The Silurian Candidate

Main Range #229

Released: 12 September 2017

Listened: 2/3/21

Silurian stories always have a bit of grey morality to them, and the Seventh Doctor sometimes does too, but this time he goes way more enigmatic than the situation calls for, almost deliberately winding Ace up by letting her think he’s on the Silurians’ side. The year is 2085, meaning this story takes place shortly after “Warriors of the Deep,” and the political factions from that story are still in place. Some Silurians have woken up early, as they do, and they have records not only of “Warriors,” but also of “The Silurans” and the Doctor’s history going back to “Bloodtide.” Although this story was released well after “The Hungry Earth,” those events aren’t mentioned. It follows the usual pattern for Silurian stories, with the Silurians assuming that humans are dangerous and taking steps to get rid of them, in this case replacing a high-level human politician with a mind-controlled plant. There’s some misdirection as to who the plant is, but it’s so blatant that it’s easy to assume that the story will pull a fast one, except it doesn’t. Ace spends most of the story angry at the Doctor for being so secretive, and Mel spends it mostly confused, because the Doctor she remembers usually didn’t act like that (except for Pompeii). This leaves Ace pretty much stuck on one note, and although Mel spends some time being introspective, it doesn’t really add up to much. Nicholas Asbury plays an Australian with an accent so thick it’s almost a parody, and Caitlin Thorburn plays a series of robots with an American accent that sounds a lot like Nicola Bryant’s. It’s a story with a lot of plot and settings, which feels like it should be more interesting than it is.