Format: DVD
Warts & All: Big Rubber Dinosaur
Quote: That’s typical of the military mind, isn’t it? Present them with a new problem and they start shooting at it.
Review: What a beautifully constructed sci-fi morality tale. Finally, an alien race who have a valid claim on the Earth, because they’re not aliens and are the world’s original owners. Humans are the squatters, although it’s not their fault they evolved. Well, some of them anyway. Peaceful co-existence with the Silurians would be disaster, of course. You’d have millions of lizards coming up from underground, stealing all our jobs and the planet’s overcrowded as it is. But you can’t blame the Doctor for trying. Belligerence, primitive fears and narrow-minded bigotry plagues both sides and the reasoned voices are few.
The many arguments pit military against science, friends against each other, everybody against bureaucracy and science against biological warfare. And the story understands the reality: most such situations end hopelessly. It’s more than the Doctor’s bitter disappointment we feel on that closing note.
It’s all wonderfully played with a cast that includes Paul Darrow as a UNIT Captain, Fulton Mackay as Dr Quinn, not the medicine woman but rather a duplicitous scientist who wants to exploit the Silurians for the knowledge they can give him, and Peter (Nyder) Miles as Dr Lawrence, the officious and overwrought director of the research facility. The sniping between him and the UNIT contingent, especially the Doctor, is better than any shooting war. And he even has a curious moment of butting heads against a minor employee who seems particularly possessive over his phone. Magic. Then Geoffrey Palmer shows up as Masters, government secretary, permanent or otherwise. Bonus! His character is one of the more reasonable government officials we get to see in the Pertwee era. Amusing when he decides his course of action will be to wait on further reports and ultimately tragic when he goes on to be the carrier of an engineered plague, delivering one of the most horrific and terrifying scenarios in all Doctor Who, to my mind.
It’s Survivors territory, is what it is and gives a chilling sense of very real people keeling over and dying in the streets of London. The tension in the lab as the Doctor and Liz battle to fight a cure is easily a match for the guns and grenades action that the UNIT era is more famous for. Pertwee and Caroline John are an absolute delight here and Courtney blazes as the Brigadier. And even though ultimately he is the one who bombs the shit out of the Silurians we understand why. Everyone’s views and motives are clear and we get them, irrespective of whether we agree with them or condone their actions.
The dinosaur looks rubbish, but DW has never had a great track record with larger monsters and this is not a story about monsters. This is all about the promise and potential and the frequent shortfall and capacity for horrors/atrocities within ourselves.
Absolutely bloody brilliant.
