Review: Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth

Chris Chibnall is officially, in my eyes, a bad writer. Former writer of Life On Mars, Chibnall is a Sci-Fi geek, former representative of the Doctor Who Fanclub and scatters all of his work with delightful technobabble. It's just a shame that this comes at the expense of everything else.
      So unless you've managed to ignore all media surrounding Who, you'll know that the Silurians, monsters from Jon Pertwee's era in 1970, have been revamped. This media coverage destroys all tension in the episode, so that you know exactly what's coming.
      Here's the basic synopsis; an archealogical drilling operation (Although I don't know how that works) is working in a small welsh town, where people are dissappearing beneath the ground. The Doctor and Co show up; the drilling down meets some drilling up and the creatures make forcefields and the like to confuse the surface-dwellers. Amy is dragged beneath; The Doctor is angry, takes a creature hostage and then pops down in the TARDIS to take a look.
     There's a lot of dialogue that leans on Moffat principles ("It doesn't do wood!") but the story has all the hallmarks of Chibnall, with a large number of temporary characters hastily introduced and that we don't really care about being pushed aside by self-rightous protagonists who are always generally worried about something in particular. The Silurians have been simplified into lovey-dovey 2010 versions that instead of just being a bit miffed are instead angry bastards that intended on having a full scale massacre but never seemed to get round to it.
     The pacing is terrible; there's some faffing about, a sudden important plot change and then some slow lamentation. There was no sense of tension or purpose. Why? Because for some unfathomable reason, they included a future Amy and Rory waving from a far off cliff-face. Yes, you heard me. In one page of script, they have just destroyed all tension for the entirety of the companion's tenure.
     The episode has some great character moments and despite the simple cliffhanger (There are far many more Silurians than before, woo hoo we'd already guessed that) I have a genuine interest in seeing how this plays out and if in the second half Chibnall can regain some credibility in my eyes.

Thanks