#so i’ll have to choose one and put the other in the graveyard doc

[padfootastic]

hohoho i am writing a remus & sirius confrontation that is ending up a little too mean and it’s verging on the edge of not fitting into FoD but by god, is it satisfying 😈😈😈

“Oh, stop pretending, Remus.” There’s a part of Sirius, not insignificant, that tells him to shut the fuck up. To bite back the words as he’d always done. They don’t expect it of him but he is perfectly capable of maintaining a civil tongue when needed. He just doesn’t want to, today. “You’ve always resented us, haven’t you?”

“Padfoot, do you even hear yourself—?” Remus’ amber eyes are bright, almost feverish, and Sirius knew that all he had to do was push.

So he did.

- brought to u by ‘i’ve been thinking about remus and i also recently read a fic that blindsided me w commentary on james’ and sirius’ social positions intimidating remus into compliance as an excuse for his cowardice and general temperament and got incredibly annoyed at how he is, yet again, victimised so i shall now endeavour to turn that idea around on its head using the ‘ol ‘u cannot help someone who does not want to be helped’ adage so help me god’

[one-of-us-blog]

The Hungry Earth (Doctor Who S05E08)

Today Jon is forced to watch and recap “The Hungry Earth”, the eighth episode of Doctor Who’s fifth series. There are rumblings beneath the Earth, and people are getting kidnapped. Can the Doctor figure out what’s going on in time to save the humans?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I was so pleasantly surprised that you like My Brother, My Father and Me so much! I don’t dislike the episode by any stretch, but it’s always been a bit forgettable to me. Also, I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never really grown to like the actor playing Angelo… If I had to choose between Angelo or Angela, Angela would win every time (did you pick up on that convenient naming scheme, by the way?). I’m really glad that you found so much to like about this one, and I hope that continues! Your next episode is a clip show, which I know aren’t your favorite, but after that are a few really good ones I think you’ll enjoy.

For now, though, buttocks tight!

Episode directed by Ashley Way and written by Chris Chibnall

We start out in the utterly unpronounceable Cwmtaff, South Wales, in the Year of Our Lord 2020. A man named Mo is trying to teach his son to read, but the boy doesn’t see the point since he can just listen to books whenever he wants. The man bikes off to his job, where people are drilling for something. If “The Impossible Planet” taught us anything, it’s that drilling is always a good idea. The drill has just gone deeper into the Earth than any before it, and everyone’s pretty happy about it. Mo arrives to take over as night watchman, and after everyone leaves the drill begins to shimmy and shake. Mo’s security cameras all fail and he goes off to investigate. He soon comes across a big hole in the ground and, naturally, begins to stick his hands into it, but as he gets close the hole seems to get close. He won’t be denied, though. And digs his hand into the Earth. We see it emerge into a hollow space below, and then Mo is sucked inside by some unseen force.

Onto the opening credits.

The Doctor is showing Amy and Rory Rio, only he’s not because it’s Cwmtaff. The Doctor notices that the ground feels funny, and there are patches of blue grass in a nearby graveyard. Amy notices some randos nearby waving at them, and the Doc says it’s actually 2020-era Amy and Rory. Amy’s surprised the two of them are still together, but the Doc doesn’t let them go over and say hi. The Doc notices a big mining thing and goes to investigate. Rory wants to know how the Doc’s supposed to get them home when he can’t even take them to Rio for a visit, but Amy says the presence of their future selves nearby proves that everything works out fine. Amy’s apparently forgotten that the past can be rewritten, but okay. Amy’s also wearing her engagement ring, which Rory doesn’t like because she could lose it and it cost… an amount of money. She gives it to him for safekeeping and he takes it to the TARDIS as Amy catches up with the Doc.

Inside the mining facility, Dr. Nasreen Chaudhry and Tony Mack, Mo’s father-in-law, are puzzling over Mo’s disappearance and the big hole that’s popped up out of nowhere. Rory deposits the ring in the TARDIS and then emerges to see Ambrose, Mo’s wife, and Elliot, Mo’s son, waiting for him. They think Rory is a plainclothes policeman and that he’s here to investigate a vandalized grave. Amy and the Doc break into the mining facility without waiting for Rory. Ambrose explains to Rory that the body of a relative and her coffin has vanished, despite the soil on top of it being undisturbed. Rory’s out of his depth, but the Doc’s still convinced the Earth feels funny. He and Amy come across Dr. Chaudhry, who’s not thrilled to see them. Tony arrives, and the Doc tells them they need to leave. He says the ground in the hole is shifting and moving around, but he can’t figure out why. Two more holes open up and the Doc says something knows they’re there and is attacking them. They run for it, but a hole opens under Tony and he’s stuck. Amy moves to help and a hole opens up beneath her, as well. Dr. Chaudhry gets Tony free and the Doc tells them to shut down the drill while he holds onto Amy. Amy’s understandably panicked, and the Doctor isn’t able to keep her from being submerged.

Dr. Chaudhry and Tony get back from shutting down the drill, but it’s too late. Nearby, Rory is still poking around the graveyard. Elliot is sure that the grave ate the body, and shows off some Sherlockian-style deductive reasoning. Tony wants to know if what happened to Amy is what happened to Mo and if they’re dead. The Doctor thinks the ground is reacting to the drilling, but Dr. Chaudhry thinks that’s silly. He doesn’t think it’s silly, but he doesn’t think it’s right. He pokes around a bit and realizes the ground has been bioprogrammed to keep them from drilling. They need to figure out what bioprogrammed the dirt and they’ll be able to stop them and get Amy and Mo back. He’s interrupted by the sound of drilling, which is weird because the facility only has the one drill and it’s not going at the moment. Dr. Chaudhry reveals that they started drilling here because of the minerals in the blue grass, but the Doctor says the grass was a warning because while the humans have been drilling down something else has been drilling up.

The Doc realizes the sound he heard wasn’t drilling, it was transportation. Something is heading for the surface and they’ll be here in a few minutes. Outside, we learn that a big energy dome has gone up around the facility. Rory, Ambrose and Elliot arrive and Rory lays into the Doc for not keeping Amy safe. The Doc promises to get her back, while we see her unconscious underground and being looked over by someone or something. Ambrose and Elliot still don’t know about Mo, so Tony’s got some ‘splaining to do. The Doc has them gather all the phones, cameras and sensors they can get their hands on. Elliot’s put in charge of mapping out the cameras and we learn that the reason he has so much trouble reading is because he’s dyslexic. He can still draw the map, though, and he goes to work. Spoiler alert, I had trouble finding anything that stood out enough to me to put in the “that ain’t so bad” slot, so I’ll go ahead and use that card here. Elliot being told he’s still capable of great things in spite of his learning disability? That Ain’t So Bad! Ambrose gathers up weapons to defend herself and her son, but the Doc, in quite possibly the creepiest moment of the entire show to date, tells her she’s better than defending her family and to put the weapons away. The dome overhead begins to block out light to isolate the people inside. Dr. Chaudhry and Tony share a kiss as the things underground get close. Rory, Ambrose and the Doc join them while the monitoring equipment shorts out. The adults realize that Elliot isn’t with them and Ambrose lays into the Doc for letting Elliot run around on his own with everything that’s going on. Outside, Elliot is chased through the graveyard by something. He reaches the door, but it’s stuck and he’s snatched before the adults can get the door open. Ambrose runs out into the graveyard and find his headphones just as she’s tackled by the same creature that snatches Elliot. Tony arrives in time to save his daughter, but the thing lashes out with its tongue and jabs Tony in the neck.

All the humans regroup in the church while the Doc uses some magical sunglasses to track the creature, learning on the way that it’s coldblooded. That’s enough to tell him what they are, so he grabs a fire extinguisher and blasts it with cold while Rory helps trap it in Ambrose’s van. The dome overheard vanishes, and the Doctor thinks it’s because both sides now have hostages. Amy wakes up in some sort of glass container and begins raising a ruckus, only to have something on the outside shush her and fill the container with knock out gas. The Doc says he’s met creatures similar to these before, and goes down to its improvised cell in a cellar to talk to it. He takes of its mask, revealing a reptilian humanoid. It’s actually a she, and she’s Alaya, a member of an offshoot species of the Silurians. She and her kin have been hibernating for three hundred million years, but they were woken up by the drilling. The Silurians were the original inhabitants of Earth, and now feel the time’s come to take the planet back from the apes. Alaya refuses to give Amy or any of the other hostages back, but the Doc says he’s not going to let her class of warriors start a war.

The Doc tells the humans he’s going to go down into Silurian territory. He tells the humans they’re in charge of making a good impression on Alaya. They have to convince her humanity’s pretty okay, despite Tony wanting to dissect Alaya for intel. Dr. Chaudhry wants to join the Doc as he goes down into the Earth and he relents. The TARDIS is immediately hijacked by something, getting pulled down into the Earth. Rory, Ambrose and Tony go down to meet Alaya, who tells them one of them is going to kill her and this will ignite a war that will result in the Silurians getting control of the planet again. She tells them she knows apes better than they know themselves, and that she even knows which of them will kill her. Tony, meanwhile, is not doing well after getting pricked by a Silurian tongue earlier. Dr. Chaudhry and the Doc arrive in Silurian territory. Amy wake up again, this time strapped to some sort of table. Mo is there, and he tells her not to struggle. Turns out the Silurians vivisected him while he was conscious and then sewed him back up, and they’re about to do the same to Amy. Dr. Chaudhry stumbles upon the Silurian settlement, but it doesn’t contain the dozen or so warriors the Doctor was expecting. There’s an entire civilization under the Earth, and they’re all awake.

The End

~~~~~

For me this one unfortunately continued the tradition of a lot of set up in part one and a lot of delivery in part two, so I don’t have a lot of thoughts, here. Dr. Chaudhry was the only character that really stuck in my memory, and I don’t really like how little Amy got to do other than get captured. The make up on Alaya was nice, and I’ll be interested to see what she gets up to next time.

I give “The Hungry Earth” QQQ on the Five Q Scale.

Be sure to check back on Friday when Eli will take a look at days gone by in the next episode(s) of The Golden Girls, “Golden Moments, Parts I & II”, and then on Saturday chaboi will be back to wrap up this story in the next episode of Doctor Who, “Cold Blood”.

Until then, thanks for reading, thanks for digging and thanks for being One of Us!