Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E08 The Hungry Earth



"The Doctor: Oh look, a big mining thing. Oh, I love a big mining thing. See, way better than Rio. Rio doesn't have a big mining thing."

The second two-part story of the the Eleventh Doctor's first series. Written by Chris Chibnall, head writer of Torchwood's first and second series and the Doctor Who series 3 episode "42".

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It's 2020, near a small Welsh hamlet. The most ambitious drilling project in history has reached deeper beneath the Earth's crust than man has ever gone before, but now the ground itself is fighting back.

The episode starts with Mo, the aforementioned drill worker, spending some quality reading time with his dyslexic son Elliot, before being reminded by wife Ambrose that his shift at the local major mining project starts soon. Having witnessed this fairly tender family life scene, it makes us feel all the more for the poor sap when something starts going wrong with the drill during 'off-hours' when he's the only one on duty, since it's his misfortune to have to fill the quotient of someone getting killed horribly in order to demonstrate how serious the situation really is.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive. (They were aiming for Rio, but the TARDIS disagreed.) The Doctor, never to be dissuaded from something of interest, tunes out Amy's complaints as he examines the strange feel of the ground beneath him and patches of blue grass all over the place. And there are people in the distance waving at them. According to the Doctor, who's the only one to have binoculars on him, it's a ten years older Rory and Amy, come to visit the place out of a sense of nostalgia. The Doctor explains that it would be a bad idea to meet up with them, and instead goes to have a look at the big mining thing.

Rory puts Amy's engagement ring in the TARDIS for safekeeping. He stashes the ring away before setting out after them, but gets somewhat waylaid by Elliot and Ambrose. Judging from the Police Box, they assume that he's a plainclothes police officer come to investigate the disappearance of people buried in the graveyard, coffins and all. And since on the surface the graves to all knowledge and appearances haven't been touched, it's as if the ground has all but swallowed them up.

Amy and the Doctor sonic-and-enter the premises of the drilling project, and come across Dr. Nasreen Chaudhry and Tony Mack, the two people directing this project. They're trying to work out what's wrong with the drill, where Mo went to, and where that big hole in the floor came from. The Doctor's most worried by the last, especially since it's started to steam. And of course he's right, as the ground situated under the room begins to tremble and more holes appear in the floor in quick succession. Nasreen and the Doctor make it to safety, but Tony gets stuck; Amy dashes to help him instead of making her own escape, and she starts getting pulled down into the earth for her trouble. She just gets pulled out of his grasp and under the earth.

The Doctor and Nasreen decide to head underground to bargain with the Silurians (remember them?), one of whom is under the watchful eye of Rory, crazed mother Ambrose and Tony, Ambrose's father; they have taken at least three people hostage so far and stung Tony with something nasty. And green. Also, in the middle of all that, Nasreen and Tony discover that they're in love.

The Doctor quickly mobilizes the ragtag family into a makeshift army. The reptilians put a pitch-dark barrier dome around the area and kidnap Ambrose's son, but not before he manages to draw a very accurate map of the area and tremendously helps the Doctor. The Doctor realises that he should have watched the boy more carefully and vows to rescue him.

Amy is revealed to be in the Silurians' underground science lab, soon to be dissected while still completely conscious, as frantically warned by Mo, who hasn't completely healed from his ordeal. Also, it's not just one little tribe, as the captured Silurian Damsel in Distress says. It's an entire civilization.

Tropes that this episode provides:
""Have you met monsters before?" "Yes."
 * Beneath the Earth
 * Beware the Nice Ones: The Doctor gives off strong vibes of this with Ambrose and her weapon gathering. How can someone be that scary while being so polite and reasonable?
 * Big Damn Kiss: Tony, afraid they're about to die, kisses Nasreen.
 * Big No: The Doctor does several after.
 * Book Ends: The future selves waving to the present from a distant hill.
 * Campbell Country: Cwmtaff, Wales, a dreary hamlet apparently on loan from Torchwood. Complete with hills, mists, and an old church.
 * Chekhov's Boomerang: One is thrown at the beginning of the episode with Amy and Rory standing on the hill, waving at their future selves. It got worse.
 * Chekhov's Gun:
 * What do you want to bet the engagement ring's gonna be significant by the end of the series?
 * Ambrose's pile of weapons.
 * The Meals On Wheels van.
 * Christmas Cake/Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have! (where do you classify a woman between forty and fifty?): Nasreen. Also Nerds Are Sexy.
 * Combat Tentacles: Alaya has a long, prehensile tongue that can lash out and inject venom.
 * Continuity Nod

"Are you scared of them?"

"No. They're scared of me.""

""Oi! Don't diss the Sonic!""
 * When she enters the TARDIS, rather than the customary "It's bigger on the inside!", Nasreen describes it as "Fantastic!"
 * Yet another Moff reference - the sonic screwdriver still doesn't do wood (but don't say that that's rubbish within earshot of the Doctor).

"Doctor: ...ah.."
 * And as in Inferno/The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, everything begins to go wrong when scientists want to drill very far down, be it to the center of a planet or simply through the crust.
 * The Silurian force-field is reminiscent of the Atraxi force-field. "Isolated village cut off by energy barrier generated by something alien that's been buried underneath it for centuries" was also done in The Daemons.
 * The Doctor tries to interrogate a chained-up old enemy.
 * The Doctor vetoes Amy's idea to go and meet their future selves - bad things might happen if two different versions of a person meet.
 * The "hungry earth" bit is reminiscent of Frontios.
 * Cute Monster Girl: Alaya, basically.
 * Damsel in Distress: Amy, held hostage by the Silurians, and Alaya, held hostage by the humans.
 * Dude in Distress: Mo clamped to the vivisection table.
 * Doesn't Like Guns: Ambrose pulls out a stockpile of weapons. The Doctor asks her, very kindly, to put them away.
 * Dug Too Deep
 * Everybody Lives: Nobody died in this episode. The Doctor's determined to keep it that way. We'll find out next episode if he succeeds.
 * Fantastic Racism: The Silurians regard humans as 'stinking apes' and want to wipe us out. So what's new?
 * Foreshadowing: "The man who dies again and again" is standing in a grave.
 * Gender Blender Name: Ambrose.
 * Genre Blind:
 * While preparing for the Silurians' imminent arrival, the Doctor waves off the dyslexic kid when he mentions he left his headphones at home - letting him run off on his own while quite-possibly hostile aliens natives are about to emerge. The Doctor's Oh Crap face when he realises he was the last one to see the kid shows that he's aware of it.
 * Just as bad, Ambrose refuses to believe any of what the Doctor is saying, even though she was just outside looking up at a weird giant force field.
 * Green-Skinned Space Babe: Alaya, albeit a green-skinned subterranean babe.
 * Hand Wave: A brief one explaining why Silurians look so radically different compared to the older ones.
 * Hot Mom: Ambrose.
 * Hot Scientist: Nasreen Chaudhry, in a distinguished, Christmas Cake kind of way.
 * Idiot Ball: The Mama Bear grabs hold of it quite firmly from minute one.
 * Lampshade Hanging: They're deep under the earth, it should be very, very hot. Nasreen asks why it's not. The Doctor says "I don't know" and they both shrug it off.
 * Last of His Kind: The female Silurian warrior claims to be the last of her species. The Doctor replies that he is the last of his species, he knows "how that sits in the heart", and that faking it is an insult.
 * L Is for Dyslexia: Elliot is dyslexic and compensates through drawing a map of the area to help with surveillance, and is extremely attached to his audio books (which include Sherlock Holmes). The writers got a bit Anvilicious with how it's okay to be dyslexic.
 * Mad Doctor: was certainly a visual example of this trope,
 * Mama Bear: Elliot's mother goes a little nuts after he's kidnapped.
 * Never the Selves Shall Meet: The Doctor insists that Amy and Rory do not try to interact with their future selves on the hill.
 * Night Vision Sunglasses
 * Non-Mammal Mammaries: Despite being reptilian, the Silurian females do have some chest.
 * Oh Crap: The Doctor pulls a nice one at the cliffhanger, when he discovers.


 * Playing with Syringes:
 * The Reptilians: The Silurians, Doctor Who's most famous lizard-people, are back.
 * Ridiculously-Fast Construction: There is no way it only took them nine minutes to set up their makeshift surveillance system.
 * Rousing Speech: The Doctor gives one, following which Nasreen even starts clapping. She's the only one, unfortunately.
 * Shout-Out: The Night Vision Shades were extremely reminiscent of They Live.
 * Slow Clap: Nasreen unsuccessfully tries to start one after the Doctor's Rousing Speech.
 * Some Kind of Force Field: Albeit revealed with a slingshot rather than by someone walking into it.
 * Strapped to An Operating Table:
 * Sunglasses At Night: Justified; they're slimmed-down Night Vision Goggles.
 * Taxonomic Term Confusion: Homo reptilia would mean they were descended from apes, the same way humans are. They'd be something along the lines of Reptilia sapiens (except reptilia is a class, not a genus).

"Alaya: We lived here long before the apes! The Doctor: Doesn't give you automatic rights to it now, I'm afraid."
 * Title Drop: Sort of. The Doctor references the episode's working title, The Ground Beneath Their Feet.
 * Tranquil Fury: When Alaya, the Silurian prisoner, tries to gain sympathy from the Doctor by lying about being the last of her species, his expression stays quite polite, until he begins talking, "I know what it's like to be the last of a species, because I'm the last of mine. I know how it sits in the heart so, please, don't insult me." And his expression goes Icy Cold..'
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: The Silurians' motivation is reminiscent of Zionism, and conflicts between native peoples and immigrants in countries such as America and Australia.


 * What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Played straight and inverted. The straight play comes to the fore in the following episode.
 * The inversion comes in the Silurans. They're more than happy to kill stinking apes...and vivisect them...while they're awake.
 * Who Wears Short Shorts?: Amy was dressed for RIO!