WATCH ALONG | CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO | 7x7 | Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode 3
Added 2023-07-26 14:00:10 +0000 UTCA Few Notes:
- Please no spoilers beyond this episode unless you see that later episodes have already been released. In that case, no spoilers beyond those episodes.
- This reaction is in a watch-along format. This means you'll need your own copy of the episode to watch alongside my reaction. This is in an effort to avoid copyright infringement.
- If you're based in the UK (or using a UK streaming site), here are instructions for how to get your copy to sync with mine.
- The show footage will play for the first 30 seconds with both video and audio. After that, the show footage will be silenced, and the video will be blurred for the remainder of the episode. There is also a count-up timer that begins once the episode has started. These things will hopefully make it easier for you to keep your copy of the episode synced with mine.
- This episode was viewed on BritBox via Amazon Prime.
- If you want to know what’s coming up, check out the schedule here.
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Comments
The Silurians are indeed the same creatures as those appearing in the Matt Smith era; the Series 5 two-parter "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood" is directly inspired by this story (in some aspects so closely as to be a virtual retelling of it). Your reaction to the rather... distinctive music produced by Carey Blyton (the nephew of famous children's author Enid Blyton, incidentally) was shared by Barry Letts, who took over as Doctor Who's producer with this story. He felt the Silurian "theme" to be inappropriately comical rather than threatening, and it really does sound like a demented kazoo. However, it's actually a primitive medieval instrument called a crumhorn -- a distant ancestor of the oboe. Blyton was deliberately making use of ancient instruments in an effort to depict the ancient civilisation lying dormant underground, being woken up by the humans. It was a nice idea in theory, but unfortunately the raucous result tends only to make it clear why the crumhorn is no longer a commonly used instrument... :-)
Steven Cooper
2023-07-26 14:45:06 +0000 UTC
