Live-blogging Doctor Who Season Five: "The Hungry Earth"
Posted 6 June 2010 in Doctor Who by Catriona
I think I’m running a little late for this live-blogging, but to make up for it I’m wearing a large and unnecessary flower in my hair, and my peanut gallery is back for this episode.
By which I mean Michelle and Heather.
REPORTER: An explosive Foreign Correspondent.
HEATHER: Ka-BOOM!
MICHELLE: Is this going to be the quality of jokes tonight, sweetie?
We open in South Wales in 2020 AD, in an idyllic valley. A man in a reflective jacket is reading to his son, who apparently has trouble reading, and prefers to listen to books on tape.
Or some kind of futuristic tape, anyway.
Mo, the father, heads off to work on his bicycle.
HEATHER: Goodbye, my illiterate son!
Mo works at some kind of fancy drilling plant, where they’re just, apparently, drilling into the Earth as far as they can just for the sake of it, They’ve hit twenty-one kilometres.
Mo takes over night shift, and pulls out his copy of The Gruffalo before everything goes nuts: the plant shakes and all the security cameras goes out. Of course, Mo goes out to look, instead of legging it in the opposite direction as any sensible man would. Or sensible woman.
HEATHER: Michelle, stop giggling unless it’s related to Doctor Who.
He finds a steaming hole in the floor, and he shoves his hand in it.
You moron.
Of course, something grabs him, and he’s sucked into the ground.
HEATHER: Did we just get some exposition?
ME: What?
HEATHER: Did he just say ‘It’s freezing’?
ME: No, he said, ‘No, please.’ He’s begging the ground.
HEATHER: Oh, ‘cause that always works.
Credits.
The Doctor and his companions leap out of the TARDIS, with Amy wearing even shorter clothes than normal (though these are shorts), because he promised them Rio. Oh, honestly: how many times have we heard this? How many times did Sarah Jane leap out of the TARDIS in a bikini?
MICHELLE: Funny grass.
HEATHER: No, it’s blue grass.
ME: Where are the fiddles, then?
MICHELLE: Yeah.
As well as the blue grass, the Doctor says that the ground feels funny. Then he spots a ‘big mining thing’ and insists on going to see it, because he loves big mining things.
The Doctor legs it, but Rory’s worried Amy will lose her engagement ring in Wales in 2020 AD, so he hurries back to the TARDIS to put it away while Amy follows the Doctor.
In the big mining thing, the day staff have found that Mo is missing. At the TARDIS, Rory is mistaken for a policeman by the kid from the beginning and his mother, Ambrose.
We have a brief but spirited discussion about whether or not Ambrose is a girls’ name.
The Doctor and Amy “sonic and enter” at the big mining thing.
Ambrose and her son tell Rory that bodies are disappearing from the graves in the local cemetery. Oh, I hope they come back to this sub-plot.
Of course, the Doctor, being the Doctor, just wanders straight into the control room in the big mining thing, where they’ve just got the drill up and running again. He wants to know why there’s a big patch of dirt in the middle of their floor, and then tells them they need to leave the room immediately.
They don’t leave quite quickly enough, because the ground starts steaming. The Doctor says that the ground’s attacking then, and they run—but Tony is pulled into a hole in the earth, and though the Doctor tells her to stay away, Amy dashes across to grab him. Nasreen pulls Tony free, but Amy is well and truly trapped, held up to her armpits.
The Doctor tells Nasreen and Tony to shut down the drilling, but Amy is slipping deeper and deeper into the ground. Tony’s not shutting the drill down fast enough. Amy’s worried that she’ll suffocate under the earth, and the Doctor tells her to hang on, but she slips further and further under the soil.
And then she’s gone.
Elsewhere, Rory is jumping in a grave. Ambrose’s son says that the only plausible explanation is that the graves devoured people whole—he quotes Sherlock Holmes’s “Once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” in support of this theory.
In the big mining thing, the Doctor suggests that the drill is what’s causing the problem. When the drill is stopped (as it was after Mo was taken), then the earth calms down.
He decides that it’s a matter of bio-programming. The earth has been bio-programmed to attack them.
TONY: You’re not making sense, man.
DOCTOR: Excuse me, I’m making perfect sense. You’re just not keeping up.
Even though they’ve shut the drill down, the Doctor can still hear drilling from beneath the earth.
He hacks into the company’s computers. Apparently, they chose to drill here because they found trace minerals unseen on the Earth for twenty million years. The Doctor mocks Nasreen, saying that those weren’t Xs marking the spot, saying “Drill here”—they were saying “Stay away.”
The whole time they’ve been drilling down, something else has been drilling up—and now it’s sending up transports.
As they grab the computers and leg it, an energy signal originating from under the ground sends up an energy barricade, locking the village off from the rest of the world.
Rory points out that the graves are eating people, but the Doctor says this is not the time.
Rory then notices that Amy’s missing, and the Doctor’s idea of an appropriate response to this is “I’ll get her back.” Not very comforting, Doctor. He tells Rory that he needs him by his side, and Heather says, “Oh, just snog him.”
Amy’s being scanned by something with mysterious green technology.
Everyone else barricades themselves in the church, even though the door sticks. Everyone but Ambrose trusts the Doctor, because everything else is so inexplicable.
Ooh, Doctor’s theme! I love this theme: so dynamic and action-hero.
The Doctor’s sending everyone out with cameras and so forth, and asks the boy, Elliot, to draw a map.
ELLIOT: I can’t do the letters. I’m dyslexic.
DOCTOR: That’s all right: I can’t make a decent meringue.
HEATHER: So he’s not illiterate? Just dyslexic. Well, that makes me feel a bit better about the earlier statement.
The Doctor’s asking for every bit of help he can get, until Ambrose turns up with an armload of weaponry, which staggers him.
DOCTOR: Oh, Ambrose. I’m asking you nicely. Put them away.
The Doctor’s intending to send out a pulse through the cameras, to disable the attackers. Or something.
ELLIOT: I want to live in a city some day.
DOCTOR: I was the same when I was your age.
ELLIOT: Did you get away?
DOCTOR: Yeah.
ELLIOT: Do you miss it?
DOCTOR: So much.
The attackers send darkness to hide their attack. Tony snogs Nasreen, while he has the chance—and the general reaction in my living room is “Ew.” I’m not part of the “ew,” but the majority has spoken.
They barricade themselves in the church—minus Elliot, who went off to find his headphones and made the mistake of only telling the Doctor where he was going. The Doctor, obviously, wasn’t listening.
It takes Ambrose about fifteen minutes, but she finally realises that her son is missing. She’s furious with the Doctor, but I really think it’s her responsibility.
Michelle vetoes a joke that Heather really wanted on the blog.
Elliot makes it to the church, but the door is stuck, and something comes up behind him before they can get the door open. Ambrose goes running off after him, Tony (her father) goes running off after her, and then something grabs Ambrose.
Tony comes up and grabs Ambrose, but the lizard person (to Heather’s delighted cries of “Lizard people!”) snaps its tongue out at Tony, catching him in the neck, and legs it.
The Doctor points out that Amy, Mo, and Elliot are probably still alive, but he can’t worry about that until after he’s stopped the attack. He realises who the attackers are once he realises that they’re cold-blooded, and then he disables one with the help of a fire extinguisher and a Meals-on-Wheels van.
The other attackers leave. Rory thinks they’ve been scared off, but the Doctor points out that both sides have hostages.
Amy wakes up in a perspex box.
AMY: My name’s Amy Pond, and you better get me the hell out of here, or so help me, I’m going to kick your butt. Please?
ANONYMOUS CAPTOR: (Noise).
AMY: Did you just shush me? Did you just shush me?
Then the anonymous captor gases her, much to her indignation.
The Doctor plans to interrogate the captive, but first he has to remove its mask. Underneath, it’s still alien, but less alien than the mask. The Doctor tells her she’s beautiful and that her mode of transport is gorgeous.
He wants Amy back, but the captive is highly resistant to questioning.
CAPTIVE: I’m the last of my species.
DOCTOR: No, you’re really not. Because I’m the last of my species, and I know how it sits in a heart. So don’t insult me.
The captive, whose name I can’t spell, says that they were attacked, and that they’ll wipe out the vermin who have taken over the Earth while they slept below it. But she is resistant to the idea that they can negotiate a peace treaty—she’s perfectly happy to die for her cause.
The Doctor wanders out without answering her question about what he’s willing to do for his cause, and tells everyone that he’s going down into the heart of the planet to negotiate.
The one thing he asks them to do is keep Alaya alive while he’s gone. That makes me suspicious about future events, especially given how often he says it.
He leaves, and Nasreen pursues him, because she’s spent all her life drilling down into the earth, and she’s not turning down this opportunity. The Doctor reluctantly agrees.
HEATHER: She’s dead. Put a red shirt on her.
Note: the above does not constitute an official spoiler.
The TARDIS is hijacked and pulled down into the earth, outside the Doctor’s control.
Nick insists on telling us over and over again that Alaya is clearly not a reptile, because only mammals have, um, mammary glands.
NICK: Maybe it’s where she keeps her hankies.
HEATHER: Or her poison sacs.
NICK: Ew!
The others left behind confront Alaya, and Rory tells her that they’ll keep her safe. But Alaya says no: one of them will kill her and start a war.
Tony is showing symptoms from the poison he was hit with earlier.
The Doctor and Nasreen head into the tunnels. And Amy wakes tied to an upright surgical table, next to Mo (on his own table), who warns her that he’s already been vivisected.
She struggles as a reptile in a surgical mask heads towards her with a scalpel.
And the Doctor and Nasreen discover that what they’re dealing with here is an entire civilisation, with an enormous city, buried under the Earth.
Cliffhanger!
Share your thoughts [22]
1
Tim wrote at Jun 6, 11:29 am
You’d think there’d be more than three staff at a super-deep drilling site.
It seems very odd (or stupid) for the Doctor to blithely let Elliot run off for his headphones after he’s already lost Amy and has made a big deal about saving everyone. Or to not check Tony’s bite.
I would have preferred the Silurians to look more like the original series versions, but even their new masks were more interesting than the ‘human but with scales’ look.
2
Catriona wrote at Jun 6, 01:25 pm
I’ll let Nick speak for himself, but I admit I wasn’t a big fan of this two-parter. It didn’t disappoint me in the way the Winston Churchill episode did, but it felt a little slow and under-developed, especially for a two-parter.
To be fair, though, I think the super-deep drilling site (or, as I prefer to call it, the big mining thing) did have more than three staff, especially on the day shift. I’m sure there were a number of men in reflective jackets leaving as Mo arrived. I’m not sure why Mo was the only one there at night, though, especially since the drill was apparently still operating then.
3
Tim wrote at Jun 6, 11:27 pm
Ah, I missed the very beginning, so I didn’t see the other miners.
This first part seemed slow to me too.
4
Catriona wrote at Jun 6, 11:35 pm
So you also missed the significance of Heather’s illiteracy jokes? Shame.
;)
It’s a little annoying, actually. The Cybermen and the Daleks have come back (and come back and come back and . . .), so it’s a shame the Silurians didn’t get a more auspicious return.
Now we just need them to bring back Alpha Centauri.
5
John wrote at Jun 7, 12:52 am
Yes, I agree the first part was a bit slow. It’s probably more of a one-and-a-half-parter than a two-parter. But it is setting up some plot stuff, and further developing the Doctor’s character.
And, as we were talking about last week, developing the Amy/Rory sub-plot. I’m sure the engagement ring is going to be significant (not a spoiler, because I don’t know).
6
Catriona wrote at Jun 7, 01:00 am
I myself suspect there’s something significant about the engagement ring (also not a spoiler), so it’ll be interesting to see if they come back to that. It was a little too pointed not to mean something, I suspect.
I can see that it’s developing the Amy/Rory plot, the Doctor’s character, and some of the long-term plotting, too. I’m just a little wearied by stories that do all of those things without also being compelling stories in their own right. We only get thirteen episodes a season, so I want them to all be awesome. Sadly, this is the second episode this season that hasn’t really grabbed me, which is a little annoying.
That said, I’m still loving the Eleventh Doctor and the overall feel of this season. I just hope Winston Churchill never turns up again.
7
Wendy wrote at Jun 7, 07:53 am
Still struggling…but warmed to the Matt Smith Doctor a little more in this episode.
I can barely remember Winston Churchill even though I know I watched it. So that’s probably not a good sign.
Meera Syal however is fabulous although, like Heather, sadly I’m guessing she may arrive at a sticky end.
(If you think that’s a spoiler please delete. Even though I am ignorant!)
(N.B. Off topic – now that you have converted to Glee you must watch Beautiful People if you haven’t already. The connection is Meera Syal).
8
Catriona wrote at Jun 7, 08:19 am
Speculation is never a spoiler, Wendy! Speculate all you like: the only things I’m going to edit out are specific references to episodes that have not yet aired on the ABC, or official spoilers (such as, for example, when they released that photograph of Davros before season four began airing: I didn’t post that on the blog).
Even if you’re still struggling a bit, hold on—and this is a spoiler, but a completely non-specific spoiler—hold on for at least two more episodes. Trust me.
9
Drew wrote at Jun 7, 03:21 pm
I actually really enjoyed this episode. Perhaps it was because, for me, the 3rd Doctor’s encounter with the Silurians was one of the high points of his run and this episode brought back some of that feeling.
No, I didn’t get Heather’s joke either. :(
10
Drew wrote at Jun 7, 03:23 pm
There was also a hint or suggestion of the Pertwee episode Inferno as well, and I rather liked that.
11
Catriona wrote at Jun 7, 09:27 pm
Don’t worry, Drew—it was only a little joke. (Sorry, Heather, but it’s true! the others were bigger!) I was just thinking that if Tim missed the beginning, he wouldn’t have known there was anything wrong with Elliot until Elliot admitted to the dyslexia, so Heather calling him illiterate might have been a bit odd.
Of course, it might have been a bit odd, anyway.
I did like some aspects of this story. John’s outlined some of them above, and I also like the fact that they’re in the not-too-distant future—bit of a change from the past, where we always have to have a companion say ‘But Charles Dickens never died in a basement in Cardiff!’ or ‘When did a CyberKing stomp half of London?’ And the fact that it’s ordinary-folk-in-the-future, rather than famous-people-in-the-past, which can work beautifully (no spoilers!) but has also become as regular a part of the show as the Daleks.
I did like bits. But I also thought it was a bit slow and unwieldy. If I don’t care for the second part, either, then that makes three episodes out of thirteen that really haven’t grabbed me, and I think it’s such a shame, when I look forward to them so much.
(Of course, they’re not making the show for me. But still. Shame.)
12
Drew wrote at Jun 7, 11:17 pm
No, they are making it for me it seems. Sure I don’t want to go back to Churchill’s bunker but I am ejoying Matt Smith’s Doctor so much that I am finding it hard to be critical of the stories, he is utterly brilliant.
13
Catriona wrote at Jun 7, 11:38 pm
I like the Eleventh Doctor, too. I like him very much. I just didn’t find this a very compelling episode.
14
Tim wrote at Jun 8, 01:11 am
No, I did get Heather’s joke. :)
15
Heather wrote at Jun 8, 06:55 am
Actually, what I said was “So he’s not illiterate? Just dyslexic. Well, that makes me feel a bit BAD about the earlier statement.” But, yeah, I know, not one of my best. :)
16
Catriona wrote at Jun 8, 07:06 am
Well, so you say! But the live-blogging has spoken.
(Actually? I’m sure you’re right. But such is the nature of live-blogging, alas.)
17
Matthew Smith wrote at Jun 10, 09:50 am
So disappointed I didn’t check your blog until now! I love the live blogging with guest peanut gallery – it brings an extra dimension.
Nothing much to add here – previous commenters said it all. The Silurians are experimenting on human bodies including stealing dead ones. What’s the deal there? Can someone remind me what they were up to in the Doctor Who Classic Series (or whatever it’s called now).
On the subject of bad taxonomy I should also note that reptiles while “cold blooded” do have body heat (otherwise they would die just like us) it’s just that they don’t make their heat by burning body fat.
18
Catriona wrote at Jun 10, 10:00 am
Also, they don’t have mammary glands—and, really, isn’t that what we’re all concentrating on here?
19
Drew wrote at Jun 12, 12:03 am
Well if Cyber(wo)men can have mammary glands then surely Homo Reptilia can as well. :P
20
Catriona wrote at Jun 12, 04:00 am
And in either case, I can sit around bitching, “Well, we know those ain’t real.”
21
Tim wrote at Jun 21, 01:42 am
A minor thing that my mother pointed out — if most of the Silurians are asleep, why does the city have so many lights on? Very wasteful.
22
Catriona wrote at Jun 21, 02:04 am
That’s an excellent point, Tim’s mother. That scientist and the handful of soldiers (and the latter might not even have been awake for long) can’t possibly need that many lights. Clearly, the Silurians are responsible for our current fossil-fuel shortage, which rather undercuts their argument that it’s the apes who are the parasites.