Thursday, June 17, 2010

Doctor Who - Cold Blood, Episode 1: "The Hungry Earth"

Spoiler Level: High

Wow, talk about a Pertwee love fest! A giant drill digging deeper into the Earth than ever before! A giant forcefield put over a small town! And best of all... could it be? Is it really?!? Wait for it.... yes, yes it is.... the return of the Silurians!!! [::Fer does the Returning Monster Happy Dance::]

As soon as I heard the episode titles I thought of the Silurians. Then I saw a few preview clips and I really, really hoped it was Silurians. Then I accidentally saw a photo and got a look at their faces-- and my hopes fell. Oh well. Not Silurians. Maybe a similar-to-Silurians-but-not-really-Silurians situation like last week's Valeyard-but-not-really-the-Valeyard situation. Then while watching the episode I thought, come on, these have to be Silurians! And then... finally... yes, he said it, they ARE Silurians!!!!

Okay, I would have preferred for them to not have human looking eyes and noses, or for them to at least have had their third eye, but I can dig that these are an offshoot of the classic Silurians. It's not a bad update design.

I also loved the pacing of the episode... the two-parters really are working best for me this season. I especially loved the scene between the Doctor and Rory after Rory realized that Amy was missing. "I need you to stand by me." And he does. Good stuff.

Mylene doesn't like having to wait for Part Two next week; you'd think that since she started with Hartnell she wouldn't mind the cliff hangers so much, but with those she's used to having the next episode at her fingertips on the DVD. But I'm glad it's a two-parter. Not just because of the pacing, but because it helps capture the feel of the original Silurians stories as well.

As to the story title, I'm inclined to go with "Cold Blood" over "The Hungry Earth," because (1) The Earth eating people seems to be exclusive to Part 1, but "Cold Blood" fits both parts, and (2) the episode title for Part 1 changed from "The Ground Beneath Their Feet" to "The Hungry Earth," while the title for Part 2 has been "Cold Blood" all along.

2 comments:

greatplaidmoose said...

I've heard that although us old fans and even a bunch of new fans prefer the two-parters for character development and pacing that children really hate having to wait a week to resolve the cliffhanger. The Moff has said that's why we won't be getting a change in the format any time soon to accommodate more two-parters.

And Silurians along with River Song were the two things the BBC did not hide in press releases but I wanted to wait and see if you guessed or found out about them on your own. They also showed clips of the new Silurians in the trailers but since they didn't look the same I figured you wouldn't recognize them.

Fer said...

Yep, you called that one right!