The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the small Welsh village of Cwmtaff
in 2020, as opposed to their intended destination of Rio de
Janeiro. They encounter a mining operation, led by Doctor Nasreen
Chaudry, studying minerals deep in the earth that have not been
seen for over 20 million years. Nasreen is accompanied by a local,
Tony Mack, whose daughter and grandson, Ambrose and Elliot, are
examining the disappearance of bodies from underground at the
graveyard of a nearby church. An earth tremor causes the ground to
open and send Tony and Amy falling into it; Tony is rescued but Amy
is pulled under by unknown forces. The Doctor surmises the minerals
form a bio-reactive defense system that was triggered by the
drilling operation. The group is soon alerted to the presence of
three life forms traveling up the drilling shaft from 21 kilometres
below the earth, and they barricade themselves in the church. The
Doctor explains Amy's disappearance to Rory and assures him he will
get her back.
The three beings turn out to be reptilian humanoids, and in a
scuffle, they capture Elliot and strike Tony with a venomous forked
tongue; the Doctor and the group are able to subdue one of the
beings while the other two retreat with Elliot back into the earth.
The Doctor realises the beings are a new form of Silurians, and
that they have relented in their attack since both side hold a
hostage. The captured Silurian calls herself Alaya, a member of the
warrior caste awoken by the intrusion of the drill. Alaya believes,
as with all the other Silurians, that the Earth still belongs to
them and will defeat humanity eventually. Tony, suffering from the
effects of the venom, believes they should dissect Alaya, but the
Doctor warns that it will be seen as an act of war. The Doctor
decides to travel in the TARDIS down the drilling shaft to talk to
the rest of the Silurians and work out a truce, with Narseen
desiring to come along.
Amy awakens to find herself strapped to an examining table, near to
where Ambrose's husband Mo is similar ensnared. Mo apologizes to
Amy that the Silurians intended to vivisect them. The Doctor and
Nasreen descend in the TARDIS, where the Doctor explains the
Silurians and that he only expects to encounter a small number of
the aliens. The show ends on a cliffhanger as the Doctor and
Nasreen are surprised to find an immense Silurian civilisation
stretching out for miles in the caverns below the earth.
This second part starts with the Doctor and Nasreen walking along a
bridge in the Silurian civilisation, as the Doctor marvels at the
technological advances they have made since he last met them. They
find themselves in a corridor covered with plants long thought
extinct, and find an entrance. As soon as they walk through it, an
alarm goes off and the pair are inevitably captured by the Silurian
soldiers where they are taken to the same lab Amy and Mo are in.
Amy is about to be dissected by the Silurian doctor Malohkeh, but
he is called off moments before doing so by the alarm triggered by
the Doctor and Nasreen.
Malohkeh had used a palm-sized device to lock Amy's hands into the
cuffs and had placed it in his pocket. But while he is distracted
by the alarm, Amy pickpockets him and steals the device. Amy
quickly unlocks the clamps around her arms and frees Mo. As they
walk around trying to find a way out, they stumble upon a chamber
where the Silurians are keeping Elliot alive, but sedated, for
observation. Mo, Elliot's father, is enraged and determines they
need to find weapons to protect themselves and later get his son
out. They then find two contiguous chambers, each with a Silurian
warrior inside, although they appear to be immobile. Amy deduces
that they are hibernation pods, with each warrior standing on a
transport disc that can take them to the surface. Since they don't
know how to work the transport discs, they take the hibernating
Silurians' weapons instead to have something to fight with while
looking for another exit.
In the church, while the group are awaiting the Doctor's and
Nasreen's return, Ambrose notices her father's injury from Alaya's
sting, so she goes to Alaya's room and implores her to give her the
cure. Alaya responds that she has no desire nor need to tell her.
Angered, Ambrose picks up a stun gun to pretend to threaten Alaya.
However, Alaya begins taunting her by asking her where her son is,
and how she is too much of a coward to use the stun gun even to
protect her family. Angered and worried about her family, Ambrose
does stun her, at first lightly to get the information, but when
Alaya still refuses, she shoves the stun gun into her stomach with
greater strength, killing her. The others run in, shocked, for
keeping Alaya alive was probably the only way to achieve a peaceful
resolution.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Nasreen are clamped onto the operating
tables, where Nasreen is knocked unconscious. The Doctor is kept
awake as the Silurians attempt to 'decontaminate' him for analysis.
The Doctor, however, is unusually finding the decontamination
painful, and yells out in between cringing at Malohkeh that he is
not human. After Malohkeh checks and notices the Doctor's two
hearts, he turns the machine off and uses a rod similar to the
Doctor's sonic Screwdriver to wake up Nasreen. Another Silurian,
Restac, Alaya's sister and the Silurians' military commander,
enters, however, and is adamant that they be destroyed. She takes
the Doctor and Nasreen to a conference room, which turns out to be
the Silurian court, and informs them they will be executed. On the
way, the Doctor explains some of the Silurians' history: that they
went into hibernation when their astronomers predicted a solar
catastrophe approaching Earth. When the Silurians ask how he knows
so much about them, the Doctor explains he has encountered their
kind before. Initially delighted that others of their species
survived, the Doctor angers them by explaining humans wiped out
those who woke before. Restac views such an act as justification to
destroy humanity.
Just as Restac is about to fire, Amy and Mo arrive, armed with the
Silurian guns. They are soon overwhelmed by the dozens of Silurian
guards, however, and are about to be executed as well. Back at the
church, Rory and the gang have wrapped Alaya's body in an orange
afghan, when a screen on an unplugged computer turns on, revealing
Restac who shows them the others as hostages. The Doctor reminds
Rory that if they bring Alaya back, the Silurians will leave them
alone, but Restac refuses and announces that the first to be
executed will be Amy, aiming her gun as the screen switches off
completely, leaving Rory in shock. Malohkeh attempts to reason with
Restac as he believes that the Silurians and humans are compatible
with each other and so war is unnecessary; however, she simply
orders him to leave. Nevertheless, Amy manages to survive because
Eldane, a Silurian above Restac in rank, arrives after being
fetched by Malohkeh and orders for them to be untied.
The Doctor proposes that the Silurians hold talks, with Amy and
Nasreen as the human race's representatives, to try to figure out a
peaceful way for the Earth to be shared between the species. They
are making progress, as Amy suggests that certain areas of the
planet that are inhospitable to humans could work for the
Silurians. In exchange, Eldane proposes that all Silurian
technology can be used to both species' benefit. As they have found
common ground, Eldane is open to the idea of exchanging them for
Alaya, so they open another communication link to Rory and the
others in the church. They agree to bring them down to the
Silurians' habitat for the exchange, and it appears as if it will
all work out. Meanwhile, Restac and a number of troops storm into
Malohkeh's lab and execute him for betraying her cause.
After the communications link is closed, Ambrose, still distrustful
of the Silurians and worried because Alaya is in fact dead, decides
that before going down, they should set the drill to go off in 15
minutes, which would destroy all oxygen in the Silurians' habitat.
As the group arrive with Alaya's corpse, Restac returns with many
more warriors, who she has woken up from hibernation, intending to
stage a coup. When she sees that Alaya, her sister, is dead, Restac
loses control and orders her warriors to kill all the humans,
starting with Ambrose. As the Silurians open fire, the Doctor
deters them by breaking down their weapons with the sonic
screwdriver, as all the humans and Eldane lock themselves in the
lab. There, they realise that they have very little time before the
drill impacts the surface of the Silurians' habitat and they all
die. The Doctor decides that they should use the Silurian
technology to send an energy pulse through the tunnel network to
destroy the drill before it demolishes the Silurian civilisation.
However, doing so would cause an underground collapse, so they will
need to escape before the drill is destroyed. They need to get from
the lab to where the Doctor and Nasreen left the TARDIS, but the
Silurian army is blocking the way. Eldane tells them that he can
stall the army by activating 'toxic fumigation'; a safety system
that warns everyone to return to hibernation before a toxic gas is
released, for only those stubborn and violent enough to follow
Restac will die. The Doctor approaches Eldane and promises that in
a thousand years, the Silurians and humans should attempt living
together once again, for he will ensure that the humans are the
best they can be by then. He approaches Elliot and asks him to
create a myth, story or religion that can inform all coming human
generations of the Silurians and how they can cohabitate peacefully
one day in order to promote this plan.
As the safety system is triggered, Tony yells out in pain. Alaya
had previously suggested that he should have been dead soon after
she attacked him, but the Doctor finds that instead of killing him,
the spit from Alaya has triggered a mutation. The Ambassador tells
them that Tony can be put in a chamber to stop the infection, but
the process takes much longer than the 15 minutes they have before
the drill impacts. To this, Tony responds that he will stay behind,
and everybody else clamors to get to the TARDIS. The Doctor
realises Nasreen is not moving, as she informs him she will stay
behind with Tony, to study the Earth and help the Silurians
co-operate with mankind when the time comes. As the Doctor is
taking so long, Amy returns to get him, prompting Rory to wait for
Amy and the Doctor as well.
Ambrose, Mo and Elliot quickly get onto the TARDIS, but before Amy,
Rory and the Doctor go in, they all notice a crack in the wall,
just like that in Amy's bedroom as a child. The Doctor surmised
that the cracks in the universe must have been formed by an
explosion and insists on reaching into the other side to see what
it holds, because explosions often leave shrapnel. He takes
something out and looks at it in horror. Just as Rory, Amy and the
Doctor are about to finally go into the TARDIS and take off to
safety, Restac, dying due to exposure to the toxic gas, appears and
shoots at the Doctor. Rory pushes him out of the way and takes the
blast, dying in Amy's arms, confused because they had seen a future
version of themselves across the hill from where they 'parked' the
TARDIS in the beginning. The energy from the crack in the wall soon
begins to absorb Rory, and the Doctor recalls what he said to Amy
in the forest at the 'Byzantium': that if the time energy catches
up to you, all evidence of your life is erased, as if you had never
been born.
Since the drill is moments away from killing them, the Doctor pries
a sobbing Amy away from Rory's lifeless body, locks her in the
TARDIS and takes off, watching Rory's body dissipate into the
crack. However, Amy implores the Doctor not to let her forget Rory,
so he prompts her to clutch onto all the memories of him so that he
can live on in her mind. Unlike with the Byzantium and the Weeping
Angels, Amy will not remember Rory just because she is a time
traveller, as he is part of her own personal history. For a moment,
it looks as if Amy remembers. However, the TARDIS jolts, causing
Amy to lose her focus, and she is not able to hold onto memories of
Rory. The Doctor finds Amy's engagement ring on the floor of the
TARDIS.
They arrive at the surface just as the drill explodes. Ambrose
thanks the Doctor, since he could have let the Silurians kill her
for killing Alaya. The Doctor responds that an eye for an eye is no
way to live, and that she should seek some sort of repentance by
making sure that her son really is the best humanity can be, in
preparation for when the Silurians end their hibernation in a
thousand years. Amy and the Doctor return to the TARDIS to leave,
and they spot someone across the hill again, except this time, it
is only 'future Amy', and no Rory. Amy does remark that for a
second she thought she saw someone else as well, but lets go of the
thought. On her way back into the TARDIS, Amy makes a remark to the
Doctor and uses the term "you boys".
The Doctor lags behind to examine what he pulled from the other
side of the crack: a burnt piece of the TARDIS.
[edit] Continuity
The events of "Cold Blood" continue the running series arc about by
the Cracks in Time, resulting in Rory's deletion from history.
After his "decontamination", the Doctor asks the Silurians whether
they have any celery or tomatoes. The Eleventh Doctor expressed
similar food cravings early in his regeneration in "The Eleventh
Hour", whilst the Fifth Doctor wore celery on his jacket and in The
Caves of Androzani claimed it had restorative powers.