 This story is renowned for being the debut for the Silurians.
This is the only story in the televised shows history that is officially entitled "Doctor Who and..." Although this was the style used on most Doctor Who scripts up until this story, the ‘Doctor Who and...’ prefix had always previously been omitted from the title given on-screen. To avoid a recurrence of this error in the future, the prefix was largely dropped from subsequent scripts. Despite being the only televised story to have the ‘Doctor Who and...’ prefix some stories during the early years ("The Savages", "The Highlanders", "The Underwater Menace", and "The Moonbase") were referred to in such a manner in the trailers for upcoming stories, and episode 5 of "The Chase" was also titled "The Death of Doctor Who" on-screen. A spinoff story is also officially known with the ‘Doctor Who and...’ prefix - the radio drama "Doctor Who and the Ghosts of N-Space" - as well as the first issues of many of the Target novelisations.
The actual title of this story is sometimes reduced to the original intended title "The Silurians".
Paul Darrow, later to become Kerr Avon in Blake's 7 plays Captain Hawkins. He would return to the show playing Tekker in the 1984 Sixth Doctor story "Timelash". Other familiar actors guest starring in this story include Fulton Mackay (now better known for his role as Mr Mackay in the classic BBC sitcom Porridge, plays Dr. Quinn) and Geoffrey Palmer who played Masters is best known as playing the part of Ben Parkinson in Butterflies and as Lionel in As Time Goes By". He would return to the show in the Third Doctor story "The Mutants" and in the Tenth Doctor story "Voyage of the Damned".
This story includes non-speaking cameo appearances by members of the production team, including Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks and, most prominently, Trevor Ray (who plays a ticket collector struck down by the Silurian virus), in the location scenes shot at Marylebone Station in London.
The Silurians' aquatic cousins, the Sea Devils, featured in their own story ("The Sea Devils") in 1972 during Season Nine; they and the Silurians later returned for the 1984 Fifth Doctor story "Warriors of the Deep".
Production on "The Silurians" began a week late due to the same industrial action which had forced "Spearhead From Space" to be recorded entirely on location.
Bessie, The Doctor's new car, debuts in this story. Suggested to Peter Bryant by both Jon Pertwee and assistant Script Editor Trevor Ray, Bessie was built in the style of an Edwardian roadster. During filming a fake license plate reading ‘WHO1’ was used. This was because this number plate number was already registered. Bessie’s actual number plate was the more mundane MTR5.
For the cave scenes it was initially planned to visit Wookey Hole in Somerset. However, it became clear that this would not be logistically feasible, and so the cave sequences were recorded in a studio. Unfortunately, this lead to additional difficulties when designer Barry Newbury discovered that the outside contractors, he had hired to build the cave set, had made the walls too flimsy to stand erect. As a result, it was decided to abandon the show's usual pattern of recording all the scenes for each episode in the same week. This was to enable all the cave scenes, regardless of the episode, to be filmed at the same time.
Another innovation for the recording of this story saw the show in studio on both a Sunday and the following Monday. It was felt that the usual one-week-one-episode pattern was inefficient; instead, it was thought that it might be better to record two instalments together on a biweekly basis. Since the sets could then be left up overnight thus reducing the amount of damage incurred from being taken down and then put back up.
This story included the first use of Colour Separation Overlay (CSO, also known as ChromaKey or Greenscreen), a new electronic effect at the time in which elements of the image from one camera replaced areas of the image from a second camera which were keyed to a specific colour (usually blue, green or, a little later, yellow). Tests for this technique had been held as far back as August in the previous year where it was realised that there could be enormous possibilities in its use in the show. Examples of this technique in this story include the creation of the cave background and the presentation of an image of Major Baker on a screen in the Silurians' underground base.
After the previous story, producer Derrick Sherwin was transferred to the television series Paul Temple, and the BBC intended for Barry Letts to become producer. However, Letts was committed to another production, and could not be released until after the location work on "The Silurians" was completed. Script editor Terrance Dicks and his assistant Trevor Ray shared the production responsibilities for the location work.
The unusual music in this story featured clarinets, recorders, cellos and horns and was conducted by Carey Blyton who would also contribute music for the 1974 story "Death to the Daleks" and the 1975 Fourth Doctor story "Revenge of the Cybermen".
This story marks the first time The Doctor is seen to be seriously at odds with his UNIT colleagues, although it was not the last.
The Doctor remarks in this story, ‘You know, I'm beginning to lose confidence for the first time in my life - and that covers several thousand years’. This comment adds to the many conflicting ages for The Doctor provided in the television show over the years.
During this story The Doctor is heard to state that he is thousands of years old, which is inconsistent with the Fourth Doctor's later statements of being about 750 years old, or the Second Doctor's statement of being only 450 years old soon after his regeneration (and there is no indication the Second incarnation lasted for thousands of years). The Doctor though may have been exaggerating, or basing his age upon the relative age of the Silurians. The Doctor’s age has never actually ever been confirmed due to the many different and conflicting references to it – possible an effect of being both a time traveller and an alien.
According to this story, the Moon was originally a small planet/huge meteoroid that ended up in orbit around Earth. However, it has been confirmed that actually the Moon is about as old as the Earth, and actually resulted from a planet-sized object hitting the Earth.
The term ‘Silurian’ is never actually used by the creatures themselves; only by the humans. Its use resulted in many letters from scientists and geologists who argued that it was impossible for a reptilian lifeform to have existed in the Silurian era. In the follow-up story "The Sea Devils", The Doctor admits that the name ‘Silurian’ is inaccurate and states they should more properly be called ‘Eocenes’ (which again is an unlikely candidate for the creatures' own era. It is agreed amongst fans that a more accurate name would have been ‘Cretaceans’ or ‘Maastrichtians’). However, the misnomer Silurian has stuck. For example, in "Warriors of the Deep" both they and the Sea Devils use ‘Silurian’ to refer to themselves (even when no humans are present) - presumably because the audience knows them as this. The Virgin Books' The New Adventures, beginning with "Love and War" refer to the creatures as ‘Earth Reptiles’ for the most part, although Ben Aaronovitch's "The Also People" they are referred to as ‘Indigenous Terrans’.
The Virgin Books' The New Adventures novel "Blood Heat" features an alternate universe where The Doctor died in captivity during the events of this serial and Earth was subsequently conquered by the Silurians. The Virgin Books' The Missing Adventures novel "The Scales of Injustice" is both a sequel to this story as well as a prequel to the events of "Warriors of the Deep". Other novels in both series, such as "The Also People" and "Happy Endings", reveal that at some point the Silurians will be revived and successfully integrated with human society. The Silurians also appear in the Big Finish Productions audio story "Bloodtide", which explains why they did not wake up from hibernation and what roll they played in human evolution.
Sadly the original 625-line PAL colour videotapes of this story were wiped by the BBC for reuse, although they retained the 16mm Black and White film recordings. However, all seven episodes currently exist as PAL D3 colour restorations. These were created in 1993, by an unofficial Doctor Who restoration team. They used original NTSC U-matic dubs, that were sent abroad prior to the wiping of the colour videotapes, and the Black and White film telerecordings. Some segments though had to be individually re-coloured with the aid of a computer due to their nonexistence in the NTSC print; additionally, two shots had to be slowed down to replace absent material. The re-colourised version was then released, on VHS video in July 1993.
This story was repeated on BBC Two in 1999, for which further restoration work was carried out to improve the colour.
In January 2008 a fresh restoration of the story was released on DVD as part of boxed set called "Beneath the Surface" along with "The Sea Devils" and "Warriors of the Deep".
A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in January 1974 under the title "Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters". In this adaptation, the Silurians were given names like Morka, Okdel and K'to. The novelisation gives extensive background to the reptile culture, including a prologue featuring their hibernation beginning. Large parts of the novelisation are told from the reptiles' point of view and there is an extensive back story given to several characters including Quinn and Major Baker (for some reason, the character is called Major Barker in the novelisation). The novelisation avoids referring to the reptiles as Silurians (the word turns up as a UNIT password) but identifies the dinosaur in the caves as a tyrannosaurus rex.
| |
|
The Firsts:
The first appearance of the Silurians.
The first, and only, televised story to have 'Doctor Who and...' in its title.
The first appearance of Bessie - The Doctor's yellow car.
Barry Letts' first involvement in the show as Producer.
The first Doctor Who story to be directed by Timothy Combe
Marion Richards' first involvement in the show as Makeup Artist.
Carey Blyton's first involvement in the show providing the incidental music.
The first story to include the use of Colour Separation Overlay (CSO).
|
|
(Position = 24 out of 159)
(Position = 45 out of 200)
(Position = 50 out of 241)
