Doctor Who: Doctor Who And The Silurians (1970)

I am not the world's biggest fan of the Jon Pertwee incarnation of The Doctor, but had I seen Doctor Who And The Silurians before any of his other episodes I might have rated him higher.

The Doctor has been exiled to Earth and is just getting used to his new position as "scientific adviser" to UNIT, when he and Liz Shaw (Caroline John) join the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) in investigating mysterious power losses at an underground nuclear research centre in Derbyshire.

The research centre is built into a cave network that just happens to the resting place of a legion of hibernating Silurians - the bipedal, humanoid lizards who lived on Earth before mankind evolved.

The Silurians have been tapping the centre's power to awaken their sleeping kin and one of the scientists, Dr Quin (the late, great Fulton Mackay), has been helping them, believing they will allow him access to their advanced technology.

The Doctor discovers what is going on and tries to broker peace between the Silurians and the humans, but is hampered by the fact that the humans either don't believe him or want to wipe out the "monsters" and only the leader of the Silurians agrees with his aims. The Silurian leader is overthrown and the new lizardman leader releases a virulent plague to wipe "ape" life off the planet they wish to reclaim as their own.

The Doctor and Liz struggle to concoct an antidote before too many people die, then the Silurians reveal their next plan: to turn the Earth into a baking hot house by destroying the ozone layer (although it is incorrectly referred to as the Van Allen Belt).

A few bits of wonky science aside (there is a lot of misinformation about when exactly the Silurians roamed the planet), and if you can ignore the awful rubber monster costumes, silly puppetry, garish lighting and colours that mar many of Pertwee's adventures, this is a brilliant, tense, political story that rattles along at a lick that belies its seven-episode, almost three-hour duration.

There isn't a vast amount of padding for such a long story, although the script could probably have done with trimming some of the many secondary characters - although Dr Lawrence (Peter Miles), the research centre's obnoxious, comb over-sporting director would be sadly missed for his scenery chewing turns.

We also get to see, in the denouement, a darker side of the Brigadier.

The Silurians themselves, once you look past the rubberiness of their get-ups, are great 'aliens' (in the broadest sense, technically they have as much right to be called 'Earthlings' as us); a reasonably well-rounded, complex species - not intergalactic Nazis like the daleks and cybermen with their excellent range of psychic abilities channelled through the third eye on their scaly foreheads.

These psychic powers seemed as multi-faceted as the sonic screwdriver, with uses ranging from operating machinery and drilling through rock (and 'regrowing' it) to mental torture (giving Pertwee an opportunity to use his cross-eyed, gurning shtick).

What I'd really like to know, though, is in the final episode, when the Doctor is wearing a T-shirt, we can clearly see his (Pertwee's) snake tattoo on his arm; has this ever been incorpated into the Doctor Who mythology? I'd be very surprised if it hasn't, there must be a clever story in there somewhere: do any other incarnations of our favourite Gallifreyan have a tat?

The Silurians deserve their moment in the sun in the new era of Doctor Who and join my growing list of Classic creatures I'd like to see revived (this batch, surely, remain frozen under the moors - something could easily wake them up) by Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat.