The Silurians
Although Spearhead from Space undoubtedly deserves its reputation as one of the best Doctor Who stories ever made, it did constitute a potentially disastrous precedent for the production team(s) of Peter Bryant, Derrick Sherwin, Terrance Dicks and new boy Barry Letts, in that it revolved around an extraterrestial invasion of the planet Earth, albeit a rather unconvential invasion With the Doctor now exiled to Earth In the twentieth century, there was a very real danger that the length of the waiting-list of those alien menaces who had put in their applications for conquest would strain the credulity of the audience a bit too far, pace vague talk about our space probes having "drawn attention" to our little world. It is to the credit of the production team, then, that this embarrassment was, by and large, avoided throughout the Pertwee years as a whole - only about five or so out of the twenty four Pertwee stories deal with a contemporary alien attack on Earth with the purpose of conquest. In few stories was the problem so cleverly or neatly overcome as in Doctor Who and The Silurians, for here the Incredible Hulke brilliantly turned the whole idea on its head by making Mankind the "alien invader", inheriting the planet from its Indigenous population (though not through deliberate intent). The development of this promising concept was also remarkably ingenious: since the dinosaurs of prehistory ruled the Earth for a period of time far longer than that taken for man to evolve to his present state, why couldn't an intelligent race of prehistoric reptile people have developed? A marvellous idea, and one easily made relevant to modern England through the beautifully simple plot devices of impending catastrophe/overlong hibernation/accidental revival caused by nuclear power station. The dramatic imagery inspired by this prehistoric survival-revival plot is tremendous. The opening scene of the story - the "hook" - encapsulates it: the attack of the tolerably convincing dinosaur ("The jaws that bite, the claws that catch") on the two pot-holers is a terrifyingly dissonance, and this ancient, primal irruption into the modern, technological world of the twentieth century is mirrored in a physical form by the close proximity of the Wenley Atomic Research Centre to the cave system. (A luxtaposition which works well on screen largely thanks to the excellence of the sets: the huge Cyclotron Room, with its banks of monitor screens and gleaming proton accelerator "porthole", is outstanding, while the cave sets are streets ahead of Earthshock.) Slowly, disturbingly, the past begins to filter into the present ... A member of the Centre's staff dies in the caves and is found with "unusual abrasions on the body, strangely resembling scratches or claw-marks"; his companion is reduced to a gibbering IdIot, bizarrely drawing buffaloes on the walls of the sick-bay, the result of a fear which has "thrown his mind back millions of years". Two distinct atmospheres are engendered in these early episodes, contrasting yet complementary. Within the underground Research Centre the mood is intense and claustrophobic - there are inexplicable power-losses, outbreaks of neurosis, and a staff who seem to have a mutual and powerful dislkike for each other, especially Director Charles Lawrence (Peter Miles) and Dr John Quinn (the late Fulton "Mr Mackay" Mackay). Conversely, on the surface we have the agrophobla of the wild, windswept moors, a cold, depressing and aery landscape, where half-glimpsed, scaly "creatures" prowl and lurk In deserted barns. With the entry of UNIT into this tense situation, things start to come together and the pace quickens, with the Doctor's shrewd Investigations ("Everything leads back to those caves, Liz"), Dr Quinn's desperate evasions, and the dramatic hunt for the fugitIve Silurian on the moors with dogs and helicopters after its attack on Liz. The presence of the UNIT team only exacerbates the friction between the various characters, however. The whimsicality exhibIted by the Doctor in Spearhead has been replaced by a more bombastic and rude persona which does not exactly endear him to the Director:
For his part, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart reveals an unusually brusque and unpleasant side to his character, both to the Doctor:
and even to Liz, once under the strain caused by the spreading Silurian epidemic:
Such acrimonious exchanges add to the hardness of the situation, effectively killing off any traces of cosiness which might have diluted the highly-strung atmosphere which has been built up. The essential element of human drama is not just limited to the humans, either. When the prehistoric people with the potent pineals come Into the foreground, it is wonderfully refreshing to find that they are real people. Unlike such dull creations as the Daleks or Cybermen, the Silurians are genuine Individuals - they do not all think alike, and deep rifts occur among their ranks:
It is this element of individuality, together with the fact that they are as much In the "right" as the humans, which elevates the Silurians above the general homogeneous mass of Doctor Who "monsters" But back to the production. To keep viewers guessing as to the actual appearance of the Silurian reptiles for a full three episodes might seem to be going a bit far, but director Timothy Combe handles this long buiId-up consumately, with lots of tantalising devices, such as that marvellous shot of something manlike but not human staggering across the bleak, open mooriand, a black shape sihouetted against the sun, accompanied by menacing heavy breathing. Combe also uses lots of subjective camerawork, the image "seen" by the Silurian being a triple-faceted one - a hint of the creature'5 appearance. (A hint reinforced, in one rather nice touch, by a cut from such a subjective shot to a close-up of the three lenses of a microscope.) Add to this numerous glimpses of three-taloned, scaly claws and ridged, spiked backs, and the effect is suitably intriguing. It has been said that one should never build up to a monster's final appearance in Doctor Who, as anti~limax is the invariable result. This story is the exception which disproves the rule, as the actual Silurian costumes are excellent to say the least. The three-eyed, crested head masks, with convincingly moving lips, are superb, while the bodies, if somewhat loose and baggy, never sink anywhere near the shambolic level of Warriors of the Deep - no gaping gaps and glimpses of actors' vests here! One needn't apologise for Hulke's "Silurian" misnomer, either; bit of a cock-up on the scientific accuracy front, but it does have a certain ring to it, lacking in "Jurassanians" or "Cretaclans", and so is dramatically quite legitimate. (The Sea Devils, of course, had to go and make an even bigger hash of things by referring to them as "Eocences".) With the Silurians now firmly on the scene, the Inevitable conflicts occur, what with bettles in the caves and attacks on the Research Centre itself. In a season which otherwise places such a strong emphasis on spectacular, violent action, it is pleasing that this aspect is relaxed for one story. Here, most of the battles occur off-screen - a far cry from the rather contrived set-piece battle of Sea Devils part six, in which the RN takes the opportunity to show decisively who really rules the waves The introduction of the Silurian epidemic into the storyline is really the final turn of the screw as far as grimness of atmosphere is concerned. The horror that the plague scenes pack is quite incredible, and the sheer realism of their presentation is in a class of its own. We open with a shot of a young woman's face, leaning against a railway timetable at the London station; the camera tracks with her as she falls stiffly to the ground, dead. Before long whole crowds of people are collapsing, as wailing ambulances race to the disaster area Even better than the crowd scenes are the individual deaths of the civil servant Masters (Geoffrey Palmer) and Dr Lawrence. Edward Masters staggers groggily out of the station, weaving blindly, before he comes to rest grotesquely slumped against some railings, his eyes staring, his face mottled by the plague infection. Masters' death is especially traumatic as he has been depicted in the story as quite an intelligent and likeable man - there is no comparison between him and, say, Chlnn or the abominable Parliamentary Private Secretary Walker. Lawrence meets his demise in choking agony, after having attacked Lethbridge-Stewart in a fit of shrieking madness, despairingly blaming the ruination of his life and career on the Brigadier and his "military rubbish". The effect is all the more alarming because of the contrast between Lawrence's raging fit and his previous icy, almost emotionless sarcasm. Also, the make-up team really go to town with the festering, rotting infection that covers the dying Director's face. Not once over-dramatised with blaring incidental music, the plague scenes are compelling viewing, and unusually strong stuff for Doctor Who. Indeed, if anything, it is almost too powerful - in comparison, the Doctor's prevention of a nuclear explosion in the last episode (by "fusing the control of the neutron flow", no less) seems rather tame. As well as finding an antidote to the Silurians' bacterium, the Doctor must also struggle against another creeping poison, that of racial intolerance between the two species. For a Doctor oft criticised (by Verity Lambert among others) for being too much of a tool of the establishment, it is good to see most of the establishment very firmly ranged against him in this story on the question of coexistence. Miss Dawson, shocked at the death of Dr Quinn, sees the Silurians as brutal murderers, without pausing to consider how Quinn's actions (kidnapping and blackmail) must have seemed to the Silurians. The Brigadier sees the reptiles as a military problem to be efficiently eliminated and nothing more. And Major Baker, the Centre's security officer, despises the Doctor's attempts at preventing needless bloodshed: "Where are you, Doctor? Telling them everything they want to know? You're nothing but a traitor. D'you hear me, Doctor? A traitor!" Not that the Silurians are that much better in their attitudes: witness the Young Silurian's strident diatribes against the "apes" he so loathes; in his case, blind racism is coupled with good old-fashioned megalomania : "I am the Leader now," he gloatingly whispers to himself after having murdered the Old Silurian. Anyway, intolerance wins the day and the scene is set for the Doctor's famous speochifying:
Jon Pertwee and Caroline John's acting make this last scene genuinely sad rather than sickly, and it is a moving moment, but the point would have been made quite clearly without dialogue, and I can't help feeling that a long moment of expressive silence would have been more subtle and more effective in conveying the Doctor's feelings. Still, at least the moral is there adding that certain extra dimension to the story, and at least Malcolm Hulke didn t fall into the trap of making his Silurians wholly good, which would have resulted in a scenario as simplistic and cliched as if they had been soulless monsters. Thus, then, is The Silurians: a rich array of well-acted characters, a plot of unusual originality, faultless production values, a darkly gripping atmosphere, and a moral message well put. How rare for all these to come together in one Doctor Who story! Nor Is the serial's epic length a liability: Silurlans is extremely well-paced, with the slow and fast moments being smoothly distributed and integrated throughout all seven episodes, something Ambassadors of Death didn't always succeed in achieving. Carey Blyton's incidental music, while not as good as the scores composed for Death to the Daleks or Revenge of the Cybermen, is nonetheless worthy of note Its weird fluting tones complimenting the atmosphere at several key moments, such as 'the introductlon to the viewers of Squire's farm at daybreak, or the Silurian's activities in the gloomy caves. As a story, The Silurians is really a case of "follow that". In terms of Huike's concepts, The Sea Devils just marked time - actual development was largely lacking, with the accent being on straightforward, solid adventure Instead (nothing wrong with that). It is Interesting to speculate whether a second, concluding, sequel should ever have been attempted. Certainly "homo reptilia" was an inspired concept with a lot of mileage still left in it after The Sea Devils, which, while it was a creditable continuation, was an unsatisfactory conclusion to the saga. That the (still) current production team could have allowed Warriors of the Deep to be such a tawdry fiasco bespeaks a curious lack of sensitivity towards the memory of Malcolm Hulke, and if one wishes to fully enjoy The Silurians (or The Sea Devils) it is perhaps best to conveniently forget the very existence of Warriors, that wretched progeny which really ought to have been exposed at birth. To conclude: The Silurlans can be seen as providing the proper template for the rest of the seventh season, after the "odd man out" of Spearhead. It featured a home-grown menace. Its length allowed for unusual complexity of plot and depth of characterisation. It presented us with the first of those glittering "scientific establishments" which only Season 7 could convincingly realise. And it was the first story of the season to have a moral theme as an intrinsic part of its storyline (unless Bob Holmes was trying to make a point In depicting politicians and civil servants as hollow, plastic dummies!). But The Silurians was not just a template - it was a classic story In Its own right which stands up well when taken out of its context. To use a no longer-quite-so-fashionable adjective, it was stunning. |