Invasion of the Dinosaurs, simply titled Invasion in Part One, is the second serial of the 11th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 12 January to 16 February 1974.
Set in London, the serial involves Member of Parliament (MP) Sir Charles Grover (Noel Johnson) and General Finch (John Bennett) conspiring to roll the Earth back in time to the "golden age" when it was untouched by humanity. This is the last story from the Pertwee era to contain an episode that was colourised from a black-and-white telerecording after the original colour version was irretrievably lost.
Plot
The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive in a deserted London, where they discover that dinosaurs are inexplicably appearing all over the city, causing havoc, but no one can account for their sudden appearances and disappearances.
The Doctor suspects that someone is deliberately tampering with time and with the help of his colleagues at UNIT, he starts to formulate a plan. They are introduced to Sir Charles Grover MP, and General Finch. In a hidden laboratory, Professor Whitaker is operating secret Timescoop technology. The dinosaurs are being used to compel the authorities to evacuate the city. It turns out that Whitaker is being aided by the disillusioned Captain Yates, of UNIT.
Sarah conducts her own investigations, but is captured by Grover, who is in league with Whitaker. She awakens and is astounded to find herself on a vast spaceship. The crew explain that they are en route to a distant Earth-like planet, explaining that Mankind can begin again on "New Earth", closer to nature and without the overpopulation and pollution of Earth. When Sarah tries to explain that they are still on Earth, they condemn Sarah to be re-educated into thinking the way they do.
Operation Golden Age is revealed to be a broad conspiracy, including Yates, with Whitaker, Grover and Finch as its coordinators. They have emptied London, so that the chosen people on the "spacecraft" (a dummy ship hidden in a bunker under London) will be the only people within range of the Timescoop when it is activated. Whitaker has discovered how to reverse time, so that only the chosen elite will ever have existed.
Meanwhile, Sarah escapes from the bunker, but is apprehended by Finch. Her escape alerts some of the passengers to the deception. Yates reveals their plans to the Doctor, Benton and the Brigadier. Yates is overpowered, and when Finch tries to stop the Doctor's and the Brigadier's efforts, Benton incapacitates him in a struggle.
The Doctor and the Brigadier confront Grover and Whitaker, just as the duped environmentalists from the fake ship arrive and demand an explanation. The Timescoop is activated, but, as the Doctor is a Time Lord, the machine's effect on him is limited, allowing him to switch the device off. Finch is arrested and court martialled. Grover tries to use the machine again – but, as the Doctor has reversed its polarity, it sends only itself, Whitaker and Grover into the past.
Production
Working titles for this story included Bridgehead from Space and Timescoop.[1] The story title of the first episode was contracted to Invasion in the opening title sequence, in an attempt to conceal the central plot device of dinosaurs. However, this was undermined by the BBC listings magazine Radio Times, which carried a picture of a dinosaur in the listing for episode one.[2]
Malcolm Hulke protested against the use of the title Invasion of the Dinosaurs, preferring the original working title of Timescoop,[3] and felt the contraction for the first episode was silly, especially because the Radio Times gave the game away. In a response letter after transmission, script editor Terrance Dicks pointed out that all the titles used for the project had originated in the Doctor Who production office. He agreed that the contraction to Invasion was a decision he now regretted but noted that "Radio Times are a law unto themselves".[2]
In the novelisation, adapted by Malcolm Hulke from his own scripts, no reference is made to the "Whomobile" (which was a prop contributed to the production at a late stage by actor Jon Pertwee). In the novel, the Doctor uses a military motorbike with electronic scanning equipment attached, as in the original scripts.
The producer of the series, Barry Letts, was very disappointed with the realisation of the dinosaurs, and stated in an interview in 2004 that this was the story he would most like to remake with modern technology.[5]
Missing episodes and archive
All episodes of this story except Part One exist on original format PAL colour master tapes, with the first episode only existing as a monochrome 16mm film print, but has since been recolourised.[6][7] It was returned to the BBC by Ian Levine in June 1983 after being retained by him for two years for use as a bargaining chip, in case another, more valuable, missing episode showed up.[8] A short clip from the end of Episode One, depicting the Doctor and Sarah Jane in the back of a Land Rover to be taken to the detention centre when the Land Rover encounters a tyrannosaurus rex, still survives in its original 625-line format, having been used as reprise at the beginning of Episode Two.[9][10]
There is a long-standing fan myth that the tape of Part One was erased by mistake, having been confused with an episode of the Patrick Troughton serial The Invasion.[11] In fact, BBC Enterprises issued specific instructions to wipe all six episodes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, named as such, in August 1974, just six months after the story's transmission; for reasons unknown, however, only Part One was actually wiped. Stickers on the cans for the remaining episodes 2–6 indicate that they were returned from BBC Wales, which was transmitting Season 11 in a different timeslot on Sunday. As far as the BBC was concerned, the story had been wiped in its entirety; researchers for the 1977 BBC documentary Whose Doctor Who found that none of the episodes were listed as existing in the BBC Film Library, despite the fact that episodes 2–6 were actually at the possession of the BBC engineering department (they would be merged together into the BBC Film and Videotape Library in 1978).[12]
A black-and-white film print exists of the filmed sequences for Part One. This includes one scene of a scared scavenger stealing money from a dead milkman's satchel that was omitted from the broadcast version; this would have formed part of the deserted London montage. Black-and-white prints were used for practice by BBC film editors, in deciding where to make cuts, before cutting the master colour negatives. The surviving film recording of Episode 1 is the only tele-recording of a Season 11 episode held in the archives; this is probably due to the longstanding practice within BBC Enterprises of making a film print for overseas sales purposes prior to wiping any master tape. Colour 35mm film sequences from Part Five also exist, as does the initial edit of Part Three, without sound effects or incidental music on the soundtrack (known within the BBC as a "71 edit").
Chroma dot colour recovery and Manual recolourisation hybrid
2
"Part Two"
24:43
19January1974(1974-01-19)
10.1
PAL 2" colour videotape
3
"Part Three"
23:26
26January1974(1974-01-26)
11.0
PAL 2" colour videotape
4
"Part Four"
23:33
2February1974(1974-02-02)
9.0
PAL 2" colour videotape
5
"Part Five"
24:30
9February1974(1974-02-09)
9.0
PAL 2" colour videotape
6
"Part Six"
25:34
16February1974(1974-02-16)
7.5
PAL 2" colour videotape
After the episodes were broadcast, many younger viewers of the show complained that the Tyrannosaurus rex was actually an Allosaurus.[18]
The story was repeated in 1999 on BBC Choice as part of a series of programmes themed around dinosaurs.[19]
In The Discontinuity Guide (1998), Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping noted that "the special effects are woeful" and there was some padding, but the story "has many redeeming features, most notably the sombre location footage in the first episode".[20]David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker, in their analysis in Doctor Who: The Television Companion, felt that unfortunately the "awfulness of the dinosaur scenes tends to overshadow the excellence of Paddy Russell's direction of the rest of the story and the high quality of the performances by the assembled cast". Though they were favourable towards the plot, they noted that "the story is poorly paced and contains a tremendous amount of padding".[21]
In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times awarded it three stars out of five, describing it as "a roaringly good script" and he also praised the casting, but he criticised the dinosaurs as "dire" and questioned the "grand plan" which "raises all sorts of questions about how the new, jump-suited generation of mankind was smuggled aboard the fake spaceship, or how a big, nuclear-generator-powered underground base could be built unnoticed".[2]DVD Talk's John Sinnott gave the story four out of five stars. Aside from the dinosaurs, he felt that the rest was "very good" with "a good amount of suspense, some nice twists", and also highlighted how the villains were "people who basically had the right ideas but that they took it way too far".[22]SFX reviewer Ian Berriman wrote that the serial was "crammed with unlikely plot turns ... but that just makes it all the more entertaining". He noted that it was problematic to have several cliffhangers rely on the appearance of the dinosaurs due to their poor realisation, but praised Sarah's competence and involvement with the plot.[23]
A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in February 1976 as Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion. In 1993 it was reprinted with the title Doctor Who – Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and different cover art. The novelisation features a prologue about the dinosaurs and ends with the Doctor consulting the Book of Ezekiel to determine the final fate of the Golden Age time travellers. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by actor Martin Jarvis was released on CD in November 2007 by BBC Audiobooks.[24]
Home media
This was the final complete story to be released by BBC Worldwide on VHS, in 2003.
The story was released on DVD in the UK on 9 January 2012 alongside the 1975 Tom Baker story The Android Invasion, together forming the U.N.I.T Files box set.[25] The DVD features a restored black-and-white version of Episode 1 as the default and also a 'best-endeavours' attempt at colour recovery of this episode as a branched-extra feature.[6] This serial was also released as part of the Doctor Who DVD Files in Issue 121 on 21 August 2013.
In contrast to other wiped colour episodes from the Pertwee era where the missing colour information had been inadvertently recorded on the surviving black and white film copies as a sequence of visual artefacts/dots or chroma dots, in the case of Part One of this story this information was found to be incomplete, and only the red and green colour signal information was recoverable, requiring the missing blue signal information to be obtained via other means.
The new colour version of Part One featured on the DVD thus employs approximated blue colour information, and although the outcome is not up to normal DVD quality, it gives an impression of what the episode would have looked like when originally broadcast.[7]
Related Research Articles
The Silurians and Sea Devils are two fictional related ancient species created by Malcolm Hulke for the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The Silurians are a race of scientifically advanced reptilian humanoids from the dawn of man which first appeared in Doctor Who in Hulke's 1970 serial Doctor Who and the Silurians. The two species will foreground the plot of the upcoming Doctor Who spin-off series The War Between the Land and the Sea by Russell T Davies.
David Arthur Whitaker was an English television writer and novelist who worked on the early years of the science-fiction TV series Doctor Who. He served as the programme's first story editor, supervising the writing of its first 51 episodes from 1963 to 1964.
Terror of the Autons is the first serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 2 to 23 January 1971.
Doctor Who and the Silurians is the second serial of the seventh season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast in seven weekly parts on BBC1 from 31 January to 14 March 1970.
Day of the Daleks is the first serial of the ninth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 to 22 January 1972. It was the first of four Third Doctor serials to feature the Daleks, which returned to the series for the first time since The Evil of the Daleks (1967).
The Dæmons is the fifth and final serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in five weekly parts on BBC1 from 22 May to 19 June 1971.
Terrance William Dicks was an English author and television screenwriter, script editor and producer. In television, he had a long association with the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, working as a writer and also serving as the programme's script editor from 1968 to 1974. The Doctor Who News Page described him as "arguably the most prolific contributor to Doctor Who". He later became a script editor and producer of classic serials for the BBC.
Robot is the first serial of the 12th season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 28 December 1974 to 18 January 1975. It was the first full serial to feature Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, as well as Ian Marter as new companion Harry Sullivan. In the serial, the director of an English research institute plots to use an experimental robot to steal nuclear launch codes and blackmail the world's governments with them.
Malcolm Ainsworth Hulke was a British television writer and author of the industry "bible" Writing for Television in the 70s. He is remembered chiefly for his work on the science fiction series Doctor Who although he contributed to many popular television series of the era.
Planet of the Spiders is the fifth and final serial of the 11th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 4 May to 8 June 1974. It was Jon Pertwee's final regular appearance as the Third Doctor, the last regular appearance of Mike Yates, and marks the first, uncredited appearance of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. This serial introduces the term "regenerate" to explain the Doctor's transformation into another appearance. It also contains the first mention in the series of future companion Harry Sullivan.
The Green Death is the fifth and final serial of the tenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 19 May to 23 June 1973. It was the last regular appearance of Katy Manning as companion Jo Grant.
Frontier in Space is the third serial of the tenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The serial was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 24 February to 31 March 1973. It was the last serial to feature Roger Delgado as the Master.
The Android Invasion is the fourth serial of the thirteenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 22 November to 13 December 1975.
Terror of the Zygons is the first serial of the thirteenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 30 August to 20 September 1975. The serial was written by Robert Banks Stewart and directed by Douglas Camfield.
Barry Leopold Letts was an English actor, television director, writer and producer, best known for being the producer of Doctor Who from 1969 to 1974.
Colony in Space is the fourth serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 10 April to 15 May 1971.
The Ambassadors of Death is the third serial of the seventh season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in seven weekly parts on BBC1 from 21 March to 2 May 1970. The serial's script was credited to David Whitaker but completed primarily by Malcolm Hulke and Trevor Ray. It was directed by Michael Ferguson.
The Mind of Evil is the second serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 30 January to 6 March 1971.
The Enemy of the World is the fourth serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in six weekly parts from 23 December 1967 to 27 January 1968.
Derrick George Sherwin was an English television producer, writer, story editor and actor. After beginning his career in the theatre, Sherwin became an actor in television before moving into writing. He became the story editor on Doctor Who and, as the producer of the series in 1969, he oversaw the transition from black-and-white to colour by producing Patrick Troughton's final story and Jon Pertwee's first. He also co-produced Paul Temple for the BBC.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
