Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth – series 31, episode eight

SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching Doctor Who on BBC1. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode eight Dan Martin’s episode seven blog “The warrior class was activated to prevent the assault. We will wipe the vermin from the surface and reclaim it for ourselves” Steven Moffat had one major headache when he took over Doctor Who – there were no great villains from the past left to revive. The Silurians didn’t get a big press release or leaked photograph heralding their return because barely anyone remembers them and their classic stories were hardly classic in the first place. Their close cousins the Sea Devils would probably have had more of an impact. And yet the way the showrunner tells it, it was the idea of the Homo reptilia – the Earth’s original inhabitants woken from slumber and seeking to claim it back – rather than their legacy that compelled him to bump them up the checklist. “That’s a movie franchise idea,” he told Doctor Who Magazine . “Just having that idea could make you rich for the rest of your life. And so (creator) Malcolm Hulke gave it to Doctor Who. Quite right.” So the Silurians lie sleeping under the Earth until some gung-ho humans disturb them (this time with a “big drilly thing”) and provoke a war. The scaly-faced humanoids are a beautiful creation by the prosthetics department, so beautiful in fact that Matt Smith is implored to borrow one of David Tennant’s signature phrases as he removes Alaya’s mask. That thing they do with their tongues is totally badass. The decision to make them reptilian femmes fatales could turn out to be masterstroke. And Alaya’s insistence that “I know which one of you will kill me” is delicious. The set-up – which is necessarily the same set-up as any Silurian story ever – presents an interesting quandary: nobody is particularly in the wrong here. There are also complex issues of nationhood at play that presumably we’ll see played out in the story’s concluding part; given most of this story was set-up, it will surely be epic. Expect Battlestar Galactica-style allegories and moral dilemmas aplenty. Ambrose putting those weapons back in the van is surely not going to end well. “It’s not quicksand. She didn’t just sink – something pulled her in. It wanted her” While a lot of things are introduced in this episode, not a lot actually seems to happen. There are other problems, too: it’s good that Doctor Who employs local actors, but near-future South Wales doesn’t have the wow factor of 16th-century Venice; Amy being pulled into the earth is effective and poignant, but the result is a punishing lack of Pond-life for most of the episode; the Scooby Gang is a nice touch, but I found I couldn’t care too much for any of them save the dyslexic kid and Meera Syal. And as tense as the flashes of the Homo reptilia might have been, the reveal came too late in the day for me – that sudden whoosh of stuff in the last five minutes only underlined the fact that you’d spent the previous 40 waiting. These are quibbles, however. Clearly it’s all about next week. “Did you just shoosh me?!” Along the way there’s some cunning character work, again all set to pay off next week. Rory’s still in the tentative middle ground between wimp and hero, butthe old Davison trick of “split the companions up at the start” allows him a chance to fight on the frontline. Despite last week’s revelations that she really does love Rory, Amy still seems surprised to discover they’re together 10 years on, but her reaction down in the Silurian chamber is magnificent. (What is it with the glimpse of their future selves? A red herring?) Meanwhile, will the Doctor’s self-confidence be his undoing? Surely those repeated claims that he’s going to save Elliot’s dad will come back to haunt him… Timey trivia As the Doctor points out, the Silurians have a dating controversy all of their own. A more accurate description of the period they come from (given here as 300 million years) is the Eocenes . But, once again, probably a question you’re not supposed to ask. Next week! We are promised war in the concluding part of the story, Cold Blood. Do you think it can live up to the promise? 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