Doctor Who and the Silurians Episode 2

The one where we discover Quinn is colluding with the subterranean creatures...

Liz is great, isn't she? Even in her slightly diluted form here, she's not afraid to stick up for herself and speak out. It's lovely that she has very quickly sided with the Doctor, her loyalty apparent in the early scene when the Brigadier teases the Doctor about not coming up with any credible evidence of creatures in the caves. "A subterranean Loch Ness monster? Very helpful!" he scoffs, but Liz is quick to provide support for the Doctor by apparently believing that the creature could be prehistoric. The very idea of a prehistoric monster being alive in the caves beneath Derbyshire is pretty preposterous, but Liz is willing to go with it, for the Doctor's sake.

So it's a little disappointing when the Doctor lets her down somewhat when he sides with the Brigadier in refusing to let her go down into the caves with him. Despite Liz's spirited "Have you never heard of female emancipation?", she's defeated by the sheer amount of testosterone in the room, and sadly, she gives in to it all too easily. This is not the Liz Shaw of Spearhead from Space. This is Barry Letts's version of a Doctor Who companion: loyal but submissive. Shame.

Barry Newbery's cave sets really are splendid, and they feel solid and expansive, especially when so well lit by Ralph Walton. The scenes are dimly lit, but it's all very realistic and each speaking character is picked out perfectly well (and boy, doesn't Paul Darrow look young?). A particularly well-lit shot is when Major Baker opens fire on the mysterious shape in the distance, and you can see the shape is vaguely humanoid, but then again not quite. It's a half-glimpsed terror in the very best traditions of horror movie-making.

It's a pity about the music though. I'm a great advocate for musical experimentation, but there's something about Carey Blyton's uncompromising score for this story - and the creatures' theme in particular - which really grates. It's not really music, it's sound and noise. The clash of kazoo, cymbals, bells and horns is disruptive and takes attention away from the drama because it's all so damn weird. Maybe eccentric is a kinder word, but either way, it just doesn't work for me, and greatly reduces the dramatic impact of some scenes.

Timothy Combe's location work on the moor is astonishing, with the injured creature beautifully back-lit by the sun as it staggers across the landscape. The POV shots are also wonderfully well done, suggesting the creature has three eyes (a top one seeing red!), and when the creature advances on the farm at nightfall, it's rasping breath heavy in the gloom, it's another pure horror movie moment. I'd imagine kids in 1970 were terrified by these scenes, especially with the odd glimpse of a scaly, clawed hand too!

It's Combe's economy with shots like this which works so well. When Quinn goes down into the cave system, we see fleeting snatches of something on the edge of frame, watching him as he makes his way to the monsters' lair. Walton's use of coloured lights - blistering reds and verdant greens - is striking, and although wasted on the majority of the 7.3 million viewers that week, show what efforts the Doctor Who production team were putting in at the time to make the best use of their new colour status (the proliferation of the colour red in Newbery's sets and particularly Christine Rawlins's costumes is another indicator).

The monsters down beneath are yet to be seen fully, but the voice which speaks to Quinn is pretty terrifying. It does sound vaguely like a Kroton sometimes, but its rasping, guttural bullishness is quite unsettling, only slightly weakened by the fact it looks like the voice is emanating from one of those 1970s coal effect gas fires! It seems Quinn has been promised scientific knowledge in return for the vast quantities of energy the creatures are draining from the cyclotron. But what could they want the power for? Also, where do they keep their pet dinosaur when he's not rampaging about the caves, and how do they feed it?

I love the scene between the Brigadier, the Doctor and an irked Dr Lawrence, who just wants UNIT done and gone. It's when the Doctor riles him by touching a clearly very raw nerve about his self-interest in his own career and reputation that things get tense, and he storms off in order to write a very strongly worded letter to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary! "That is your privilege, Dr Lawrence," smirks the Brigadier.

The creature's attack on farmer Squire is directed well too, and Nancie Jackson makes a good job of portraying Doris's horror and fear after seeing the creature. When the Doctor quickly sketches the face of a monster (which he presumably saw on Spencer's wall) and shows it to her, he says: "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Yes, I have - it looks a lot like one of Picasso's Cubist paintings!

The cliffhanger is a doozy, with the injured (and let's face it, pretty nasty) creature taking a swipe at poor Liz as she goes about her business in the barn making forensic tests (she's finally getting to do something worthy of her talents!). I'm not convinced that she would, or should, have been left alone seeing as there's a murderous monster on the loose, but if she had a UNIT guard with her, he'd probably only end up dead. This is the first "companion in jeopardy" cliffhanger since The War Games episode 4, and it's great to have them back!

First broadcast: February 7th, 1970

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The location footage of the creature on the moor, and the POV shots.
The Bad: Carey Blyton's music is 'interesting', but undermines the drama.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 1
Neck-rub tally: 0

NEXT TIME: Episode 3...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5; Episode 6; Episode 7

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/04/doctor-who-and-silurians.html

Doctor Who and the Silurians is available on BBC DVD as part of the Beneath the Surface box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Beneath-Silurians-Warriors/dp/B000ZZ06XQ.