Doctor Who and the Silurians - Episode 4

I like how when the Doctor encounters the Silurians he isn’t scared and doesn’t try to fight it but instead he reasons with it. This is a good thing about the Doctor, even when everyone would be happy to wipe them out, he is trying his best to prevent a war. When Baker goes into the caves and gets trapped I must say that I don’t have much sympathy. I’ve gone from finding him interesting to being a pain in the rear-end.

We get to encounter the Silurians properly for the first time and its quite surprising that its taken until the fourth episode but at least its finally happened. Visually, they look really good and I think it’s the best that they will look in any of their other stories. It’s nothing special but its just a great look and the sound of them is something that works because it doesn’t sound human but doesn’t sound too dissimilar.

Liz gets to do something constructive in this episode and actually gets to go down in the caves. According to the information text on the DVD, they wanted Caroline John to be in a mini skirt when she went down in the caves. This is sadly a sign of the time that this story was made in that this would have been a perfectly acceptable thing to do and it’s good that Jon Pertwee insisted that she wear the appropriate clothing.

Geoffrey Palmer makes his first of three appearances in Doctor Who in this episode. He’s curiously called ‘Masters’ but is really just a talking suit from Westminister and seems to try and put off doing anything to help the situation, seemingly unwilling to believe anything of what anyone says. It’s a perfectly fine performance from Palmer and he seems quite good at being a sort of civil servant type. We get a bit more of Dr Lawrence who seems to get more and more irate. His mood doesn’t seem to get any better as the episode progresses which is becoming a funny part of the story. At least he features more in this episode than he did in the previous one. Peter Miles is a very reliable actor and he makes me understand the position that Lawrence is currently in and with the arrival of Masters, it feels like Lawrence has his back against the wall. Miss Dawson makes an appearance at the 20 minute mark and no explanation has been made as to where she was between her final moments with Quinn and when she does appear she’s discovered that Quinn is dead and immediately decides that the Silurians should be killed. I’m finding her rather much the same as Major Baker and that’s not a good thing. Quite why she survived and yet Quinn got killed is somewhat of a mystery.

I thought that this was a perfectly fine episode, nothing special but it just carried things along. We’ve got to the half way point of the story and there are still loads of interesting things to happen and with the introduction of Masters it feels like things are moving at a good enough pace and I find my interest at the same level as it was at the beginning of Episode one.