Meera Syal has spoken to SFX about her guest role in the Silurians two-parter, The Hungry Earth/The Cold Blood, which begins this week.

“My character’s a geologist, a very high-up, innovative geologist who is working for a company,” she revealed. “And her project is to drill as far as she can towards the centre of the Earth. And, in fact, the episode opens with her reaching the target, and she gets further than anybody else has ever done. And that’s what starts off the problems!”

Describing her character’s first encounter with the Doctor, the actress explained: “The Doctor happens to land where all this is going on, and there are really strange things happening in the village. And he traces all these weird happenings to what she’s doing. And then it all kicks off – that infrastructure starts collapsing, and she ends up going off with him, to find out what’s going on beneath the Earth.”

The Hungry Earth airs this Saturday at 18:15 on BBC1/HD. Keep up to date with the latest episode news by clicking here.