Doctor Who and The Silurians

"Doctor Who Meets the Silurians", "Doctor Who Encounters the Silurians", "Doctor Who Likes the Silurians"

"The One With Doctor Who and the Silurians" (USA), "The Silurians" (people who don't call it Doctor Who and the Silurians)

Doctor Who meets some people who aren't Silurians

*** - Paul Darrow, Paul Darrow, Paul Darrow

"I'm going to have a facelift and come back in a few years to finish the job" (the head Silurian, cut from final version as Warriors From the Deep was a sore point even in 1970)

"I'm beginning to lose confidence for the first time in my pants - and that covers several thousand years"

Caroline John's "It'll make a nite... nice break" was a rare example of her lapsing into her native tongue.

This story was based on a script called “The Sea Devils” which was submitted in 1969.

One of the Silurians was played by future BBC news reader Peter ‘Stomper’ Sissons. Then a jobbing actor, Mr Sissons also had roles in ‘Confessions of a Milkman’, ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ and ‘Eskimo Nell’

The Clackton Cone said this story was ‘Genuinely hard to understand’ while the Skegness Shield viewed it as ‘best watched in bed with a glass of absinthe’

Peter Miles and Bobby ‘Sir Bobby’ Charlton were joint winners of the Comb-over of the Year award in 1970. Their prize – a golden comb – was cut in half and each received only a portion. They never spoke again.

Martin Jarvis appears in episode three as a rock. You can tell it’s him as he is a really convincing rock. He totally loses himself in the role.

Jon Pertwee whistled too much during the making of this story and Fulton Mackay told him either he stop whistling or “I’ll shove your lips so far down your throat that you’ll be able to kiss your arse from the inside”

...is that you shouldn’t evolve into the superior race on a planet without checking to see if it’s ok first

Si Hunt

"Story BBB inspired me to set up Bendaton's first (and to date only) potholing club. It wasn't a happy experience once the pleasures of writing up a set of Club Rules had been exhausted. I came up with some fascinating ones but, I knew deep down, that sooner or later I would have to let other people join in and sully my pure and perfect society. I put an advert in the Bendaton Probe which, due to a typographical error, placed "Pot" at the end of the first line and "holing" at the beginning of the second. Hence me being inundated by membership application from drug smoking h-o-m-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-s. Once I'd sifted through the riff raff, the proles and the weirdoes I was left with myself, Ian Devine and a rat faced man called Philip. I didn't have the heart to tell Ian Devine that he wasn't entirely cut out for clambering through narrow underground passages and let him learn that for himself when he became wedged in Nonce's Opening (a famed cave on the outskirts of Bendaton) and had to be winched out by the fire brigade. The rat faced man called Philip and I explored deeper passages and, aside from the fact that Philip fell down a gully and was never seen again, it was rather a successful first exploration. Sadly the rodent faced Philip's membership subscription cheque failed to be honoured by the bank and the society folded. It's a good job he fell to his certain death as I was fuming and wouldn't have been able to prevent myself from giving him a piece of my mind."

Sid Tozer, writing in "Romana's Punt" cited Doctor Who and the Silurians as "the finest seven part story since Marco Polo, with the exception of Evil of the Daleks, and even then it might be better than either of them as I've never seen them but they sound good according to people who've seen them. I haven't seen the Silurians either but I've got a friend who recorded the episodes on his reel to reel tape recorder and he leant me episode three." Meanwhile Barry Mendel said he would be willing to donate "whichever kidney does the least work or enough of my liver to save the life of a small child" in exchange for a video of the story as part of his regular feature in "Gallifrey Hermit". The serial got a mention in the Paul Darrow fanzine "Avon's Bitches" with their correspondent saying it was "televisual chocolate" to see Mr Darrow in uniform and that "my husband's electric razor was too sticky to use the next morning."