The color master tapes of this seven-part serial were wiped by the BBC in the 1970s and the BBC only held 16mm black and white telerecordings. The serial remained only in black in white until the 1990s, when the color signal from a domestic NTSC recording and the black and white telerecordings were used to create new color masters on D3 digital tape.
This story is the first to be recorded using colour studio cameras. The previous serial, Spearhead from Space, was the first in colour, but was shot entirely on location (i.e., outside the electronic TV studio), and on film (as opposed to videotape, the standard method for recording Doctor Who (1963)). Due to the move to colour, the production team made use of a technique known as Colour Separation Overlay (CSO, or Chroma key), which allowed images to be superimposed over each other using colour separation. This was used extensively in the series for many years, beginning with this serial.
The Only Story to Use "Doctor Who" in the title, which was a mistake by the production team, all documents up to this point would often list serials as "Doctor Who and" despite And being dropped prior to title cards being produced, however because the mistake slipped through on this occasion New Producer Barry Letts demanded that the practice be dropped to avoid any incident, despite this most if not all of the Target Novelisations would adapt the prefecture of "Doctor Who And".
This serial was released by the BBC on video cassette in the UK in July 1993, having been recently restored to color.
After the previous story, producers Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant (who was originally to have the producer's credit on this story) were transferred to the television series Paul Temple (1969), and the BBC intended for Barry Letts to become producer. However, Letts was committed to another production, and could not be released until after the location work on Silurians was completed. Terrance Dicks and his assistant Trevor Ray shared the production responsibilities for the location work.