Review of Doctor Who and the Silurians (#52)
DVD Release Date: 03 Jun 08
Original Air Date: 31 Jan – 14 Mar 1970
Doctors/Companions: Three, Liz Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Spearhead from Space (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: The Ambassadors of Death (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Silurians have never been one of my favorite species. Although I came to Doctor Who through the new series, it was still before they made their return in The Hungry Earth. Thus this story, as for earlier generations of fans, was my introduction to the erstwhile dominant species on Earth.
When my main memory of this story was the questionable rubber monster suits, then, perhaps I can be excused for not knowing off the top of my head which side of the Highs and Lows this month’s entry was meant to fall on. I was pleased to find, when I checked the i09 reference rankings, that it comes in at #24, and settled in to be reminded of a good story I’d forgotten about.
Little did I know how viewing the story in 2021 would color my experience.
Like most of Season 7, Pertwee’s first, Doctor Who and the Silurians (and don’t get me started on that title) spans a whopping seven episodes. It starts out with a fairly standard UNIT-era plot line, where some agency or another wants UNIT to look into something fishy that hasn’t been resolved in a timely enough manner. It turns out that a nuclear research facility has been suffering unexplained power losses for three months, and now there are some mysterious deaths to add to the trouble.
The center’s director Dr Lawrence, played by Peter Miles, who would later play Davros’s lackey Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks, is incensed at the intrusion, and only wants his work to continue. Unfortunately, when the Doctor goes spelunking (or “potholing,” as they call it here) in the nearby caves to investigate, he discovers there’s much more going on.
Most of the adventure follows the story that has since become familiar to us; it is essentially the same as its Series 5 successor. The Silurians (again, don’t get me started on the questionable naming of the species, or the terribly mis-timed reasoning behind their hibernation) had once dominated Earth, but in order to avoid a natural disaster, put themselves into a cryogenic sleep. Now they are ready to re-emerge, but the presence of humans on the surface now complicates their plans to pick up where they left off.
What is different here than in later versions of “humans meet Silurians,” and what hits really hard right now, is the idea that the anti-human Silurian faction decided to use a biological weapon to wipe out the human race so they could take over without interference. Basically, they released a plague.
I can’t even explain how traumatic it felt, as we still struggle to get a handle on COVID, to watch a character who was a known carrier of a deadly disease wandering blithely through crowded areas, spreading contagion and infecting innocent passers-by before succumbing to the disease himself. The laxity of UNIT’s lockdown of the facility and the incompetence of their contact tracing, paired with the rapid action of the Silurians’ bacterial infection, made for a grim scene that I would not recommend to anyone who is feeling even the slightest bit twitchy about the current state of affairs.
Worse, Dr Lawrence, laser-focused on his own goals and desires, completely ignores what precautions UNIT has been able to instigate. His argument with (the fantastic and criminally underused) Liz Shaw sounds all too familiar:
Lawrence: My staff are suffering the ill effect of a series of compulsory injections.
Liz: You haven’t had your own injections yet, have you?
Lawrence: No, nor do I intend to.
Liz: But you’ve got to have them. It’s for your own good.
Lawrence: Rubbish. Why should I waste my time having useless injections against an imaginary epidemic?
Liz: Dr Lawrence, it is quite clear that the disease exists. Major Baker is dead.
Lawrence: He may have been ill for some time. I should be interested to see the results of the post-mortem.
Unfortunately, Dr Lawrence would not live long enough himself to see those results. That was, perhaps, the most disturbing part of the whole viewing experience for me; it was too real. I know all too well that people like Dr Lawrence are everywhere right now, refusing to believe that there is any compelling reason to get what they perceive as useless injections.
If, like me, you like to turn to your media as an escape during times of stress, I can’t recommend Silurians right now. Although it is a well written story and Pertwee only over-acts the Doctor’s reactions to the Silurians’ control sonics, there are too many parallels to the present day for comfort. This one may need to hibernate for a bit longer.