Doctor Who And The Silurians is the 52nd serial and the 7 parter is the 2nd story of the 7th season. It ran from January 31 to March 14 1970. The serial returns to the studio but this time it's the bigger BBC studio with nice color cameras. There's still plenty of outside location shooting that was shot on film. The jump to color and the better production values made the show look a lot more interesting. Jon Pertwee is the 3rd Doctor and he's stuck on Earth in England in 1970. He's working for UNIT with Liz Shaw and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The Brig is played by Nicholas Courtney and Liz is played by Caroline John. The Brigadier is the man in charge of UNIT and he doesn't always see eye to eye with the Doctor. He does get the Doctor a nice new yellow car. That's it above. The Doctor tools around England with that car, just lookin' cool. The plot is less cool, it's another invasion story and it's written by Malcolm Hulke. Terrance Dicks, the script editor, said in one of the featurettes that they thought they had two choices for plots with the Doctor stuck on earth; alien invasion or mad scientist. Faced with that he had the invaders, the Silurians, originate from the deep inside the earth. The ancient reptile humanoids had been scared by the moon 2oo million years ago and gone into hibernation. Quite the nap, eh!
The Doctor, Liz and the Brig all meet up at a research center that's been having some issues with power being drained from it's nuclear reactor. Some of the workers have been having mental breakdowns. The man in charge is one of those uptight guys who doesn't listen to anyone. His attitude kills him. The main scientist is played by Fulton MacKay and while he's not quite totally mad the man is caught up in his own scheme to get knowledge and fame from the Silurians. That kills him. Some random guys get killed too as the Brig clashes with the Silurians. The invaders release a virus that kills a bunch of people and the Doctor and Liz have to make an antidote before the world dies. Wow, huh. At the end of the serial the Brig blows up the caves that lead to the Silurians underground base and that makes the Doc mad. Don't worry, it looks like the Silurians return in future serials. It's a pretty good story that might have been improved by a little editing. Even Terrance Dicks talked about the difficulty of the longer serials. He'd been more happy making 4 parters. Me too. I find that really tightens up the story. Still, mostly a pretty good story with a Doctor that I quite enjoy.
I enjoyed the pet dinosaur that the Silurians had to guard their caves but for a totally different reason. He's pretty goofy looking. The dino only appears briefly in the show. The suit was pretty heavy and the man inside could barely move around. Those pics are from the photo gallery on the second dvd of the 2 disc set. They had some nice behind the scenes pictures. The episodes have the usual commentaries and there are several featurettes with lots of interviews. One of them has now and then shots of the outdoor locations, one talks about the music, one details the color restoration and another looks at the effect used to show the POV of the Silurians.
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