Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Four

Derp! Silurians look so derpy, lol.

Obviously the Doctor reacts not with fear but with "Hello. Are you a Silurian?"
He tries to make friends with it, but the Silurian hears a noise from outside and runs away.

Major Baker escapes from the hopistal. Liz asks the Brigadier if he wants to chase after him, but the Brigadier knows where he will be going - back to the caves. He's right, and when he gets there, Major Baker gets captured immediately by two Silurians, who pewpewpew him, or hypno-eyes him, or possibly both at the same time.

The Doctor tells Liz that Dr Quinn is ded, but he keeps this fact from the Brigadier because, so he says, "they're not necessarily hostile." I mean, hardly any mannys have been killed so far, and none that really count, right?

The Doctor has found Dr Quinn's map of the caves, so he and Liz follow the route marked on it. They find clues left behind by Major Baker when he got captured, and eventually they come to the door where Dr Quinn got hypno-eyesed back in episode two. They see a Silurian and hide while it goes through the door.

Dr Quinn's homing device also acts as a key and opens the door for them. They go inside and sneak around for a bit, dodging Silurians until they find Major Baker in a cage.

Baker tells the Doctor that the Silurians have been asking him "a lot of questions."

"What do they ask?"
"The population of the Earth, what weapons we use, what food we eat. Don't you see? They are trying to gather information for an invasion!"

Or they could be practising for an appearance on Pointless?

They see a Silurian waking up after a sleep, and the Doctor concludes that their alarm clock is what is causing the power drain of the mannys' nuclear reactor. They can't rescue Major Baker right now, so they decide to go back to warn UNIT and try to bring back more help. On the way out they see a pet dinosaur going rar, although it doesn't do anything else.

Back at the Cyclotron room, Masters, the Permanent Under-Secretary (Geoffrey Palmer), arrives and talks to Dr Lawrence. These two together are an appalling combination of unlikable characters who bring out the worst in each other.

"We've got to get this sorted out, you know. I'm under very heavy pressure from the Minister. The future of this centre is very much in question."

Masters may be a Permanent Under-Secretary, but he's more of a Sir Jason Fowler than a Sir Humphrey Appleby. However even he is more competent than Dr Lawrence, who projects his own failings onto the Brigadier in an attempt to avoid any blame for things going wrong:

"He's exaggerating this whole business out of all proportion merely to magnify his own importance."

Just as he did in Spearhead from Space, the Brigadier needs his reinforcements to come from the "regular army." In that story it was General Scobie who was responsible for them, and here it is Masters, and Masters won't give him any.

Two Silurians ask Major Baker some questions, including

"Is your species the only intelligent lifeform?"

Major Baker lies and says yes, obviously wanting to keep the existence of cats secret from the Silurians. When they ask him about weapons he refuses to answer, and one of them (who has a pinkish-coloured face) gets angry. Like with the mannys we have just seen in the previous scene, I think there is some projecting going on, because Pink Face says it is Major Baker who is "becoming aggressive."
The other Silurian (who has a green face) seems more reasonable. He wants to study mannys, while Pink Face wants to "kill them all."

The Doctor and Liz tell the Brigadier, Dr Lawrence and Masters what they saw in the caves. Masters wants proof (which actually sounds fairly reasonable under the circumstances) ad the Brigadier wants to go and get it from the caves. The Doctor wants to make peaceful contact with them, and reiterates his point about them only attacking in self-defence - he has not met Pink Face yet!

I think the story is trying to establish a thematic parallel between the contrasting methods of the Doctor and the Brigadier and Green Face and Pink Face, but the Brigadier at least is a lot more nuanced than Pink "wipe them out, all of them" Face would seem to be.

Anyhow, the Doctor's point about self-defence is undermined when Miss Dawson comes in and tells them about Dr Quinn being ded, and she knows he was killed by a Silurian. This gets Masters to agree to the Brigadier's plan to take UNIT into the caves, and he goes to get ready. The Doctor decides to warn the Silurians that UNIT are coming, telling Liz

"If the Brigadier won't listen to reason, Liz, maybe the Silurians will."

He gets there in the twinkling of a scene change, and meets with three Silurians. Pink Face asks

"Shall I destroy him?"

but Green Face says no. Even Green Face is not in the mood to listen to the Doctor though, and they put him in the big cage along with Major Baker. They open the cage door in the way they open all their doors - by hypno-eyesing it with their special hypno-eye that all the Silurians have, which is a neat trick that cats have yet to master.

The Brigadier and some UNIT mannys, including Captain Hawkins (purr, I thought for a while that he wasn't going to be in this episode at all, but it is suddenly looking a lot better now he is), are in the caves, and they get trapped by walls appearing where they weren't before. This happens to cats sometimes too, mew.

Pink Face goes to the Doctor and tells him he has "destroyed" the mannys - oh noes, I hope he doesn't mean Captain Hawkins!

"And now I shall destroy you!"

He pewpewpews the Doctor with his hypno-eye, and the Doctor makes a face - cliffhanger!