It makes sense that the drastic change in the show's format for this season would inspire its writers to try something new, bold, and daring. Malcolm Hulke certainly seems to have taken that opportunity and ran like hell with it.
In my wrap-up of the Troughton era, I mentioned how the predominant trend in treating aliens in that era of the show was to write them as monsters. There were very few episodes where the alien beings were rendered as anything but existential threats to humanity, a monolithic group who cannot be reasoned with. Although several strong stories maintained this format, it was ethically worrying in some ways. It's notable that the one major exception was The Faceless Ones, also by Hulke. One imagines that he had a bit of an ax to grind when he wrote this.
What ensues is perhaps the most tragic, most morally gray, and angriest story the show has done so far. It's fascinating watching the shift in the story at the start of part four, when after following an apparently dangerous reptilian creature, and finding a human scientist dead, the Doctor introduces himself to our first Silurian with a how-do-you-do and a smile. After so many bases under siege, it's kind of a whiplash moment. Watching the Doctor struggle so mightily for all those episodes to secure that common ground between humanity and the Silurians is just heartbreaking, knowing ahead of time how it ends.
It's an interesting choice having the Silurians not be aliens from another planet, but rather the original inhabitants of the planet Earth. It adds some implications that we're talking about issues of indigeneity and native rights that I don't think were exactly intended by Hulke, and would probably complicate the message of the story at any rate. What we have is essentially a story decrying xenophobia, and in a fairly pessimistic way at that. After all, even though there are those desiring peace on both sides (although the Silurians as a society really aren't rendered all that well), the tendencies of the worst specimens of both humanity and Silurian kind win out, ending in disaster.
As more or less a side note, in 2021 the scenes of Londoners dropping dead in the streets as a violent new contagion spreads hit a little differently. I chuckled nervously when Lawrence refused to get his shots because of "an imaginary epidemic". Some things never change.
Jon Pertwee is extremely impressive as the Doctor in this serial. He has the same charm and intelligence from his first outing, but this time he's forced to play a Doctor in distress (hoo hoo) and it's positively heart wrenching to see him struggle under the pressure of the situation. The atmosphere of this story is so positively anxious and uncertain, and the Doctor seems to feel the weight of it more than anybody. His desperation to prevent a genocide seems to pay off in the end, and the Doctor seems so very happy to have the chance to study the advances of the Silurians.
And then the bombs go off. The anger and betrayal in the Doctor's gaze as he drives off says it all.
For the first time in years, the Doctor reaches out to try and make peace between humanity and another race, only to be thwarted by the very people he's just promised to work for and protect. We're only eleven episodes into the UNIT era, and it feels like Malcolm Hulke has already delivered a scathing retort to the new format. I'm not nearly as negative on it, but this does raise the interesting question of whether it's possible for the Doctor to be the Doctor when he's beholden to a military hierarchy, where panicking civil servants and generals can just countermand the Brigadier and ruin everything. There is an essential contradiction behind this new era, and I'll be intrigued to watch it play out.
The Ambassadors of Death is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 21 March 2021.)
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