On Wenley Moor in Derbyshire, a nuclear energy research center is suffering mysterious power losses and a series of staff breakdowns. Investigating on behalf of UNIT, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart calls the Doctor in to help, assisted by the scientist Liz Shaw. What the Doctor discovers is quite unexpected: the power losses are being caused by a group of intelligent, indigenous reptiles living in caves deep beneath the moor. These are the creatures who ruled Earth before Man, and they have lain dormant for centuries. Now awoken, they still believe Earth to be their planet. A power struggle amongst the Silurians threatens to overwhelm the Doctor's attempts to achieve peace between the reptiles and the humans. And when a deadly virus is released and spread throughout the country, the Doctor and Liz must work against the clock to save humanity… In an additional bonus interview, Caroline John, who also provides the linking narration for the story, recalls making Doctor Who and the Silurians for television.
Author
Malcolm Hulke was a British science fiction writer best known for his tenure as a writer on the popular series Doctor Who. He is credited with writing eight stories for Doctor Who, mostly featuring the Third Doctor as played by Jon Pertwee. With Terrance Dicks, he wrote the final serial of Patrick Troughton's run as the Doctor, the epic ten-part story "The War Games." Hulke may be best known for writing "The Silurians," the story that created the titular race that is still featured in Doctor Who. Hulke's stories were well-known for writing characters that were not black and white in terms of morality: there was never a clear good guy vs. bad guy bent to his story. Hulke joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1945 and worked briefly as a typist in the party's headquarters. He left the party in 1951, objecting to the Soviet Union's hostility to Yugoslavia and its line on the Korean War, but soon rejoined, and appears to have remained a member of the party, on until the early 1960s. His politics remained firmly on the left, and this was reflected in his writings, which often explored anti-authoritarian, environmental, and humanist themes. In addition to his television writing, Hulke wrote the novelizations of seven television Doctor Who stories, each of which had written for the screen. He died at the age of fifty-four, shortly before his novelization of "The War Games" would be published.
