Cold Blood

by Courtney Hilden


"Cold Blood," the latest episode of Doctor Who, picks up where the last episode left off, which finds our heroes, the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy (Karen Gillan), trying to negotiate peacefully with the Silurians, aliens that once inhabited the Earth and mean to go back.
If the Daleks are meant to be the Nazis, then these aliens are apparently the Bush Administration, since they apparently "don't negotiate with apes." Points to the show for using science fiction as a way to discuss moral problems and political issues. This is where the show should go instead of recycling previous ideas from the last few seasons.
It's possible to read the Silurians as not an alien species but as another race. It would be easy to see them, given that they were the original owners of the planet, as indigenous people. The Doctor at least encourages both sides to negotiate instead of out-right war between colonizers and the native people. Unfortunately, the humans, the colonizers, are weak enough to be goaded into killing one of the Silurians. What makes this problematic is that the hero, the Doctor, defends the humans, the colonizer, and not the oppressed group. It's also dangerous that the oppressed are depicted as unhuman, literally green and scaly.
The episode was a solid entry in the series, especially since it ditches the overused plots and characters and goes for something different.