Doctor Who Rewind - Doctor Who & The Silurians

So, apart from natural disasters, human error and blind stupidity, when else could a Nuclear Power Plant be a bad idea? Well, when you've got a race of pre human reptilians from the Silurian era of Earths history living directly under it, that's bloody when.

What you have here is a story about a race of beings that have been lying dormant, in hibernation, for thousands of years, who have revived themselves from sleep upon detecting the Nuclear Power Plant and have attacked a number of its engineers in self defence of the caves where they live under the earth.

The Doctor and the brigadier are called in to investigate, despite some resistance from the plants deputy director, who it later turns out is in league with the creatures. They have promised him advanced scientific knowledge. One of these creatures, who has been wounded, and is at large, is taken in by him and is held captive against its will.

When the Doctor discovers the creature at the then dead deputy directors home, he tries to reason with it, just as you would imagine he would, but it runs away in fear. Eventually the Doctor meets the creatures in their cave lair underground and again tries to forge a peaceful resolution. The creatures have captured the security chief from the plant and despite the Doctors attempts to reason with them for his release they infect the Deputy Director with a virus and send him back up to the surface.

Another Silurian who is older,and perhaps wiser than his younger counterpart, releases the Doctor and gives him a canister of the virus so that he can try to come up with a cure.

The DD travels to London and nearly infects the entire populous.The younger Silurian decides the Doc must be destroyed before he finds a cure. Just in time, the Djctor discovers a cure and gives the formula to Liz,but just then, the Silurian's break into the base and abduct him back to their own lair.

Liz Shaw finally gets the cure distributed but the Silurians have another plan, to destroy the Van Allen Belt and make the Earth a hostile environment to live on.

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 re-enter the caves to hibernate until the danger has passed.

In the final scene the Doctor tells Liz he is going to revive the creatures and try to reason with them, but, acting on orders from the top, the brigadier blows up the caves, seemingly wiping out an entire species of Silurians.

So, for the first time Doctor Who is acknowledged in the story title and it seems oddly weird. Not only that but Mr Who calls his car Bessie and has a registration number WHO 1, which kind of hints other vehicles will be coming later on.

There's a couple of good cameo roles from future stars in this story. We have future Blake's Seven star, Paul Darrow (Avon) turn up in this as Captain Hawkins, looking impossibly young. Blake's Seven obtains a cult status to this very day.

Then we have Geoffrey Palmer from future comedy hit Butterflies turn up as the permanent undersecretary , Masters.

One of the best sequences in this story comes when Masters is infected with the deadly virus and takes himself off to London. When he arrives he looks like death warmed up and proceeds to pass on the illness to everyone he comes into contact with. As there was little budget Geoffrey Palmer had to walk through real streets of real people and what you get are some genuinely shocked and confused reactions from members of the public who don't know they are appearing in a Doctor Who, as the camera is so far back from the main action, they can't see it's just acting. It's very effective.

The Silurians themselves do look rather dated compared to their updated counterparts. With their large bulbous heads and sticky out ears. But still, as a youngster of the early 70's I can imagine they would put the willies right up you.

Another highlight moment is when actor Peter Miles as Doctor Lawrence, gets infected and launches himself with great enthusiasm at Nicholas Courtney aka The Brigadier. He's like a caged animal and really gets in touch with his inner beast. I think he must have had spinach for lunch from the canteen that day.

All in all this is a really well told story, and despite the long episode count, which draws things out a tad, it finishes up really well, setting up the respected, but fraught early relationship between the Doctor and Brigadier with that rather sad ending.

Next time on Doctor Who Rewind, we meet some rather strange astronughts.