072 – The Hungry Earth & Cold Blood

This time we talk about the Sirulians. Sorry for the bad quality but we were recording it on the road.

Opening 

Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet that that believes in the return of the lizard people from the center of the earth! Noobs and the Whovian! 

My name is Austin and I’m the Whovian, and these are my sons Tripp and Corbin and we’re the noobs!

This is the podcast that introduces a whole new generation to Doctor Who by watching an episode each week and discussing it from the perspective of a dad who’s seen it before, and two sons who haven’t.  

Welcome to Episode 72 covering series 5 episodes 8-9, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood.

Super-short Recap

This is the one where the Doctor, Rory, and Amy meet lizard-people from the center of the earth! They try to form a treaty with humans, but it doesn’t work. Oh, and Rory died again.

Remember that one?

Production notes

• Story # 209
• Originally aired May 22 & 29, 2010
• Written by: Chris Chibnall! The current (2019) showrunner
• Directed by: Ashley Way
  • HE did mostly Torchwood, some SJA, and these two episodes, along with a few Tardisodes and minisodes
  • Also did some Merlin

News

• Stephen Moore, who played the Silurian leader Eldane, passed away last week.

Cast

• Alaya & Restac – Neve McIntosh
  • She played both female Silurians (same gene chain)
  • We might see her again

Checklist

• Creature of the week
  • Silurians – I’ll leave this to Jared
• Bad CGI
  • Drill blowing up was actually pretty good.
  • Silurian tongues
• Geronimo – 
  • Running Count – 3
• Jiggery Pokery
  • Sonic 
    • Sonicing and entering
    • Rory just learned it doesn’t do wood. Isn’t that kind of rubbish. 
      • Oi! Don’t diss the sonic!
  • TARDIS 
    • Goes rocking about. “Isn’t this what it does?!”
      • I mean, she’s not wrong.
  • Psychic Paper
  • Random
• Jibberty Jabberty
• Time War
• The Pandorica will open
• Silence will fall
• The Crack 
  • They now recognize that it keeps showing up wherever they go, like it’s following them.
  • It’s getting bigger
  • The Doctor stuck his hand in it!
  • It ate Rory!
  • Apparently the TARDIS blows up
• Jammie Dodger sighting
  • Running count – 1
• Existential horror

Who’s Who?

• Who is Amelia?
  • As she’s slipping away into the earth, she’s thinking of Rory, “Tell Rory…”
  • Whovians, did yall notice the heartbeat 
  • She’s becoming a heroic leader like the Doctor – He’s alive, and that’s good. We’ll get him out, trust me!
  • Other way, idiot!
• Who is Rory? 
  • Rory speaks for the apes!
  • He set off on his own little adventure at the beginning of this episode
• Who is The Doctor? 
  • He loves a big mining thing
  • He hasn’t always been disgusting, that’s… recent.
  • I’m making perfect sense, you’re just not keeping up
  • Eleven’s theme is awesome
  • I’m dyslexic.
    • Oh that’s alright I can’t make a decent meringue
  • Elliot says as soon as he’s old enough, he’ll get away from that little town.
    • Doctor says it was the same with him.
    • Do you ever miss it?
    • So much…
  • He’s rubbish with kids
  • It’s like this is every day for you. No, not every day, every other day.
  • No weapons, it’s not the way I do things.
    • WHY?! He doesn’t seem to mind killing, it just has to be clever. I guess guns aren’t clever.
  • Monsters are scared of him
    • Yeah, cuz he might trap you in a mirror and throw you into a blackhole or freeze you as a scarecrow!

Other stuff we noticed

• I kept hearing the dream birds from the last episode
• They’re not aliens! They’re earth… liens
• Spread the word, as legend, prophecy, or religion.
  • So, one family is supposed to convince the whole world that lizard people from the center of the earth are gonna return to the surface in 1,000 years?!
• Nasreen says “I’ve got what I was digging for. I can’t leave when I’ve only just found it.

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Can we talk about the Doctor inspiring humanity?

• This is one of those episodes where he challenges people to be their best. To be everything that he (& we) love about humans!
  • Ambrose – he tells her she was SO. MUCH. LESS. than the best of humanity
  • Btw, why was Elliot so ashamed of his mom? All he knew was that one of these things sprang out of the darkness, kidnapped him, and dragged him underground!
• Malohkeh says that the humans aren’t monsters, and neither are we.
• He tells Nasreen “C’mon, be extraordinary.”
• ONE person let you down. But there is a whole race of dazzling, brilliant people up there!

Classic Who Connection

• The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood
• -The Silurians were first introduced with Third Doctor in the serial Doctor Who and the Silurians (the first encounter with the Silurians, waking them from their hibernation and now wanting to reclaim Earth), and The Sea Devils (a different race of the Silurians), and The Fifth Doctor saw both races in Warriors of the Deep.
• -In Doctor Who and the Silurians, we find the history of the Silurian race. They once ruled earth but, believing that earth was on a crash course with another planet, they hid underground in suspended animation until the atmosphere was once again inhabitable. This planet didn’t hit the earth, instead it started orbiting the earth and became the moon. Humans took over the planet in that time and The Third Doctor discovered them with his companions and woke them up. Much like this story, the Third Doctor tried to convince the Silurians and Humans to share the planet but that didn’t work because the leaders of UNIT were too afraid to let them live on the planet so the exploded the caves killing them all. When the Third Doctor met the Sea Devils, that also ended with the destruction of that race of Silurians.
• -The Doctor said that “the earth is hungry” on Frontios also. In the serial by the name Frontios, the Fifth Doctor and his companions found themselves on a planet creatively called Frontios where there were often mysterious deaths and missing people, but since the planet often had lethal meteorite showers no one thought too much of it. As it turns out the ground of Frontios would open up and suck people down just like in The Hungry Earth. Also similar was the fact that there were monsters living underground that planned to destroy humanity on top.
• -In the first encounter with the Silurians, they intended to go back to sleep for 50 years and share the earth when they woke up. That group was killed by UNIT. That episode aired in 1970 and supposed to be set at about the same time. This episode was set 50 years later in 2020.
• -The Third Doctor also saw a massive drilling project in Inferno
• -The Master also used an energy barrier to cut off a small village in The Daemons
• -The Third Doctor visited a small mining town in The Green Death
• -The Third Doctor was taking Sarah Jane Smith to the beach but ended up on Exxilon instead in Death to the Daleks
• -Previous Doctors have also taken shelter in churches.
• -While very rare in use, there was some narration used in Classic Who such as the TV movie and The Fourth Doctor serial The Deadly Assassin
• -When The Doctor was disarming the Silurians he held the sonic screwdriver upright. This was reminiscent of the way Classic Who doctors would use the sonic.
• -The guns they were using were more like the heat ray weapons of the Sea Devils the armor was also similar to the armor of the sea devils as seen in Warriors of the Deep
• -The Doctor asked for some celery after the decontamination process was stopped. This is a reference to the celery the Fifth Doctor wore on his lapel and we have covered before.

Overall impressions

• Overall rating out of 10 – 
  • Jared – 9.85 Elliotts
  • Austin – 9.1 computer-animated tongues
  • Corbin – 8.5 homo reptilias 
  • Tripp – 9 lizards masks 
• Creep Level – out of 500
  • Jared – 275
  • Austin – 250
  • Corbin – 175
  • Tripp – 235

Theories

• Corbin thinks The Crack will appear feature in every episode story and that either the Master or the New Paradigm Daleks or Davros are responsible for it and the Silence.
  • Maybe it’s not the Daleks. 
  • The Doctor will blow up the TARDIS 
• Tripp thinks The Crack is the end of the universe like the end of the sidewalk. The Crack is in the Wall of the Universe.
  • He also thinks that when the Doctor messed with it in Eleventh Hour that it changed it and caused the problem.
• Tripp thinks the Star Whale is significant and we’ll see it again.
  • Not yet…
• Tripp thinks the Doctor r to find a way to bring back Rory, and this will cause the TARDIS to explode which causes the Crack. 
• Corbin thinks Rory is coming back. They will find a way to stop the explosion which will cause Rory’s never having existed to not have existed. 

Listener Input  

• We’re still on our mission to get a new review each month. So here’s a challenge: leave us a review in the month of your birthday. So, if your birthday is in September, it’s your turn! If you do, send me an email saying you left your birthday month review and we’ll not only read the review but we’ll wish you a happy birthday on the show!

The Game Plan 

• We’re chuggin along through series 5!
• The next special episode will be a Classic Who Rewind featuring the Third Doctor story The Terror of the Autons which is the first appearance of The Master.

Next Time…

Join us next time as we discuss Series 5 Episodes 10, Vincent and the Doctor.

Closing

Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor and Jared for their Patreon support.

You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.