound. The Doctor seizes the chance to escape and returns to the research station. Once back there he fills the Brigadier in on what he's seen. Much to the Doctors frustration, the Brigadier decides that the only answer is to send armed men into the caves. He decides to go with the Brigadier anyway.
Once at the caves, the Doctor takes the soldiers to the spot where he met the dinosaur.
No tracks remain and it looks like the Doctor imagined it. Major Baker however sees something in the shadows and rushes off in pursuit. He finds a humanoid at the end of a tunnel and fires his gun, wounding it. The dinosaur turns up again and attacks Major Baker, but is called off at the last moment by the bleeping sound. The Brigadier and UNIT soldiers catch up to Major Baker but find no trace of anyone.
The Doctor takes some samples of blood from where the humanoid was injured and decides to take them back to the research station for study, taking Major Baker back with him whilst the Brigadier gives chase to the humanoid.
The humanoid makes it to the surface, stumbling about the moors until it finds a barn to hide in.
Back at the station, the Doctor and Liz study the blood samples and discover that it bears similarities to the high end reptiles. They go to question Dr Quinn but Miss Dawson tells them that he's gone home ill.
Knowing that UNIT have entered the cave systems, Dr Quinn decides that he must go in there too. He seems to know where he's going. He stops at the face of the cave wall and is bathed in red light as the strange bleeping sound echoes around the cave.
As if under hypnosis, he is taken through a door in the wall into an alien base, where he is brought back around to speak to the aliens. He tells them that UNIT are investigating but discovers that they have already met them, wounding one of their kind. Quinn asks for the knowledge they've promised him, but the aliens tell him he must help their wounded comrade first. They give him a hand held signaling device and send him on his way to find the wounded alien.
Out in the barn, the alien is discovered by the farmer who approaches it with a pitchfork. The alien kills the farmer and frightens the farmers wife half to death. The bodies are found by UNIT and the farmers wife is admitted to hospital with shock. The Doctor goes to visit her whilst Liz searches the barn for clues.
Once by the farmers wife, the Doctor discovers that the alien never left the barn.
Sure enough, as Liz is searching the hay, the alien humanoid approaches her from behind and attacks her.
The Doctor and the Brigadier rush back to the barn, finding that Liz has just been knocked unconscious.
Despite the barn being closed from the inside, it seems that the alien has escaped. The Brigadier orders a manhunt across the moors.
Out of nowhere, Dr Quinn turns up at the barn with the excuse that it's on his way to the station. The Doctor asks if he's recovered from his sudden illness. Dr Quinn is confused at first but makes excuses once he sees that the alien has gone. As he goes to leave the Doctor asks him to take Liz to the station, but Quinn says he's got some errands to run first and he leaves, looking more suspicious to the Doctor than ever before.
As the manhunt gets underway, Dr Quinn drives around the moors, using the summoning device to draw the alien to him. The Doctor and Brigadier find the location too late, noting alien footprints leading to tyre marks.
The Doctor follows his instincts and goes to Dr Quinns cottage, finding him at home rather than the station where he said he was heading.
Quinn tries to say that he just popped back to his house because he forgot something. The Doctor notes how hot it is in there, and Quinn tells him the thermostat is broken. Despite all his attempts to get Quinn to cooperate, the Doctor cannot persuade him. He leaves but lets it be known that he's aware Quinn is up to something.
The Doctor goes back to the research station and with the help of Liz, breaks into Dr Quinns office. There they find a miniature globe depicting the Earth but with the continents drawn together, just like they were millions of years ago during the Silurian epoch. Miss Dawson finds them and is on the verge of spilling the beans but the Brigadier walks in at the wrong time and she decides to keep her lips sealed.
She leaves the station and goes to Dr Quinn's house where she tries to get Quinn to open up to the Doctor. Quinn is adamant that he can get the aliens to reveal vast amounts of superior knowledge and the Doctor is only interested in claiming the glory for himself. He intends to hold the alien for ransom in his basement until the rest of them tell him what he wants to know.
Later that night, the Doctor returns to Quinn's house he finds the scientist dead.
He recovers the summoning device from Quinn's lifeless hand and uses it. From behind him, the alien approaches.
The Doctor notices it at the last moment and tries to communicate with it. It clearly understands the Doctor, but chooses to run away.
Back at the station's sick bay, Major Baker is recovered and wants to go after the Silurians once again. Liz won't let him, but he waits until she has gone and he overpowers the guard watching him, and heads off to the caves, only to be captured by the Silurians.
The Doctor finds Liz and tells her what happened at Quinn's house. He intends to go to the caves alone, but Liz is adamant that this time, she goes with him. They use a map found in Quinn's office to navigate the tunnels and soon find evidence that Major Baker has come back to the caves. Not long after that, they discover a secret door and use the beeping device Quinn had to open it.
Inside, they find a vast alien complex and see Major Baker locked in a cage. He tells the Doctor that they have been interrogating him on the size and strength of the human armies. The Doctor asks Baker to stall for time and he and Liz leave, returning back to the station.
On the way out, they witness the Silurians reviving one of their kind from a long hibernation. .
Dr Lawrence greets Masters, the Permanent Undersecretary who has arrived on the back of the Brigadiers request for a sizable force of soldiers to be brought down from the British Army. Lawrence is scathing of UNIT's help and says they should be made to leave. The Doctor and Liz turn up as the Brigadier, Masters and Lawrence are all debating the situation.
The Doctor decides to tell them all what's going on and urges for peaceful negotiations to take place. They are almost convinced until Miss Dawson turns up and tells them that Quinn is dead, killed by these monsters. She is fervent that they must mean all humans harm and something should be done about it.
Having failed to convince them to keep soldiers away from the cave, the Doctor decides that his only option left is to go into them caves before the soldiers can be commandeered and organised. He intends to forewarn the Silurians and hope they are willing to negotiate.
He does as he intends, and warns the Silurians, but they lock him up next to Major Baker. The Major is furious when he finds out that the Doctor is betraying the UNIT force but there's little he can do.
The Doctor is willing to gamble everything on the fact that the Silurians will listen.
The Doctor didn't count on one of the Silurians having his eyes on leadership. The leader of the Silurians agrees to talk to the Doctor, but the young Silurian thinks he's unfit to lead. He sneaks off and meets up with the UNIT forces, trapping them in an air tight room before returning to base.
Once back there, he tell the Doctor that he intends to kill him. He uses his eye beam, but the Silurian leader stops him and orders that the Doctor will not be harmed.
When the young Silurian leaves, the leader releases the Doctor. He tells him about how the Silurians lived on Earth millions of years ago, but were forced into hibernation when their scientists spotted a large planet approaching and they assumed that it would disrupt the atmosphere.
They set their alarm clocks for the machinery to revive them a few thousand years after, in the hopes that they would survive the planets collision, but it seems that the machinery failed and they remained in hibernation until a new power source (the Cyclotron) was placed nearby and so revived them.
As they are having this chat, the Brigadier and his men are slowly suffocating in the caves. One of his men starts to regress to caveman status and just like Spencer did, starts drawing on the walls.
The Doctor convinces the Silurian leader to release the Brigadier and his men, and promises to go back and help negotiate a peace between the humans and Silurians, where the reptiles can live in the deserts where they like it warm but man doesn't want to use.
The young Silurian is outraged that they are making peace with the "apes" when it was the Silurians planet first. He convinces the only other awakened Silurian, a scientist, to help him destroy the "apes". The scientist is uncomfortable with the prospect of genocide, but is threatened into compliance. He gives the young Silurian a test tube containing a potent virus that they used against the "apes" when they used to raid their crops.
The young Silurian takes the virus and infects Major Baker with it before releasing him back into the caves.
When the Silurian leader finds out, he releases the Doctor, giving him a sample of the virus and asking him to warn the humans and to make an antidote (because one doesn't exist). Once the Doctor has left, the leader confronts the young Silurian, but is killed by the rebel.
Back at the station, Miss Dawson is urging Masters to call for the Army and send them down into the caves after the Brigadier and his men. Liz tries to make them see that there's no need to attack the Silurians, but nobody listens.
Masters is almost about to make the call when the Brigadier turns up with his men, He explains how they were trapped but then miraculously freed on the brink of suffocation. Major Baker turns up not long after, ranting about how much of a traitor the Doctor is and also calling for Silurian deaths. The Doctor enters and makes everyone stay away from Baker, pointing out the fact that he's infected.
Baker is taken to a local hospital for quarantine, and Masters decides that the only safe course of action is to shut the research station down, an act that Dr Lawrence is devastated by, as it's likely the end of his career. Masters shows signs of weariness, but brushes it off and heads back to London.
The Doctor and the Brigadier head to the hospital to check on Baker, but find him dead in the forecourt. It's clear that the Silurian virus is about to rage out of control. They warn the hospital staff to quarantine, and race off back to the station to begin work on a cure.
The Brigadier and Liz discover that Dr Lawrence is missing and that Masters has returned to London. They spend their time trying to locate and quarantine them. As a stop gap measure, everyone at the research station is also given a healthy dose of antibiotics.
Masters meanwhile, arrives in London and looks decidedly ill. He catches a cab to the ministry of Science building.
As hours pass, the Silurian plague begins to spread, reaching as far as France. As they wait for the Doctor's experiments to yield success, Dr Lawrence turns up half eaten by the plague.
He rants at the fact that the Brigadier has ruined his career and attacks him. The exertion proves too much for him and he ends up dying on the conference room floor.
The Police eventually find Masters, but it's too late. He's also covered in plague and runs away from them, eventually dying on the run.
Down in the caves, the Silurians monitor the situation on a strange TV monitor. Much to their annoyance, they determine that the Doctor could possibly find a cure. The young Silurian decides that he wants to deal with the Doctor once and for all. They find the section of caves that are nearest to the base and they use their third eye to melt through the rock, making a tunnel towards the base.
The Doctor meanwhile finds the correct combination of drugs to form the cure and sends a test of it to a patient in the sick bay. The test is a success and he goes back to the lab to write the formula down for mass production. As he is working there, the Silurians burn their way into the corridor behind and stun him with their third eyes.
The Brigadier and Liz wait anxiously for the formula as more and more reported cases of the plague come in.
The Silurians are discovered by a UNIT soldier as they take the unconscious Doctor back into the tunnels. They shoot the soldier dead and seal up the tunnel. Not long afterwards, Liz goes to check on the Doctor and the alarm is raised that he's been snatched. Luckily, Liz finds the Doctors screwed up note paper and is able to locate the correct formula to stop the Silurian Plague.
The Doctor comes round to find himself back in the Silurian prison. The young Silurian gloats about stopping the Doctor, but the Doctor tells him he's too late and that the plague is cured. The young Silurian curses and decides to go to plan B - using a huge sonic disruptor to destroy the Van Allen belt around the Earth and fry everyone with the incoming solar radiation, leaving the Silurians to live in perfect perpetual summer. The only thing they need to do is start up the Cyclotron again so it can be powered.
With the plague cured, Liz urges the Brigadier to save the Doctor. She can only see the way forward being an attack on the caves by what few UNIT soldiers he has. He agrees and sends his men there. At the same time however, the Doctor and the Silurians are coming back up the tunnel towards the station. They melt through the wall again, coincidentally at the same moment as Liz and the Brigadier are nearby. They are all taken prisoner and led to the Cyclotron control room.
Once at the control room, the Doctor obeys the Young Silurians command and starts up the Cyclotron, secretly giving Liz orders in the process to drop all the uranium rods into the reactor at once on his command. He builds up the power, and gives the order. The resulting power surge breaks the sonic disruptor, ending the threat of the Silurian weapon.
The young Silurian is ready to kill all the humans around him when the Doctor tells him that the reactor is beyond his control and is about to melt down. The resulting explosion will kill everything in the area and the radiation will last for decades. The young Silurian decides that it's more fitting for the humans to die in the radiation explosion and so he leads his men back to their cave.
Liz and the Brigadier congratulate the Doctor on the victory, but he isn't smiling. He really did push the reactor to breaking point and there's no clear way of escaping.
The Silurians return to base and enter another period of hibernation. The scientist tells the young Silurian that the alarm clock mechanism is still faulty and someone will have to stay awake. The young Silurian volunteers to do this, giving the scientist an order to set the hibernation period for fifty years and when they re-awaken, to carry on his quest to destroy the humans.
Back at the Cyclotron, a bit of jiggery pokery by the Doctor doing something with the neutron flow (not reversing the polarity of it though), fixes the reactor and averts disaster.
Once the crisis is over, he revisits the Silurian base, coming face to face with the young Silurian. The alien leader realises he's been duped and tries to kill the Doctor, but he himself is killed by the Brigadier. The Doctor thanks the Brigadier for his help and says he can't wait to wake the Silurians up again and negotiate properly.
Later, the Doctor prepares to leave Wenley Moor to go and get more equipment and scientists. He says he'll be back tomorrow and tells the Brigadier not to let anyone inside those caves. The Brigadier is unusually complacent and waves the Doctor off. Once his scientific advisor has left, the Brigadier gives orders for them to seal the Silurian base permanently.
On the moors, "Bessie" has a bit of trouble and stalls. The Doctor uses an odd red liquid to get her started again, but as he gets into the car, a huge explosion goes off in the distance. He's appalled when he realises what the Brigadier has done.
Liz claims that its more like the Government who will have given him orders.
The Doctor watches the explosions for a moment with disgust and says it's genocide before driving off.
Trivia
- No sooner as Jon Pertwee was on board, Derrick Sherwin finally got his wish to jump ship (which Pertwee was furious about). As a replacement, they turned to Doctor Who veteran Director, Douglas Camfield, but he was unavailable. They needed someone, preferably a Director, who could rewrite scripts under pressure and had a good track record of succeeding in the BBC pressure cooker. That person was Barry Letts (Director of Enemy of the World).
- Unfortunately for Letts, he didn't have much of a handover. On his way out, Sherwin handed Letts his huge production bible and said "see ya". The first thing Letts did was reduce the number of stories, giving the much needed break that Troughton would have danced a jig for.
- You can see from the title, it's the only Doctor Who story on TV that used the naming conventions of the Target Novels e.g. used "Doctor Who and the..." in the title
- Never noticed it until now, but Paul Darrow played one of the UNIT soldiers in charge of the manhunt. To the uninitiated, Paul Darrow played the hugely popular character: Kerr Avon in Blake's 7.
- As you can tell, the music in this story is....unusual to say the least. The idea for it was actually quite innovative. Because the Silurians were meant to be prehistoric, it was decided to use olden style instruments. As such, medieval instruments such as the Crumhorn were used,
- This story came about from a debate between Terrence Dicks and Malcolm Hulke. The latter said that moving to an all Earth based Who was a bad idea because you can only do two types of story - mad scientist, or alien invasion. Terrence countered the argument by saying not if the aliens were there in the first place. He then commissioned Malcolm to write it.
What worked
- The fact that Dr Quinn wasn't mad, he wanted to help mankind, just so long as he had the credit
- Timothy Combe did a good job of hiding the Silurians until episode 3. The first person view gives a good build up of tension
- I love the bit when Dr Quinn uses the tracker to summon the Silurian. Given all the deaths so far, you naturally assume he's next when the three lens camera focuses on him
- When Dr Lawrence refuses to take antibiotics for the epidemic, he reminds me of the Government minister who fed his family beef during the mad cow outbreak and refused to acknowledge that there was a problem.
- Dr Lawrence's outrage was just top class!
- The end scene where the Doctor realises what the Brigadier has done is also a great scene
What didn't work
- The C.S.O. shots of the cave monster
- Why does the Doctor decide to go in the caves when most of the incidents occurred in the Cyclotron control room?
- Why do people go insane in the Cyclotron control room? I can't see where it's ever explained
- If the Silurians killed Quinn, why did the wounded one hang around and why did they leave the summoning device in his hands?
- A national crisis like a plague spreading across London and they send every single drug being developed to a complete stranger like the Doctor. Seems unlikely to me
- The melting through walls and building them with a third eye is just ridiculous
- Surely, the Silurians would die anyway if they got rid of the Van Allen belt
- The Silurians themselves, particularly the young Silurian are the epitome of Bond villains. They have numerous opportunities to just kill the Doctor and get him out of their hair, but they don't.
- Both Miss Dawson and Liz do a complete rethink on attacking the Silurians at one point or another
- Nothing to do with the story itself, but if you watch the DVD, episode 6 has the title "Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee" embossed on the screen all the way through the start of the episode up to the point where Masters arrives at Marylebone Station. Once you know it's there, it's very off putting
Overall Feelings
There's no doubt in my mind that there's a lot to like about this story. It's the first story in Jon Pertwee's run where we can really get into the plot as there's no side explanations need working in to account for the Doctors regeneration.
The setup is nice and intriguing, with a good cast to help it along. The Director does a good job of keeping the monsters mysterious too and even when they're revealed, there's always the welcome addition of monster infighting just like we saw in the Dominators.
Additionally, this story shows a case almost unique to the third Doctor when he has loads of time to find a cure, even though people are clearly dropping like flies. Even later in the classic series we don't particularly see this level of studying the problem, but as soon as we hit the 2005 reboot, it is not seen again because the time frame is too tight to allow it. And judging by this story, I can sort of see why. If only slightly, the pace of this story is a little bit too slow. We get a good couple of minutes showing people putting stuff in test tubes, and more running back and forth from the caves.
The pacing isn't the only problem though. There's just a few too many unexplained situations to make this story epic. Case in point is the regression to caveman status and headaches in the Cyclotron. At least one of these if not both can be explained away as legit psychological neuroses, but once the story's over, I just found myself thinking that they were pointless red herrings.
The final episode or two throw up more things to hate like the burning through walls and worse, re-building them; or what about the fact that the Brigadier touches people with the plague at least three times but doesn't get infected.
Don't get me wrong though, I loved "the Silurians" in spite of all the odd bits. You just can't help but love the bad guys here, from the outfits to the voices and mannerisms. It's just a thought provoking and interesting take on something that could have been run of the mill base under siege.
Rating
9 out of 10
Great story well filmed, but just a little too slow paced and just a couple of bonkers red herrings and explanations
Rewatchability Factor
7 out of 10
Great classic episode that deserves to be watched again and again, but with healthy gaps in between.
Watch this if you liked...
- The Hungry Earth (Doctor Who, Series 5)
- Cold Blood (Doctor Who, Series 5)
Consulting the Matrix
Could we live in peace with a race like the Silurians?
