Let’s do this the wrong way round, because if you’re anything like us, the part of Cold Blood that you’ll be wanting to talk about all happened in the last five or ten minutes. It’s a good job we did, too. As the Doctor reached into the crack, we couldn’t help thinking we were on the verge of a Utopia moment, where an episode was about to be turned on its head by something happening in its final moments. As it turned out, for once we were absolutely on the money. Never mind for now what the Doctor pulled out of said crack (we’ll come to that shortly), how about instead the fact that Doctor Who did what it’s been reluctant to do ever since it returned: kill off a major character? Because this is, after all, a Saturday teatime show. And yet, for the first time since Adric decided he was going to try and stop a spaceship crashing, a companion character who had travelled with the Doctor for several episodes was killed on his watch. Now granted, it wasn’t the most convincing way to go (there was a bit of a Die Hard ending about Restac crawling through rubble and firing off a shot), but nonetheless, Rory was shot, and Rory went down. Furthermore, the light coming through the crack got him, which most of us, we’d wager, suspect is the way that Rory will come back to life. Truthfully, we’d be shocked if he didn’t. There’s presumably a reset switch in there somewhere, tied in to the fact that Amy has already forgotten him (and how good a plot device now does having the two of them waving across the valley look?) just as she’s forgotten the likes of the Daleks. But for now, that’s a genuinely shocking conclusion. All on a Saturday teatime. The episode that had preceded it to this point all of a sudden felt like a different story, albeit still an enjoyable one. It carried on the themes from the previous episode, that of being an old-school-feel Doctor Who adventure. That meant you got corridors to run along (albeit very nicely dressed corridors), moments of perils that are interrupted with seconds to spare, and a race who aren’t as two-dimensional as they first appear. The Silurians, as we noted last week, haven’t always drawn the longest bit of the straw where Doctor Who is concerned, but they had fine treatment here. Turns out that they’re as divided and conflicted as the humans they’ve been sharing the planet with, and on each side there’s someone you could call an enemy. What was surprising was just how far Ambrose was allowed to go in the script, fulfilling the prophecy that one of the humans would kill the Silurian prisoner (making it two genuinely surprising deaths in one episode). And it led the Doctor to ultimately put the talks on hold, declaring neither side ready for another 1000 years. In short, 1000 years to save the planet. The subtext isn’t too tricky to see here. What was nice, though, was that Nasreen got a really solid end point in the story, and we wonder if she’ll be around when the Silurians are next explored by Doctor Who at some point in the future. It’s certainly left something in the tank for the next time we meet them. With quality mask and creature work that actually allowed the Silurians to emote and the actors underneath to do their stuff, we’re pleased with how well the return of the creatures turned out. These aren’t old style roaring Doctor Who monsters, instead having a backstory that allows them to be woven into more contemporary stories with just a little more depth to them. Writer Chris Chibnall did this well, too. As it turned out, it’s set things up for a fascinating next adventure, the Richard Curtis-scripted Vincent And The Doctor. Taken as a standalone episode, that already had the potential to be intriguing. But given the story threads it now has to weave in – it can’t ignore them, after all – it’s a flat-out must see… Our review of last week’s episode, The Hungry Earth, is here…