260 Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Three

EPISODE: Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 260
STORY NUMBER: 052
TRANSMITTED: 14 February 1970
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Beneath the Surface (The Silurians / The Sea Devils / Warriors of the Deep)
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

When the humanoid creature sees Liz it flees. The Brigadier orders a manhunt over the moor. Quinn arrives at the barn behaving suspiciously. Tracks for the creature are found and end at some tire marks. The Doctor visits Quinn at his cottage, finding the heating on full blast and it's owner uncooperative. Baker bursts into a meeting between Unit and Dr Lawrence demanding a search of the caves. He's escorted back to the sickbay by Captain Hawkins while Dr Lawrence tells the Brigadier he is displeased with Unit's performance and has summoned under secretary Masters from the ministry. The Doctor breaks into Quinn's office, discovering a globe depicting the Earth millions of years ago. He's discovered by Miss Dawson warns Quinn. Quinn says he will keep the creature captive until he gets the scientific information he desires. The Doctor visits Quinn's cottage again and finds him dead. Taking the signal device from him, the Doctor activates it, summoning the creature into the room.

As this episode finished Liz turned to me and asked how many were left. The look on her face when I said Four said it all. It's just so slow this story, taking ages to go anywhere. Major Baker's annoying me and Doctor Lawrence is annoying me which is a shame as I enjoy other performances by both the actors involved. I quite liked Quinn but he copped it this episode! There's some great goggle eyed Pertwee at the end of the episode as he sees the Silurian for the first time.

This episode and the previous one use Hankley Common for much of the out door filming and Sheep Hatch Farm for (obviously) the farm scenes.

Nowadays when we talk about missing episodes of Doctor Who we automatically think of the Hartnell and Troughton episodes. Once upon a time there were missing Pertwee episodes too. When Ian Levene visited the film and video library in 1978 their Pertwee holdings amounted to:

Spearhead from Space: 1, 2, 3, 4 (16mm film)
The Ambassadors of Death: 1
The Claws of Axos: 1, 4
The Dæmons: 4
Day of the Daleks: 1, 2, 3, 4
The Sea Devils: 4, 5, 6
The Mutants: 3, 4, 5, 6
The Three Doctors: 1, 2, 3, 4
Carnival of Monsters: 1, 2, 3, 4
Frontier in Space: 4, 5
Planet of the Daleks: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6
The Green Death: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
The Time Warrior: 1, 2, 3, 4
Invasion of the Dinosaurs:
Death to the Daleks: 2, 3, 4
The Monster of Peladon: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Planet of the Spiders: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

All, bar Spearhead from Space, were held on the original 624 line transmission tapes.

When Levene visited BBC Enterprises he found black & white film copies of all of the stories from Jon Pertwee's first four seasons, from Spearhead from Space to the Green. This filled in the missing episode for most of the stories listed above and supplied complete versions of The Silurians, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, Mind of Evil, Colony in Space, Curse of Peladon & The Time Monster. This meant that the number of missing Pertwee episodes was reduced to 7, Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1-6 and Death to the Daleks 1. At some point the 625 line transmission tapes for Invasion of the Dinosaurs 2-6 were found leaving just Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 and Death to the Daleks 1 missing from the archive. Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 surfaced as a rough black & white film recording while Death to the Daleks was recovered first as a 525 line US video and then as a 625 line recording being used for transmission in Australia.