"The Hungry Earth"/ "Cold Blood"

As you can imagine, I was not looking forward to a Chris Chibnall two-parter. His previous effort, "42", was a thoroughly lazy script, rescued only by Graeme Harper’s phenomenal direction. However, Chibnall is physically capable of writing good scripts- his Life on Mars episodes are very good and, although his showrunning and episodes for Torchwood were terrible in series 1, he improved in series 2. In any case, "The Hungry Earth"/ "Cold Blood" had the added attraction of featuring the return of the Silurians, one of my favourite ‘monsters’ on the programme.

Reading the basic storyline did not fill me with hope. Just as "42" was a basic rewrite of Planet of Evil, "The Hungry Earth"/ "Cold Blood" takes most of its plot elements from previous stories- it’s Doctor Who and the Silurians meets Inferno, meets The Green Death, meets Frontios! On watching it, the way the plot unfolds would be entirely predictable, even if it wasn’t following the story progression of Doctor Who and the Silurians almost to the letter and ending not so much with a deus ex machina, but with a literal pneuma ex machina! It must be said, however, that Chibnall writes with more sincerity than he did last time, which means that we buy into the plotting a bit more, even though the only parts that aren’t hackneyed are by Malcolm Hulke. This is helped by a very strong cast- Eliot, the dyslexic boy who won’t let his disability get in his way, so clumsily worthy on paper, is made into a real person through the endearing performance of Lady Sovereign lookalike Samuel Davies. Robert Pugh is an awesome actor, who puts meat on the very bare bones of his underwritten character and Meera Syal is an absolute delight as Nasreen, a very poorly written character- I am sure I was not alone in secretly hoping for her to join the TARDIS crew.

The Silurians are suitably revamped for the 21st century with a fantastic make-up and prosthetic applications. Although very different from their forebears, I instantly recognised them- although making the eyes and teeth more saurian would not have been unwelcome. However, the revamps work, because the designers remembered something they should have remembered when doing "Victory of the Daleks"- if you’re going to redesign a popular monster, make it look cool. The Silurians are all excellently performed, with all the actors remaining very recognisable, despite the excellent make-up, from Neve McIntosh’s impassioned dual performance as Alaya/ Restac to Stephen Moore’s dignified Eldane. These performances compensate for the fact that the character types are very similar to the original Silurians- we even have the bellicose Silurian killing the peacemaker The only disappointment is that Chibnall seems to be just as clueless about palaeontology as Malcolm Hulke- but Hulke did not have the Internet as a research tool, so Chibnall has no excuse. Chibnall has the Doctor state that they are ‘300 million years out of their comfort zone’, which would make them Carboniferous, on the cusp of Permian- not as unlikely as the Silurian, but still pretty far-fetched and only adding to the confusion. As I said many moons ago, if there is one area of science that the average child will know a lot about, it’s prehistoric life.

Ashley Way gives the story the epic feel it needs and the action scenes are shot with the necessary energy to make them effective and he marshals the great cast with aplomb. The special effects are flawless, with the jaw-dropping shots of the vistas of the Silurian city and the hibernating army, with the entire production team giving their all. Matt Smith is astonishing, yet again, with his kindly, yet somewhat threatening warning to Ambrose about weapons to his grief over Amy’s apparent death. Karen Gillan has to react to the death of her fiancée again and it is to her considerable credit that she makes it look just as convincing as in "Amy’s Choice" yet very different, something which can also be said for Arthur Darvill. I really hope this is not the final end for Rory.

This is a very well made, very enjoyable Doctor Who story. However, again we have a Homo reptilia story (technically it should be something like Anthroposaurus sapiens, but I digress) that covers pretty much the same ground as the original story. Chibnall’s script, although not in the same league as others this year, is far better than his previous one. It is odd to think that the only Silurian story to build on the original is Warriors of the Deep!

NEXT: "Vincent and the Doctor"