History Recap / DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians

* WhatTheHellHero - The Brigadier ordering the Silurian compound destroyed at the end, wiping out the colony. After the explosion, the Doctor drives away with a disgusted look on his face. Because hey, it's not like the Elder Silurian had been murdered by his warmongering underling, or that the Silurians had barely been stopped from destroying all Human life on Earth not once but twice - no, wait, that's EXACTLY how it was. What The Hell Doctor?
** Because he's not just disgusted at the Brigadier. ''Neither'' species of Earthling impressed him today.

* CreatorCameo: Assistant script editor Trevor Ray is the ticket collector and Barry Letts and Creator/TerranceDicks are passengers.

* ShoutOut: The Doctor sings [[Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland The Jabberwocky]].

* JerkAss: Almost ''everybody'', most notably Dr Quinn, Major Baker, Dr Lawrence, Miss Dawson and the Young Silurian. The only characters that come out of this relatively clean are the Doctor, Liz and the Elder Silurian. Even the Brigadier borders on being this here, especially considering his actions during the ending.

The Doctor tries to broker peace and gains the trust of the Silurian leader, but the leader's rebellious son takes power and releases a virus that will destroy humanity. The Doctor and Liz find a cure, but are then told that the Silurians have taken over the underground lab and are going to destroy the Van Allen Belt, bombarding the Earth with radiation deadly to mammals, but not reptiles. The Doctor gets them to retreat back into the caves by overloading the reactor and threatening an explosion. The Brigadier -- to the Doctor's disgust -- then orders the Silurian base destroyed.

* WhatTheHellHero - The Brigadier ordering the Silurian compound destroyed at the end, wiping out the colony. After the explosion, the Doctor drives away with a disgusted look on his face. Because hey, it's not like the Elder Silurian had been murdered by his warmongering son, or that the Silurians had barely been stopped from destroying all Human life on Earth not once but twice - no, wait, that's EXACTLY how it was. What The Hell Doctor?

The one where a grown man scribbles on the wall.

Written by Creator/MalcolmHulke. The only Doctor Who TV story to be officially titled "Doctor Who and...". Legend has it this was due to an error by the first-time director in having the script prefix added to the onscreen titles. (The title format stuck for the Target Literature/DoctorWhoNovelisations, and was parodied by Creator/BigFinish Productions a few times.) While [[IAmNotShazam "Doctor Who" isn't his name]], the actor was credited as playing "Dr Who" until 1970 and "Doctor Who" until 1981 (and again in 2005), so the WordOfGod on the subject is clearly a bit suspect. On another point of trivia, this was also the very last ''Doctor Who'' serial to be filmed in TheSixties.

* JerkAss: Almost ''everybody'', namely Dr Quinn, Major Baker, the Director, Miss Dawson and the Young Silurian. The only characters that come out of this relatively clean are the Doctor, Liz and at a push the Elder Silurian. Even the Brigadier borders on being this here, especially during the ending.

* ThirdEye: The Silurians can project some kind of invisible beam from their third eyes to kill humans and each other.

The only Doctor Who TV story to be officially titled "Doctor Who and...". Legend has it this was due to an error by the production team in putting the prefix onto the onscreen titles. (The title format stuck for the Target Literature/DoctorWhoNovelisations, and was parodied by Creator/BigFinish Productions a few times.) While [[IAmNotShazam "Doctor Who" isn't his name]], the actor was credited as playing "Dr Who" until 1970 and "Doctor Who" until 1981 (and again in 2005), so the WordOfGod on the subject is clearly a bit suspect. However, this could still be backed up by the fact that nearly all '60s stories were submitted under the title "Doctor Who and the...", even though they weren't televised as such until this story.

Anyway, the Brigadier sends for the Doctor and Liz to take a look at an underground laboratory working on a new kind of nuclear reactor. They're getting odd power losses, a bizarrely high level of stress-related illnesses among the staff, and a background music composer with an inexplicable kazoo obsession.

* AdaptationExpansion: The novelisation adds a prologue tells of the Silurians going into hiding to avoid catastrophe.
** A new scene features some security guards at the main gate checking the Doctor and Liz's passes. Liz gives password, which is "Silurians".
* AllThereInTheManual: In the novelisation, the Silurian that is wounded and forced to the surface is named as Morka. He is also the younger Silurian who kills the leader, a distinction which is not made clear in the television story (where the two are played by different actors).
** A UNIT corporal named Grover tells Liz that the Doctor is working on Bessie.
** More background is given to Miss Dawson; she is said to have lived in London her whole life, looking after her old mother, while all her other siblings went to America and Australia. Her mother then died, and she took the job at Wenley Moor. She is also given the first name of Phyllis.
** It is said Dr Quinn's wife died in a car accident some years before the events of this story

* ProperlyParanoid: The Humans and Silurians both believe the other side is trying to wipe them out. They're both right. [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Mainly because ''they're'' also trying to wipe ''them'' out]].

* DownerEnding: After a tense back-and-forth struggle to make the Silurians cool their jets upon awakening, one of the younger Silurians took over by force and started an invasion. As a result, the Brig blew up the whole cache of Silurians, lock, stock and barrel. Needless to say, it made the Doctor REALLY angry.

* DownerEnding: The Brig blew up the whole cache of Silurians, lock, stock and barrel. Needless to say, it made the Doctor REALLY angry.

* DownerEnding

* DarkerAndEdgier: Between the moral ambiguity, extremely depressing ending and biological horror this could easily pass for a ''Series/{{Torchwood}} story.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: Except for the Doctor and Liz - and perhaps the Elder Silurian - nobody comes out looking particularly good in this story, not even the Brigadier. Most characters on both sides retain sympathetic qualities, however. This sort of complexity - that people in general aren't good or bad - was a staple of Malcolm Hulke's scripts - he was also involved in writing 'The War Games' a story dealing with DeliberateValuesDissonance.

* IdiotPlot: The Doctor realises the Silurians have infected the potholers with a bacterial weapon, and informs Masters (an infectee) that he's very sick. Masters, despite the foul blisters on his arms, then announces he's going to London and no-one makes any efforts to stop him, not even the Doctor. Two episodes later, after Masters had got to London and spread the Silurian plague throughout the tube system, with chaos and people dropping dead in the streets, the Doctor even moons over the fact that if he'd just established a quarantine, everything would have been fine. The Silurians themselves spend most of the story convinced the humans are going to kill them despite the Doctor's best efforts to persuade them that they won't, and the humans spend most of the story convinced the Silurians are going to kill them despite the Doctor's best efforts to persuade them that they won't, and the Doctor spends most of the story convinced the two sides aren't going to kill each other even though they obviously are. The Brigadier purposefully defies the Doctor's orders and blows the Silurians up at the end out of sheer racism, and still the Doctor [[EasilyForgiven bothers showing up for work the next morning]].

* IdiotBall: The Doctor realises the Silurians have infected the potholers with a bacterial weapon, and informs Masters (an infectee) that he's very sick. Masters, despite the foul blisters on his arms, then announces he's going to London and no-one makes any efforts to stop him, not even the Doctor. Two episodes later, after Masters had got to London and spread the Silurian plague throughout the tube system, with chaos and people dropping dead in the streets, the Doctor even moons over the fact that if he'd just established a quarantine, everything would have been fine. The Silurians themselves spend most of the story convinced the humans are going to kill them despite the Doctor's best efforts to persuade them that they won't, and the humans spend most of the story convinced the Silurians are going to kill them despite the Doctor's best efforts to persuade them that they won't, and the Doctor spends most of the story convinced the two sides aren't going to kill each other even though they obviously are. The Brigadier purposefully defies the Doctor's orders and blows the Silurians up at the end out of sheer racism, and still the Doctor [[EasilyForgiven bothers showing up for work the next morning]].

** The Elder Silurian is definately this as he discover the younger virus plan. He releases the Doctor, giving him a canister of the virus so he can discover a cure. The younger Silurian kills the older one for this act.

* WhatTheHellHero - The Brigadier ordering the Silurian compound destroyed at the end, wiping out the colony. After the explosion, the Doctor drives away with a disgusted look on his face. Because hey, it's not like the Elder Silurian had been murdered by his warmongering son, or that the Silurians and barely been stopped from destroying all Human life on Earth not once but twice - no, wait, that's EXACTLY how it was. What The Hell Doctor?

* WhatTheHellHero - The Brigadier ordering the Silurian compound destroyed at the end, wiping out the colony. After the explosion, the Doctor drives away with a disgusted look on his face.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Very much a mixed bag, as the reason the Silurians went into hibernation - the Moon crashing into earth, them panicking and it taking up orbit around the Earth instead - has since become a discredited theory, since when we checked moon rocks with earth rocks, it proved that they all came from the same place, proving that the moon were created when a meteorite ''really'' early in earth's development forced out a pile of rock that then formed the moon. Discussion of plate tectonics, however, works with what's accepted in the scientific community.

* AdptationExpansion: The novelisation adds a prologue tells of the Silurians going into hiding to avoid catastrophe.

* AdpatationExpansion: The novelisation adds a prologue tells of the Silurians going into hiding to avoid catastrophe.