By Robert Smith?

Obverse Books, out January 2020

Obverse Books’ ongoing series of monographs focusing on a Doctor Who serial or story hits 1970’s Season 7 serial Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Most fans will argue that Malcolm Hulke’s eco tale of Silurians reclaiming the Earth from mankind reads better as a book or as a set of stills than as a single 175-minute trawl. But as author Robert Smith? posits here, it shouldn’t so much be seen as seven episodes but as seven weeks, the repetition necessary for the 1970 audience they had no opportunity to iPlayer the first parts again.

Indeed, one of the most interesting sections of the book challenges just how long a Doctor Who serial should be. Silurians isn’t the longest, but we have to wait until the end of Episode 3 to see the protagonist in the scaly flesh. Robert argues that the old four-parter is now just 45-minutes, the modern pacing and use of devices like psychic paper effectively removes the foreplay of parts one and two.

Elsewhere, arguments are presented as to whether technology (in this case the Cyclotron) can improve our lot, including sideways looks at how real world technology has impacted us. He does that a lot, going deep into his arguments, and occasionally you have to remind yourself what was initially being discussed, but there’s solid research with credited sources, and if you want to go deep (past where the Silurians are slumbering) then this is the place for it.

Other chapters question the point of UNIT (specifically in this story and wider), and what the Doctor’s relationship is with them, the topic of British decolonisation, and indeed whether the programme itself is a science show. At best, the science is clunky, and often just plain bad (The Moon is a what?) and Robert expands this thought to look at everything from the rise of a postmodern society that rejects absolutism, to animal testing and the Flat Earth Theory. Finally, we get to discuss just how effective the Silurian Plague would likely have been, using the 1961 Smallpox outbreak in Britain to provide context, before expanding our view to world-threatening pandemics, plagues in general, quarantine and cures.

Verdict: The absence of any production details, reference to the additional material in the Target novelisation or coverage of Warriors of the Deep does mean that this is a book focused on very specific themes and can’t be considered as definitive. This may be too narrow for some quarters, but the work has been done to back up the author’s points of view. 7/10

Nick Joy

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