Cold Blood (TV story)

Cold Blood was the ninth episode of the fifth series of BBC Wales Doctor Who. It was the second part of a two-part story that featured the return of Silurians and the death of companion Rory Williams.

Synopsis
It is the most important day in the history of Earth: the dawn of a new age of harmony… or the start of its final war.

The Doctor must face his most difficult challenge yet and he tries desperately to ensure Alaya's prediction of a massacre does not come true. Meanwhile, what fate will befall the captured Amy and can Tony and his friends be trusted?

Plot
''This is the story of our planet, Earth, of the day 1,000 years past when we came to share it with a race known as Humanity. It is the story of the Doctor who helped our races find common ground, and the terrible losses he suffered. It is the story of our past, and must never be forgotten.''

The Doctor and Nasreen have entered the Silurian city, using the 'front door approach'. However, several Silurian troops, woken from suspended animation, quickly capture them.

Amy and Mo remain in the lab, and the Silurian doctor, Malohkeh, is about to start the dissection process on Amy, but is called away to examine the Doctor, leaving Amy with the device to release herself and Mo. They escape and find Elliot - in suspended animation, but alive.

Malohkeh now has the Doctor and Nasreen strapped to slabs in his laboratory. First, he scans the Doctor and then attempts to decontaminate him of the surface bacteria. However, this instead harms him since he is not human, and Malohkeh stops the procedure, against the wishes of Commander Restac, but since Malohkeh is also a Commander by rank, she cannot use any authority.

On the surface, Alaya refuses to help Tony when he asks her to cure him of the venomous sting on his shoulder. This eventually provokes Ambrose to taser Alaya, but unfortunately this has more of an effect on the Silurian than it would on a human, and inadvertantly kills her, thus destroying their only bargaining chip.

Restac has decided to have the Doctor, Amy, Mo and Nasreen executed, against the wishes of Malohkeh. However, before anything happens, Restac calls Rory to negotiate the return of Alaya. However, Ambrose claims she has had enough of following orders from Silurians and refuses, prompting Restac to order the first execution - Amy. The screen Restac had been manipulating on the surface goes blank, but before the Silurians can fire, the leader of the Silurians, Eldane, arrives and orders otherwise. This gives the Doctor a chance to attempt a negotiation, making Amy and Nasreen ambassadors for humanity. Meanwhile, Malohkeh releases Elliot, returning him to his father. He then discovers that Restac has awakened more of her warriors, and is killed by her before he can do anything.

While Rory, Ambrose and Tony make their way to the Silurian city via the tunnels, Amy, Nasreen and Eldane talk about how the Silurians might be able to live alongside Humans. Nasreen is worried about the already critical strain on resources, but Eldane says that Silurian technology could avoid these problems, and Amy points out several abandoned places that the Silurians could settle in - among them, the Australian Outback, the Sahara and the Nevada Plains. As the meeting concludes, the Doctor enters and comments on how well things had gone.

However, at this moment, Rory enters with the body of Alaya. Eldane is silent, and Restac begins to cry. The Doctor tries to avoid conflict, but Restac goes to wake some Silurians up from the suspended animation, and then gain revenge on humanity.

Eldane, the Doctor and the humans go to a control room to decide how to respond. Tony reveals that he had, as a precaution, set the drill to activate on a 15 minute timer. Eldane decides to use a toxic gas, designed to protect the city as a last-minute defense. The Silurians remaining in suspended animation would be safe, but any not in suspended animation would be killed. Finally, to prevent further drilling, they would destroy the drill with an energy surge - when activated, it would explode.

Tony decides to stay, since the Silurians can cure his wound, which is causing mutation. Nasreen also decides to remain. The Doctor tells everyone to run out of the city and wait by the TARDIS, while he asks Eldane to set up the waking up procedure on a delay of 1000 years. He also says to remember to spread the word, through religion if necessary, that the Silurians will awaken in 3020 and come back to the surface. Amy comes back to the Doctor to hurry him up, and they run into Rory, who was doing the same, and the three run back to the TARDIS, where everyone is waiting. The Doctor opens the door and directs everyone to where he wants them to go.

And then he sees a crack in the wall opposite the TARDIS. Amy instantly recognizes it. The Doctor is distressed that he doesn't understand it, despite Prisoner Zero and the Angels knowing what they were. He reaches into the crack and retrieves a smoking piece of debris. As he goes to return to the TARDIS, a weakened Restac arrives, and attempts to shoot the Doctor, but Rory takes the blast, and subsequently dies. As Amy is forced to leave by the Doctor, Rory is swallowed by the crack, thus erasing him from history. The Doctor does his best to help Amy remember him, since this is possible without distraction. However, a bumpy landing ruins the effect, and Amy forgets Rory as if he had never existed. All that remains of Rory is the engagement ring, that he'd given Amy, on the floor of the TARDIS' console room.

The Doctor, Amy, Elliot, Mo and Ambrose leave the TARDIS in time to see the drill destroyed by the Silurian energy surge. Amy sees herself, once again, on the hill, and for a moment thinks she saw someone else, but quickly forgets about it and reminds the Doctor of his promise of Rio. As the Doctor returns, he looks at the debris he retrieved from the crack. It's a scorched blue and white fragment of wood, with the incomplete words "POLICE TE" and "FR" in black on the white. The Doctor recognizes it immediately, and holds it against the TARDIS notice - "POLICE TELEPHONE FREE FOR USE OF PUBLIC" and is seen to be dreading the possible implications.

Now as my people awaken from their 1,000 year sleep ready to rise to the surface, my thoughts turn back to the Doctor, the losses he suffered then and the greater losses that were still to come.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
 * Dr. Nasreen Chaudhry - Meera Syal
 * Alaya/Restac - Neve McIntosh
 * Tony Mack - Robert Pugh
 * Elliot - Samuel Davies
 * Mo - Alun Raglan
 * Ambrose - Nia Roberts
 * Eldane - Stephen Moore
 * Malohkeh - Richard Hope

The Doctor

 * The Doctor asks for a stick of celery after the almost lethal "decontamination", a reference to the Fifth Doctor, who wore a stick of celery on his lapel and stated it was to detect certain gasses and was also an "excellent restorative".
 * The Doctor states that Prisoner Zero knew of the Cracks in Time.
 * The Doctor also mentions that the Weeping Angels laughed at him.

Individuals

 * Rory Williams is killed and consumed by a crack, effectively erasing him from the timeline.

Technology

 * The Homo Reptilia's transport pads use gravity bubbles.

Story notes

 * This episode was incorrectly entitled Warm Planet by the BBC.
 * It is revealed the Doctor's TARDIS is at least at the center of the explosion that started the cracks, as the Doctor fishes a piece of TARDIS out of the crack, which is burnt and destroyed.
 * Though it apparently was not used in the episode, in Doctor Who Confidential a cut segment from the scene in which the Silurians are marching the Doctor and Nasreen to the court hall appears. In the dialogue, Nasreen expresses that she does not want to be executed "down here". The Doctor commiserates, saying that the "last time I was executed it really put a blight on the day." There are several possible events to which this could be a reference, but as this scene did not appear on screen it should not affect continuity.
 * The Doctor uses the phrase "squeaky bum time" originally coined by Sir Alex Ferguson in 2003. Ferguson is the manager of football club Manchester United. Before Matt Smith became an actor, he planned to become a professional footballer and is still a fan of the sport, perhaps why the line was included.
 * This is the first episode since Part One of DW: The End of Time to have narration. Other stories with narration include DW: The Deadly Assassin, Doctor Who (1996), Army of Ghosts and Human Nature. The opening narration, however, was not actually in the script. According to Ashley Way in the DVD commentary, it was added by Steven Moffat in the edit.

Ratings
Overnight ratings were 5.7 million (5.4 million on BBC1, 0.3 million on HD) for a 27.2% share.

Offical viewing figures was 7.04 million.

Rumours

 * It was rumoured that the Silurians were stealing bodies to splice with Silurian DNA to make half-human/half-Silurians. It was revealed in part 1 and 2 that they were dissecting humans to learn more about them.
 * According to on-set fan reports, from filming, it seems that Rory Williams will die by saving the Doctor and then be swallowed by the Time Field crack near the end of the episode. This was proven true.
 * The Doctor will look into a crack and see the TARDIS door sign on fire. This was mostly true, as the Doctor recovers a door sign on the TARDIS exterior with burn marks, but no TARDIS is seen physically.
 * There will be conflict among the Silurians. This was true; there was a military-science conflict.

Filming locations

 * The Silurian Council Chamber is a redress of the Temple of Peace which had previously been used as the Platform One meeting room set from DW: The End of the World, the Senate building seen in DW: Gridlock, the temple of the Sibylline Sisterhood in DW The Fires of Pompeii and the Mona Lisa chamber at the art gallery from SJA: Mona Lisa's Revenge. 
 * Plantasia Botanic Gardens, Parc Tawe, Swansea (this exact same location had previously been used in DW: The Doctor's Daughter) 

Production errors

 * When running from the Silurians in the tunnels, the Doctor holds his sonic screwdriver. In the shots of the Doctor, the screwdriver is vertical, but in the shots of the Silurians, the screwdriver is more horizontal.
 * When Amy is trying not to forget Rory, the memory of him getting shot does not show the laser blast striking him.
 * When Restac shows up, the Doctor has just pulled the shard of the TARDIS out of the crack. He starts to push himself off the ground. The camera cuts to Restac dragging herself towards them, and then back to the Doctor who finishes jumping to his feet. The shard of the TARDIS is nowhere in sight. It has not been left on the ground, and there wasn't time for the Doctor to put it in his pocket.

Continuity

 * The Doctor mentions the Silurians going into hibernation when the Moon first aligned with the Earth.
 * The Doctor directly references the events of DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians.
 * Clips from DW: The Eleventh Hour, The Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone, and The Vampires of Venice were shown.
 * Rory is one of only a handful of recurring companions who have been killed. The most similar occurrence in the past was the death of the Fifth Doctor companion Adric.
 * Rory pushes the Doctor out of the line of fire only to be mortally wounded himself, just as Jenny does in DW: The Doctor's Daughter.
 * The Doctor mentions fixed points in time again, previously mentioned in DW: The Fires of Pompeii, The Waters of Mars.
 * The warrior class of Silurians use heat ray weapons, similar to those utilised by the Sea Devils in DW: Warriors of the Deep.
 * A Gravity Bubble is used by the Silurians. They were also used by Edwin Bracewell to keep the Spitfires in space. (DW: Victory of the Daleks)
 * Amy pickpockets Malokeh so she can escape, similar to how Darius Pike did with Thorne. (K9TV: Liberation)
 * The Crack appears twice in this episode. It appears on the wall where the TARDIS landed, and, if you look carefully, you can see it when the Doctor and Nasareen are confronting the Silurians in the tunnels underneath the Earth. It appears at the bottom of the screen.

Timeline

 * This story occurs after: DW: The Hungry Earth
 * This story occurs before: DYD: The Coldest War

Home video releases
BBC Video - Doctor Who Series Five - Volume Three was released on 2nd August 2010 (UK Only) on DVD and Blu-ray, featuring Amy's Choice, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood.