Doctor Who "Doctor Who and the Silurians - Episode 2" (1970)

The second part of this serial continues directly on from part 1 where the Doctor is being menaced by a very poor-looking dinosaur, thankfully some kind of beacon calls the creature away just as it is about to strike the Doctor and he is able to continue his examination of the caves. Meanwhile back up in the power station, the Brigadier is quite displeased to hear that the Doctor has gone into the caves alone and without telling anyone despite the fact that the Doctor was driven to explore the caves to find evidence for the Brigadier. Dr. Quinn believes that UNIT is close to discovering who is living in the caves and drawing power from the station and goes to alert his associates. They task him with finding one of their own who was wounded by the UNIT soldiers and he agrees in exchange for the vast scientific knowledge they have amassed and have promised him from the beginning. Not much happens in this episode other than to wet the appetites of the audience to discover who is menacing the power station from the underground caves as we see clawed hands reaching around corners, silhouettes in the darkness and some unique point of view shots of a three-eyed asthmatic creature roaming the countryside.

We get more of a sense of how the Third Doctor is a man of action as opposed to the reluctant First Doctor and cautious Second Doctor. He goes into the caves without any backup after one man has already been killed and another has been driven insane by what he saw down there. This Doctor has no compunctions about diving headfirst into danger if it will help others however he forces Liz to stay at the power station because he has no intention of putting anyone else in harm's way. He also shows concern for the Brigadier when they head down into the caves together after his return alerting him to the fact that he doesn't really know what he is chasing. We also start to get a sense of the conflict between the Doctor and his distaste for military procedure as he would like to make a careful examination of the caves while the Brigadier would like to take down an armed party to conduct a search for these monsters which he has been hearing about.

The Doctor starts to piece together the mystery of the power drains, personnel mental breakdowns and the mysterious creatures in the caves however he and the Brigadier are called out to the surrounding countryside when reports of a creature attacking a farmer are brought to UNIT's attention while Dr. Lawrence continues to fume about how UNIT is causing more harm and delays rather than helping the power station get back to normal status. The Doctor is the only one to realize that these creatures have not yet acted in a openly hostile manner and have only acted in self-defense.

Favorite moment: When realizing that the creature is still in the barn where Liz is conducting some forensics test, he and the Brigadier race back just as she has been attakced by the creature. This a much more effective cliffhanger that then one to previous episode as the dinosaur at the end of that cliffhanger is not at all believable but we only get glimpses of this new creature and Liz's attack is shown via its point-of-view. We know Liz as a regular will not die however these creatures has caused extreme anxiety and paranoia in their surviving victims and we have already seen Liz briefly affected in the control room in the previous episode. We also hope to catch our glimpse of the newest menace to the Earth. Maybe next episode, same Who time, same Who channel!