Cold Blood. Your thoughts.

Kate Griffiths: I enjoyed The Silurians - sorry Cold Blood. It was a familiar story, from killing one of them from fear, to the scientist who wanted to help, the fanatical - kill the apes - leader (who also killed the scientist) and the negotiator. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, there were some differences and chances are a lot of people watching it won't have seen The Silurians.

It looked good, like a proper underground city and all the Silurians just waiting to be woken up. The Doctor seemed more sympathetic to them in this second episode and looked really upset when he had to admit that the last Silurians he encountered died (even though it wasn't of his doing). I think the new look of the Silurians grew on me in this episode, it was quite clever how they managed to make some look younger and some older.

The Doctor had some good lines. The two that spring to mind are when he asked for some celery and squeaky bum time! I hope it's not the end of Rory, he is a good character, please let him come back at the end of the series. I would love to see him and Amy married and happy like in Amy's choice.

John Howe: Events took a darker turn this week in the second part of Chris Chibnall's epic Silurian story. We had threats of dissection and execution followed closely by an army of Homo-Reptilia massing for an attack on the human invaders. There was barely time to draw breath in another fast paced episode that seemed to be over no sooner than it had begun.The design work on this episode was a real treat. The hibernation chambers and specimen storage chambers in the dark tunnels were superb and conveyed the serials impression claustrophobia. This was then contrasted by the wonderful CGI shots of the Silurian army in stasis that afforded a huge scale to their impending threat.

If I had to level any criticism at Chibnall's story (which is a hard thing to do) it would be in the form of a compliment - stay with me on this one! The story was so grand and rich that it really needed an extra episode to fully do it justice. Imagine what this would have been like as a 3 parter?! There was just so much going on, so many intricate plot strands to admire like the play off between the belligerent Restac and the more open minded Eldane and Malokeh. The clever juxtaposition of the Silurians and then the Humans as the aggressors. The Pertwee-esque attempt by the Doctor to achieve a peace settlement that (again) almost works. There was so much to clear up that in the end it felt a little rushed. Still thoroughly absorbing to the last second though!

The death of Rory at the end was a genuine shock and I'm sure it will be pay off later in the series as will the discovery of the chunk of the outer plasmic shell of the TARDIS the Doctor pulls from the crack in time. Once again, super stuff!!

Steve Murphy: An episode with important resonances, to be sure. The "death" of Rory was something I didn't see coming, and pretty well done, although it's always a bit of a cliche, the "running-in-front-of-the-hero" shooting. With everything that's going on in the story arc, I'm not sure we've seen the last of him....

Although good, I felt the episode fell away slightly from last week's excellent one. This has been the case for me with both of this season's two-parters, although the quality gap was less pronounced this time. I did feel we got into a bit of a rut of people telling each other things they already knew at one stage, but it was still an interesting tale, and nice that this time, it was the Silurians who, in a way, blew themselves up, instead of the humans doing so. I do have a big quibble about The Doctor's handling of the situation at one point, though. When you're telling them about the past meetings, and they ask whether their people survived, "no" might have been a bit more diplomatic than "the humans killed them" when there's a tense peace deal being brokered?!?

And what do we make of the TARDIS fragment then? I could almost see Peter Davison's shocked face in "Frontios" as he intoned the line "The TARDIS has been destroyed". But of course, it hasn't been. Has it.....?