Saturday saw a baking hot day, with children playing in the park, the smell of barbeque smoke surrounding the air, and my computer exploding! However, for those of us who stayed inside the sweltering house to watch the eighth episode of the series, it was really worth it…
‘The Hungry Earth’ gets off to a rather chilling start, when a young boy’s father is soon dragged into the evil depths of the ground itself. This immediately sets up the episode with a great mystery, and intrigues the viewer (all ten of us, everyone else was sunbathing) to carry on watching.
The best parts of the episode came when the Doctor was having to face emotional battles, mainly watching Amy be pulled into the earth, which writer Chris Chibnall pitched just perfectly. Arthur Darvill once again shone in the role of Amy’s boyfriend Rory, who portrayed real emotion when discovering that she had been captured by the Silurian race below.
One of the most impressive factors in the episode were the special effects, which benefited from not requiring too much of them. The CGI tongue of the Silurians worked well with the action, and complemented this new idea of a weapon, without spoiling their classic design. The other impressive factor was the scaly lizard-like prosthetic work on the Silurian masks, which made the Silurians more believable than they had ever been in the past (mainly because they used to be cheap rubber costumes, which exposed parts of the actor’s body).
The only disappointing part of the episode was the cliffhanger, which seemed to fall a bit flat without much of a build-up to it, and not the usual dramatic score from Murray Gold. Having said that, the idea of the Silurians building a civilisation underneath the planet is both an ingenious and terrifying one, but could have been explored better with tighter-cut shots and a more horrified reaction from the Doctor, to get the full drama out of the situation.
Rating: 5/5 stars
You can also give your rating in the new poll, ‘Beneath the Surface…’
The official Doctor Who website has been updated with four brand new desktop wallpapers, designed by Stuart Manning. The designs have been made with classic twists on recent adventures, including ‘Victory of the Daleks’, ‘The Hungry Earth’, ‘The Lodger’, and the exclusive Christmas story ‘Snowfall’.
