The reasons why this happened are not entirely clear. Director Timothy Combe states that he was presented with a story called "Doctor Who and the Silurians" and that it was always intended that the serial go out with that name. However, as "Doctor Who" historian Andrew Pixley points out, this was Combe's first serial as a full director and there was effectively no producer at this time, as noted above. In addition, the rehearsal scripts for the serial simply have "The Silurians" as the title. Pixley theorises that Combe was unaware of the standard production practice and gave the order to the captioning department for the "proper" title, as he believed it to be at the time.