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[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Hungry_Earth_5372.jpg]]
->'''The Doctor:''' Oh look, a big mining thing. Oh, I love a big mining thing. See, way better than Rio. Rio doesn't have a big mining thing.
The second two-part story of the the Eleventh Doctor's first series. Written by Creator/ChrisChibnall, head writer of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'''s first and second series and the ''Doctor Who'' series 3 episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E742 42]]".
-------
It's 2020, near a small Welsh hamlet. The most ambitious drilling project in history has reached deeper beneath the Earth's crust than man has ever gone before, but now the ground itself is fighting back.
The episode starts with Mo, a drill worker, spending some quality reading time with his dyslexic son Elliot, before being reminded by his wife Ambrose that his shift at the local major mining project starts soon. Having witnessed this fairly tender family life scene, it's obvious something will go wrong with the drill when he's the only one on duty, since it's his misfortune [[RedShirt to have to fill the quotient]] of someone getting killed horribly in order to demonstrate how serious the situation really is.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive. (They were aiming for Rio, but the TARDIS disagreed.) The Doctor, never to be dissuaded from something of interest, tunes out Amy's complaints as he examines the strange feel of the ground beneath him and patches of blue grass all over the place. And there are people in the distance waving at them. According to the Doctor, who's the only one to have binoculars on him, it's a ten-years-older Rory and Amy, come to visit the place out of a sense of nostalgia. The Doctor explains that it would be a bad idea to meet up with them, and instead goes to have a look at the big mining thing.
Rory puts Amy's engagement ring in the TARDIS for safekeeping, and gets sidetracked by Elliot and Ambrose, who assume that he's a plain-clothes police officer come to investigate the disappearance of people buried in the graveyard, coffins and all. On the surface the graves haven't been touched, and it's as if the ground has all but swallowed them up.
Amy and the Doctor sonic-and-enter the premises of the drilling project, and come across Dr Nasreen Chaudhry and Tony Mack, the two people directing this project. They're trying to work out what's wrong with the drill, where Mo went to, and where that big hole in the floor came from. The Doctor's most worried by the last, especially since it's started to steam. And of course he's ''right'', as the ground situated under the room begins to tremble and more holes appear in the floor in quick succession. Nasreen and the Doctor make it to safety, but Tony gets stuck; Amy dashes to help him instead of making her own escape, and ''she'' starts getting pulled down into the earth for her trouble. She just gets pulled out of his grasp and under the earth.
The Doctor quickly mobilises the ragtag family into a makeshift army. A pitch-dark barrier dome appears around the area and Elliott disappears, but not before he manages to draw a very accurate map of the area and tremendously helps the Doctor. The Doctor realises that he should have watched the boy more carefully and vows to rescue him.
The Doctor and Nasreen decide to head underground to bargain with the Silurians ([[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians remember]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep them]]?), one of whom is under the watchful eye of Rory, crazed mother Ambrose and Tony, Ambrose's father; they have taken at least three people hostage so far and stung Tony with something nasty. And green. Also, in the middle of all that, Nasreen and Tony discover that they're in love.
Amy is revealed to be in the Silurians' underground science lab, soon to be dissected while still completely conscious, as frantically warned by Mo, who hasn't completely healed from his ordeal. Also, it's not just one little tribe, as the captured Silurian DamselInDistress says. It's an entire civilisation.
----
!! Tropes that this episode provides:
* BeneathTheEarth
* BewareTheNiceOnes: The Doctor gives off strong vibes of this with Ambrose and her weapon gathering. How can someone be that scary while being so polite and reasonable?
* BigDamnKiss: Tony, afraid they're about to die, kisses Nasreen.
* BigNo: The Doctor does several after Amy gets pulled into the earth.
* BookEnds: The future selves waving to the present from a distant hill.
* CampbellCountry: Cwmtaff, Wales, a dreary hamlet apparently on loan from ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. Complete with hills, mists and an old church.
* ChekhovsBoomerang: One is thrown at the beginning of the episode with Amy and Rory standing on the hill, waving at their future selves. It does not work out well.
* ChekhovsGun:
** What do you want to bet the engagement ring's going be significant by the end of the series? It is. Sort of. Twice.
** Ambrose's pile of weapons.
** The Meals On Wheels van.
* CombatTentacles: Alaya has a long, prehensile tongue that can lash out and inject venom.
* ContinuityNod
-->"Have you met monsters before?"
-->"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians Yes.]]"
-->"Are you scared of them?"
-->"[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E4TheGirlInTheFireplace No. They're scared of me.]]"
** When she enters the TARDIS, rather than the customary "It's bigger on the inside!", Nasreen describes it as "Fantastic!".
** Yet another Moff reference - the sonic screwdriver still doesn't do wood (but don't say that that's rubbish within earshot of the Doctor).
--->"Oi! Don't diss the Sonic!"
** And as in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno Inferno]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E8TheImpossiblePlanet The Impossible Planet]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E9TheSatanPit The Satan Pit]], [[DugTooDeep everything begins to go wrong when scientists want to drill very far down]], be it to the centre of a planet or simply through the crust.
** The Silurian force-field is reminiscent of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E01TheEleventhHour the Atraxi force-field]]. "Isolated village cut off by energy barrier generated by something alien that's been buried underneath it for centuries" was also done in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E5TheDaemons The Daemons]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E6Dalek The Doctor tries to interrogate a chained-up old enemy.]]
** The Doctor vetoes Amy's idea to go and meet their future selves -- [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E8FathersDay bad things might happen]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E3MawdrynUndead if two different versions of a person meet.]]
** The "hungry earth" bit is reminiscent of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E3Frontios Frontios]].
* CuteMonsterGirl: Alaya, basically.
* DistressedDamsel: Amy, held hostage by the Silurians, and Alaya, held hostage by the humans.
* DistressedDude: Mo clamped to the vivisection table.
* DoesntLikeGuns: Ambrose pulls out a stockpile of weapons. The Doctor asks her, [[BewareTheNiceOnes very kindly]], to put them away.
* DugTooDeep
* EverybodyLives: Nobody died in this episode. The Doctor's determined to keep it that way. We'll find out next episode if he succeeds.
* FantasticRacism: The Silurians regard humans as 'stinking apes' and want to wipe us out. So what's new?
* GenderBlenderName: Ambrose.
* GenreBlind:
** While preparing for the Silurians' imminent arrival, the Doctor waves off the dyslexic kid when he mentions he left his headphones at home - letting him run off on his own while quite-possibly hostile [[strike:aliens]] ''natives'' are about to emerge. The Doctor's OhCrap face when he realises he was the last one to see the kid shows that he's aware of it.
** Just as bad, Ambrose refuses to believe any of what the Doctor is saying, even though she was just outside looking up at a weird giant force field.
* GoshDangItToHeck: "You better get me the hell out of here, or so help me I'm gonna kick your ''backside!''"
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Alaya, albeit a green-skinned subterranean babe.
* HandWave: A brief one explaining why Silurians look so radically different compared to the older ones.
* HotScientist: Nasreen Chaudhry, in a distinguished, ChristmasCake kind of way.
* IdiotBall: The MamaBear grabs hold of it quite firmly from minute one.
* LampshadeHanging: They're deep under the earth; it ''should'' be very, very hot. Nasreen asks why it's not. The Doctor says "I don't know" and they both shrug it off.
* LastOfHisKind: The female Silurian warrior [[BlatantLies claims to be the last of her species]]. The Doctor replies that he ''is'' the last of his species, he knows "how that sits in the heart", and that faking it is an insult.
* LIsForDyslexia: Elliot is dyslexic and compensates through drawing a map of the area to help with surveillance, and is extremely attached to his audio books (which include Literature/SherlockHolmes). The writers got a bit {{Anvilicious}} with how it's okay to be dyslexic.
* MadDoctor: The Silurian at the end was certainly a visual example of this trope, but [[SubvertedTrope he turns out to be]] a MadDoctor [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold With A Heart Of Gold]].
* MamaBear: Elliot's mother goes a little nuts after he's kidnapped.
* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: The Doctor insists that Amy and Rory do not try to interact with their future selves on the hill.
* [[NightVisionGoggles Night Vision Sunglasses]]
* NonMammalMammaries: Despite being reptilian, the Silurian females do have some chest.
* NoOSHACompliance: Most basic mining safety rules include going to check out stuff in groups of two.
* OhCrap: The Doctor pulls a nice one at the cliffhanger, when he discovers there's a wee bit more than just a dozen Silurians camped under the Earth.
-->'''Doctor''': ...ah. Maybe ''more'' than a dozen.
* PlayingWithSyringes: The Silurian doctor as he approaches Amy.
* TheReptilians: The Silurians, ''Doctor Who'''s most famous lizard-people, are back.
* RidiculouslyFastConstruction: There is no ''way'' it only took them nine minutes to set up their makeshift surveillance system.
* RousingSpeech: The Doctor gives one, following which Nasreen even starts clapping. She's the only one, unfortunately.
* SchmuckBait: So, you're alone at night, a mysterious earthquake has rocked your facility, and a strange hole has opened up. So of ''course'' Mo's first instinct is to stick his hand in there.
* ShoutOut: The [[NightVisionGoggles Night Vision Shades]] were extremely reminiscent of ''TheyLive''.
* SlowClap: Nasreen unsuccessfully tries to start one after the Doctor's RousingSpeech.
* SomeKindOfForceField: Albeit revealed with a slingshot rather than by someone walking into it.
* StrappedToAnOperatingTable: Amy and the drill worker.
* SunglassesAtNight: Justified; they're slimmed-down NightVisionGoggles.
* TaxonomicTermConfusion: ''Homo reptilia'' would mean they were descended from apes, the same way humans are. They'd be something along the lines of ''Reptilia sapiens'' (except reptilia is a class, not a genus).
%%%
%% Please no natter. If you have question with this example, delete it and/or move it to discussion.
%%%
* TitleDrop: Sort of. The Doctor references the episode's working title, ''The Ground Beneath Their Feet''.
* TranquilFury: When Alaya, the Silurian prisoner, tries to gain sympathy from the Doctor by lying about being the last of her species, his expression stays quite polite, until he begins talking, "I know what it's like to be the last of a species, because I'm the last of mine. I know how it sits in the heart so, ''please'', don't insult me." And his expression goes [[DeathGlare Icy Cold]]..'
* WhatMeasureIsANonhuman: Played straight and inverted. The straight play comes to the fore in the following episode.
** The inversion comes in the Silurans. They're more than happy to kill stinking apes...and vivisect them...while they're awake.
* WhoWearsShortShorts: Amy was dressed for RIO!
* YouKeepUsingThatWord: While 'dissection' isn't technically incorrect, as it means to cut something open to examine it, it's typically only used when talking about dead things or things that were never living in the first place. The proper term for cutting open a *living* thing to examine it is 'vivisection'.
----
->'''The Doctor:''' Oh look, a big mining thing. Oh, I love a big mining thing. See, way better than Rio. Rio doesn't have a big mining thing.
The second two-part story of the the Eleventh Doctor's first series. Written by Creator/ChrisChibnall, head writer of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'''s first and second series and the ''Doctor Who'' series 3 episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E742 42]]".
-------
It's 2020, near a small Welsh hamlet. The most ambitious drilling project in history has reached deeper beneath the Earth's crust than man has ever gone before, but now the ground itself is fighting back.
The episode starts with Mo, a drill worker, spending some quality reading time with his dyslexic son Elliot, before being reminded by his wife Ambrose that his shift at the local major mining project starts soon. Having witnessed this fairly tender family life scene, it's obvious something will go wrong with the drill when he's the only one on duty, since it's his misfortune [[RedShirt to have to fill the quotient]] of someone getting killed horribly in order to demonstrate how serious the situation really is.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive. (They were aiming for Rio, but the TARDIS disagreed.) The Doctor, never to be dissuaded from something of interest, tunes out Amy's complaints as he examines the strange feel of the ground beneath him and patches of blue grass all over the place. And there are people in the distance waving at them. According to the Doctor, who's the only one to have binoculars on him, it's a ten-years-older Rory and Amy, come to visit the place out of a sense of nostalgia. The Doctor explains that it would be a bad idea to meet up with them, and instead goes to have a look at the big mining thing.
Rory puts Amy's engagement ring in the TARDIS for safekeeping, and gets sidetracked by Elliot and Ambrose, who assume that he's a plain-clothes police officer come to investigate the disappearance of people buried in the graveyard, coffins and all. On the surface the graves haven't been touched, and it's as if the ground has all but swallowed them up.
Amy and the Doctor sonic-and-enter the premises of the drilling project, and come across Dr Nasreen Chaudhry and Tony Mack, the two people directing this project. They're trying to work out what's wrong with the drill, where Mo went to, and where that big hole in the floor came from. The Doctor's most worried by the last, especially since it's started to steam. And of course he's ''right'', as the ground situated under the room begins to tremble and more holes appear in the floor in quick succession. Nasreen and the Doctor make it to safety, but Tony gets stuck; Amy dashes to help him instead of making her own escape, and ''she'' starts getting pulled down into the earth for her trouble. She just gets pulled out of his grasp and under the earth.
The Doctor quickly mobilises the ragtag family into a makeshift army. A pitch-dark barrier dome appears around the area and Elliott disappears, but not before he manages to draw a very accurate map of the area and tremendously helps the Doctor. The Doctor realises that he should have watched the boy more carefully and vows to rescue him.
The Doctor and Nasreen decide to head underground to bargain with the Silurians ([[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians remember]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep them]]?), one of whom is under the watchful eye of Rory, crazed mother Ambrose and Tony, Ambrose's father; they have taken at least three people hostage so far and stung Tony with something nasty. And green. Also, in the middle of all that, Nasreen and Tony discover that they're in love.
Amy is revealed to be in the Silurians' underground science lab, soon to be dissected while still completely conscious, as frantically warned by Mo, who hasn't completely healed from his ordeal. Also, it's not just one little tribe, as the captured Silurian DamselInDistress says. It's an entire civilisation.
----
!! Tropes that this episode provides:
* BeneathTheEarth
* BewareTheNiceOnes: The Doctor gives off strong vibes of this with Ambrose and her weapon gathering. How can someone be that scary while being so polite and reasonable?
* BigDamnKiss: Tony, afraid they're about to die, kisses Nasreen.
* BigNo: The Doctor does several after Amy gets pulled into the earth.
* BookEnds: The future selves waving to the present from a distant hill.
* CampbellCountry: Cwmtaff, Wales, a dreary hamlet apparently on loan from ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. Complete with hills, mists and an old church.
* ChekhovsBoomerang: One is thrown at the beginning of the episode with Amy and Rory standing on the hill, waving at their future selves. It does not work out well.
* ChekhovsGun:
** What do you want to bet the engagement ring's going be significant by the end of the series? It is. Sort of. Twice.
** Ambrose's pile of weapons.
** The Meals On Wheels van.
* CombatTentacles: Alaya has a long, prehensile tongue that can lash out and inject venom.
* ContinuityNod
-->"Have you met monsters before?"
-->"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians Yes.]]"
-->"Are you scared of them?"
-->"[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E4TheGirlInTheFireplace No. They're scared of me.]]"
** When she enters the TARDIS, rather than the customary "It's bigger on the inside!", Nasreen describes it as "Fantastic!".
** Yet another Moff reference - the sonic screwdriver still doesn't do wood (but don't say that that's rubbish within earshot of the Doctor).
--->"Oi! Don't diss the Sonic!"
** And as in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno Inferno]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E8TheImpossiblePlanet The Impossible Planet]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E9TheSatanPit The Satan Pit]], [[DugTooDeep everything begins to go wrong when scientists want to drill very far down]], be it to the centre of a planet or simply through the crust.
** The Silurian force-field is reminiscent of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E01TheEleventhHour the Atraxi force-field]]. "Isolated village cut off by energy barrier generated by something alien that's been buried underneath it for centuries" was also done in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E5TheDaemons The Daemons]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E6Dalek The Doctor tries to interrogate a chained-up old enemy.]]
** The Doctor vetoes Amy's idea to go and meet their future selves -- [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E8FathersDay bad things might happen]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E3MawdrynUndead if two different versions of a person meet.]]
** The "hungry earth" bit is reminiscent of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E3Frontios Frontios]].
* CuteMonsterGirl: Alaya, basically.
* DistressedDamsel: Amy, held hostage by the Silurians, and Alaya, held hostage by the humans.
* DistressedDude: Mo clamped to the vivisection table.
* DoesntLikeGuns: Ambrose pulls out a stockpile of weapons. The Doctor asks her, [[BewareTheNiceOnes very kindly]], to put them away.
* DugTooDeep
* EverybodyLives: Nobody died in this episode. The Doctor's determined to keep it that way. We'll find out next episode if he succeeds.
* FantasticRacism: The Silurians regard humans as 'stinking apes' and want to wipe us out. So what's new?
* GenderBlenderName: Ambrose.
* GenreBlind:
** While preparing for the Silurians' imminent arrival, the Doctor waves off the dyslexic kid when he mentions he left his headphones at home - letting him run off on his own while quite-possibly hostile [[strike:aliens]] ''natives'' are about to emerge. The Doctor's OhCrap face when he realises he was the last one to see the kid shows that he's aware of it.
** Just as bad, Ambrose refuses to believe any of what the Doctor is saying, even though she was just outside looking up at a weird giant force field.
* GoshDangItToHeck: "You better get me the hell out of here, or so help me I'm gonna kick your ''backside!''"
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Alaya, albeit a green-skinned subterranean babe.
* HandWave: A brief one explaining why Silurians look so radically different compared to the older ones.
* HotScientist: Nasreen Chaudhry, in a distinguished, ChristmasCake kind of way.
* IdiotBall: The MamaBear grabs hold of it quite firmly from minute one.
* LampshadeHanging: They're deep under the earth; it ''should'' be very, very hot. Nasreen asks why it's not. The Doctor says "I don't know" and they both shrug it off.
* LastOfHisKind: The female Silurian warrior [[BlatantLies claims to be the last of her species]]. The Doctor replies that he ''is'' the last of his species, he knows "how that sits in the heart", and that faking it is an insult.
* LIsForDyslexia: Elliot is dyslexic and compensates through drawing a map of the area to help with surveillance, and is extremely attached to his audio books (which include Literature/SherlockHolmes). The writers got a bit {{Anvilicious}} with how it's okay to be dyslexic.
* MadDoctor: The Silurian at the end was certainly a visual example of this trope, but [[SubvertedTrope he turns out to be]] a MadDoctor [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold With A Heart Of Gold]].
* MamaBear: Elliot's mother goes a little nuts after he's kidnapped.
* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: The Doctor insists that Amy and Rory do not try to interact with their future selves on the hill.
* [[NightVisionGoggles Night Vision Sunglasses]]
* NonMammalMammaries: Despite being reptilian, the Silurian females do have some chest.
* NoOSHACompliance: Most basic mining safety rules include going to check out stuff in groups of two.
* OhCrap: The Doctor pulls a nice one at the cliffhanger, when he discovers there's a wee bit more than just a dozen Silurians camped under the Earth.
-->'''Doctor''': ...ah. Maybe ''more'' than a dozen.
* PlayingWithSyringes: The Silurian doctor as he approaches Amy.
* TheReptilians: The Silurians, ''Doctor Who'''s most famous lizard-people, are back.
* RidiculouslyFastConstruction: There is no ''way'' it only took them nine minutes to set up their makeshift surveillance system.
* RousingSpeech: The Doctor gives one, following which Nasreen even starts clapping. She's the only one, unfortunately.
* SchmuckBait: So, you're alone at night, a mysterious earthquake has rocked your facility, and a strange hole has opened up. So of ''course'' Mo's first instinct is to stick his hand in there.
* ShoutOut: The [[NightVisionGoggles Night Vision Shades]] were extremely reminiscent of ''TheyLive''.
* SlowClap: Nasreen unsuccessfully tries to start one after the Doctor's RousingSpeech.
* SomeKindOfForceField: Albeit revealed with a slingshot rather than by someone walking into it.
* StrappedToAnOperatingTable: Amy and the drill worker.
* SunglassesAtNight: Justified; they're slimmed-down NightVisionGoggles.
* TaxonomicTermConfusion: ''Homo reptilia'' would mean they were descended from apes, the same way humans are. They'd be something along the lines of ''Reptilia sapiens'' (except reptilia is a class, not a genus).
%%%
%% Please no natter. If you have question with this example, delete it and/or move it to discussion.
%%%
* TitleDrop: Sort of. The Doctor references the episode's working title, ''The Ground Beneath Their Feet''.
* TranquilFury: When Alaya, the Silurian prisoner, tries to gain sympathy from the Doctor by lying about being the last of her species, his expression stays quite polite, until he begins talking, "I know what it's like to be the last of a species, because I'm the last of mine. I know how it sits in the heart so, ''please'', don't insult me." And his expression goes [[DeathGlare Icy Cold]]..'
* WhatMeasureIsANonhuman: Played straight and inverted. The straight play comes to the fore in the following episode.
** The inversion comes in the Silurans. They're more than happy to kill stinking apes...and vivisect them...while they're awake.
* WhoWearsShortShorts: Amy was dressed for RIO!
* YouKeepUsingThatWord: While 'dissection' isn't technically incorrect, as it means to cut something open to examine it, it's typically only used when talking about dead things or things that were never living in the first place. The proper term for cutting open a *living* thing to examine it is 'vivisection'.
----
to:
->'''The Doctor:''' Oh look, a big mining thing. Oh, I love a big mining thing. See, way better than Rio. Rio doesn't have a big mining thing.
The second two-part story of the the Eleventh Doctor's first series. Written by Creator/ChrisChibnall, head writer of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'''s first and second series and the ''Doctor Who'' series 3 episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E742 42]]".
-------
It's 2020, near a small Welsh hamlet. The most ambitious drilling project in history has reached deeper beneath the Earth's crust than man has ever gone before, but now the ground itself is fighting back.
The episode starts with Mo, a drill worker, spending some quality reading time with his dyslexic son Elliot, before being reminded by his wife Ambrose that his shift at the local major mining project starts soon. Having witnessed this fairly tender family life scene, it's obvious something will go wrong with the drill when he's the only one on duty, since it's his misfortune [[RedShirt to have to fill the quotient]] of someone getting killed horribly in order to demonstrate how serious the situation really is.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive. (They were aiming for Rio, but the TARDIS disagreed.) The Doctor, never to be dissuaded from something of interest, tunes out Amy's complaints as he examines the strange feel of the ground beneath him and patches of blue grass all over the place. And there are people in the distance waving at them. According to the Doctor, who's the only one to have binoculars on him, it's a ten-years-older Rory and Amy, come to visit the place out of a sense of nostalgia. The Doctor explains that it would be a bad idea to meet up with them, and instead goes to have a look at the big mining thing.
Rory puts Amy's engagement ring in the TARDIS for safekeeping, and gets sidetracked by Elliot and Ambrose, who assume that he's a plain-clothes police officer come to investigate the disappearance of people buried in the graveyard, coffins and all. On the surface the graves haven't been touched, and it's as if the ground has all but swallowed them up.
Amy and the Doctor sonic-and-enter the premises of the drilling project, and come across Dr Nasreen Chaudhry and Tony Mack, the two people directing this project. They're trying to work out what's wrong with the drill, where Mo went to, and where that big hole in the floor came from. The Doctor's most worried by the last, especially since it's started to steam. And of course he's ''right'', as the ground situated under the room begins to tremble and more holes appear in the floor in quick succession. Nasreen and the Doctor make it to safety, but Tony gets stuck; Amy dashes to help him instead of making her own escape, and ''she'' starts getting pulled down into the earth for her trouble. She just gets pulled out of his grasp and under the earth.
The Doctor quickly mobilises the ragtag family into a makeshift army. A pitch-dark barrier dome appears around the area and Elliott disappears, but not before he manages to draw a very accurate map of the area and tremendously helps the Doctor. The Doctor realises that he should have watched the boy more carefully and vows to rescue him.
The Doctor and Nasreen decide to head underground to bargain with the Silurians ([[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians remember]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep them]]?), one of whom is under the watchful eye of Rory, crazed mother Ambrose and Tony, Ambrose's father; they have taken at least three people hostage so far and stung Tony with something nasty. And green. Also, in the middle of all that, Nasreen and Tony discover that they're in love.
Amy is revealed to be in the Silurians' underground science lab, soon to be dissected while still completely conscious, as frantically warned by Mo, who hasn't completely healed from his ordeal. Also, it's not just one little tribe, as the captured Silurian DamselInDistress says. It's an entire civilisation.
----
!! Tropes that this episode provides:
* BeneathTheEarth
* BewareTheNiceOnes: The Doctor gives off strong vibes of this with Ambrose and her weapon gathering. How can someone be that scary while being so polite and reasonable?
* BigDamnKiss: Tony, afraid they're about to die, kisses Nasreen.
* BigNo: The Doctor does several after Amy gets pulled into the earth.
* BookEnds: The future selves waving to the present from a distant hill.
* CampbellCountry: Cwmtaff, Wales, a dreary hamlet apparently on loan from ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. Complete with hills, mists and an old church.
* ChekhovsBoomerang: One is thrown at the beginning of the episode with Amy and Rory standing on the hill, waving at their future selves. It does not work out well.
* ChekhovsGun:
** What do you want to bet the engagement ring's going be significant by the end of the series? It is. Sort of. Twice.
** Ambrose's pile of weapons.
** The Meals On Wheels van.
* CombatTentacles: Alaya has a long, prehensile tongue that can lash out and inject venom.
* ContinuityNod
-->"Have you met monsters before?"
-->"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians Yes.]]"
-->"Are you scared of them?"
-->"[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E4TheGirlInTheFireplace No. They're scared of me.]]"
** When she enters the TARDIS, rather than the customary "It's bigger on the inside!", Nasreen describes it as "Fantastic!".
** Yet another Moff reference - the sonic screwdriver still doesn't do wood (but don't say that that's rubbish within earshot of the Doctor).
--->"Oi! Don't diss the Sonic!"
** And as in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno Inferno]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E8TheImpossiblePlanet The Impossible Planet]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E9TheSatanPit The Satan Pit]], [[DugTooDeep everything begins to go wrong when scientists want to drill very far down]], be it to the centre of a planet or simply through the crust.
** The Silurian force-field is reminiscent of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E01TheEleventhHour the Atraxi force-field]]. "Isolated village cut off by energy barrier generated by something alien that's been buried underneath it for centuries" was also done in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E5TheDaemons The Daemons]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E6Dalek The Doctor tries to interrogate a chained-up old enemy.]]
** The Doctor vetoes Amy's idea to go and meet their future selves -- [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E8FathersDay bad things might happen]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E3MawdrynUndead if two different versions of a person meet.]]
** The "hungry earth" bit is reminiscent of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E3Frontios Frontios]].
* CuteMonsterGirl: Alaya, basically.
* DistressedDamsel: Amy, held hostage by the Silurians, and Alaya, held hostage by the humans.
* DistressedDude: Mo clamped to the vivisection table.
* DoesntLikeGuns: Ambrose pulls out a stockpile of weapons. The Doctor asks her, [[BewareTheNiceOnes very kindly]], to put them away.
* DugTooDeep
* EverybodyLives: Nobody died in this episode. The Doctor's determined to keep it that way. We'll find out next episode if he succeeds.
* FantasticRacism: The Silurians regard humans as 'stinking apes' and want to wipe us out. So what's new?
* GenderBlenderName: Ambrose.
* GenreBlind:
** While preparing for the Silurians' imminent arrival, the Doctor waves off the dyslexic kid when he mentions he left his headphones at home - letting him run off on his own while quite-possibly hostile [[strike:aliens]] ''natives'' are about to emerge. The Doctor's OhCrap face when he realises he was the last one to see the kid shows that he's aware of it.
** Just as bad, Ambrose refuses to believe any of what the Doctor is saying, even though she was just outside looking up at a weird giant force field.
* GoshDangItToHeck: "You better get me the hell out of here, or so help me I'm gonna kick your ''backside!''"
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Alaya, albeit a green-skinned subterranean babe.
* HandWave: A brief one explaining why Silurians look so radically different compared to the older ones.
* HotScientist: Nasreen Chaudhry, in a distinguished, ChristmasCake kind of way.
* IdiotBall: The MamaBear grabs hold of it quite firmly from minute one.
* LampshadeHanging: They're deep under the earth; it ''should'' be very, very hot. Nasreen asks why it's not. The Doctor says "I don't know" and they both shrug it off.
* LastOfHisKind: The female Silurian warrior [[BlatantLies claims to be the last of her species]]. The Doctor replies that he ''is'' the last of his species, he knows "how that sits in the heart", and that faking it is an insult.
* LIsForDyslexia: Elliot is dyslexic and compensates through drawing a map of the area to help with surveillance, and is extremely attached to his audio books (which include Literature/SherlockHolmes). The writers got a bit {{Anvilicious}} with how it's okay to be dyslexic.
* MadDoctor: The Silurian at the end was certainly a visual example of this trope, but [[SubvertedTrope he turns out to be]] a MadDoctor [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold With A Heart Of Gold]].
* MamaBear: Elliot's mother goes a little nuts after he's kidnapped.
* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: The Doctor insists that Amy and Rory do not try to interact with their future selves on the hill.
* [[NightVisionGoggles Night Vision Sunglasses]]
* NonMammalMammaries: Despite being reptilian, the Silurian females do have some chest.
* NoOSHACompliance: Most basic mining safety rules include going to check out stuff in groups of two.
* OhCrap: The Doctor pulls a nice one at the cliffhanger, when he discovers there's a wee bit more than just a dozen Silurians camped under the Earth.
-->'''Doctor''': ...ah. Maybe ''more'' than a dozen.
* PlayingWithSyringes: The Silurian doctor as he approaches Amy.
* TheReptilians: The Silurians, ''Doctor Who'''s most famous lizard-people, are back.
* RidiculouslyFastConstruction: There is no ''way'' it only took them nine minutes to set up their makeshift surveillance system.
* RousingSpeech: The Doctor gives one, following which Nasreen even starts clapping. She's the only one, unfortunately.
* SchmuckBait: So, you're alone at night, a mysterious earthquake has rocked your facility, and a strange hole has opened up. So of ''course'' Mo's first instinct is to stick his hand in there.
* ShoutOut: The [[NightVisionGoggles Night Vision Shades]] were extremely reminiscent of ''TheyLive''.
* SlowClap: Nasreen unsuccessfully tries to start one after the Doctor's RousingSpeech.
* SomeKindOfForceField: Albeit revealed with a slingshot rather than by someone walking into it.
* StrappedToAnOperatingTable: Amy and the drill worker.
* SunglassesAtNight: Justified; they're slimmed-down NightVisionGoggles.
* TaxonomicTermConfusion: ''Homo reptilia'' would mean they were descended from apes, the same way humans are. They'd be something along the lines of ''Reptilia sapiens'' (except reptilia is a class, not a genus).
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* TitleDrop: Sort of. The Doctor references the episode's working title, ''The Ground Beneath Their Feet''.
* TranquilFury: When Alaya, the Silurian prisoner, tries to gain sympathy from the Doctor by lying about being the last of her species, his expression stays quite polite, until he begins talking, "I know what it's like to be the last of a species, because I'm the last of mine. I know how it sits in the heart so, ''please'', don't insult me." And his expression goes [[DeathGlare Icy Cold]]..'
* WhatMeasureIsANonhuman: Played straight and inverted. The straight play comes to the fore in the following episode.
** The inversion comes in the Silurans. They're more than happy to kill stinking apes...and vivisect them...while they're awake.
* WhoWearsShortShorts: Amy was dressed for RIO!
* YouKeepUsingThatWord: While 'dissection' isn't technically incorrect, as it means to cut something open to examine it, it's typically only used when talking about dead things or things that were never living in the first place. The proper term for cutting open a *living* thing to examine it is 'vivisection'.
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* {{Foreshadowing}}: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong "The man who dies again and again"]] is standing in a grave.
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* LIsForDyslexia: Elliot is dyslexic and compensates through drawing a map of the area to help with surveillance, and is extremely attached to his audio books (which include SherlockHolmes). The writers got a bit {{Anvilicious}} with how it's okay to be dyslexic.
to:
* LIsForDyslexia: Elliot is dyslexic and compensates through drawing a map of the area to help with surveillance, and is extremely attached to his audio books (which include SherlockHolmes).Literature/SherlockHolmes). The writers got a bit {{Anvilicious}} with how it's okay to be dyslexic.
