OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 365
STORY NUMBER: 071
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 16 February 1974
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Paddy Russell
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - U.N.I.T Files: Invasion of the Dinosaurs and the Android Invasion
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video
"Well, I never thought I'd find myself blowing up a tube station. If you're wrong, Doctor, I'm going to have a job explaining this to London Transport!"
"Well, don't worry, Brigadier, I'm never wrong. If we don't get down there, there won't be a London Transport to explain to."
The Doctor escapes, and runs into an army patrol where Finch tries to recapture him but he is rescued by Benton & the Brigadier. Sarah is locked up in a store cupboard but escapes through an air vent. Finding Finch has ordered his men to evacuate the Brigadier realises he's been duped and calls Geneva but is held at gunpoint by Mike Yates. He explains the plan to the Doctor who tries to talk him out of it. Distracted by a soldier bringing tea, Yates is overpowered by Benton. Sarah returns to the ship and explains to Mark they are under London. Benton arms the Doctor & Brigadier with ropes & explosives so they can raid the base under the tube station. The Elders don't believe Sarah's story and summon Sir Charles from one of the other ships. Journeying to Moorgate the Doctor & Brigadier encounter several dinosaurs. Grover admitting his story is overheard by Adam. The Doctor & Brigadier are menaced by a Triceratops on the station platform as they set their explosives. Adam releases Mark & Sarah as the Doctor blows his way into the lift shaft descending by rope while the Brigadier calls Benton on the radio and summons reinforcements. Benton is being held at gunpoint by Finch but manages to overpowers him. Sarah steps out the airlock demonstrating it's a fake. The Doctor knocks Butler out. The Elders move out the ship to stop Grover & Whitaker when the Doctor arrives with the Brigadier. Whitaker activates the machine, but the Doctor resists the time field and shuts it down. As he resets the machine Whitaker attempts to reactivate it, not realising that the Doctor has reversed the polarity sending him & Grover back to the past. The Brigadier tells them that Finch will be court martialled while the Yates will be given an opportunity to resign quietly. Benton tells the Doctor he's proud to be one of the few sergeants who have punched a general on the nose. The Doctor tries to tempt Sarah back into the Tardis with a trip to Florana......
Liz was watching the opening of this episode with and commented "Here I am a placid vegetarian dinosaur and I will run into your mouth" as it "attacks" the Tyrannosaur.
But after that point the episode is go go go all the way to the end that I can't fault at all and is a cracking resolution to the story. Yes half the guest cast turn out to be in on the plan to wind back time: even the Brigadier comments "Is anyone not a traitor?" It's an interesting counterpoint to The Green Death where the environmentalists were the good guys: here they're trying to turn back time and commit mass genocide. The Doctor sympathises with their ideals, if not their methods, and that might have caused a few raised eyebrows at the time. Now that environmental concerns are much more mainstream I wonder how this story would go down and it's a bit of a shame it's not had a modern repeat. For my money it's one of the better Pertwee stories too and I thought that even before I realised how much of it was filmed in my home town!
The only real downside is The Dinosaurs of the title: they aren't great. Let me rephrase that: The Tyrannosaurus Rex is really very very poor, or as my friend Karl pointed out "He is a little bit Chewits Monster isn't he?"
The other Dinosaurs aren't bad especially those seen in this last episode - The "Brontosaur" ain't bad and the Triceratops, hidden in shadow, is really good.
It's just unfortunate that it's the rather poor Tyrannosaur that we see most often.
I'm pretty sure Sir Charles' spacesuit is a recycled one from Moonbase 3!
Robinson, one of the newly awakened members of the ship's crew, is played by Timothy Craven who was a cell guard in Frontier in Space, and will be Short in Robot and the Tesh in Protective Suit Face of Evil.
Among the rest of Operation Golden Age Men crewmembers we have Barry Summerford on his Doctor Who debut. He'll return in The Ark in Space as a Body in Pallet, Genesis of the Daleks as an Elite Guard, Revenge of the Cybermen as a Vogan, Terror of the Zygons as Private Thurston, The Seeds of Doom as a UNIT Soldier, The Hand of Fear as a Security Guard, The Sun Makers as a Megro Guard, The Ribos Operation as a Shrieve, The Armageddon Factor as a Guard, The Creature from the Pit as a Guard and The Keeper of Traken as a Foster. He also should have been in Shada as Nero ! He was in the Doomwatchepisode Tomorrow, the Rat as a Man, Moonbase 3 as a Technician in Castor and Pollux & View of a Dead Planet and in Blake's 7 he plays a Federation Trooper in The Way Back, a Rebel in Pressure Point, a Rebel in Voice from the Past, a Customer / Gambler in Gambit, a Federation Commando in Volcano, a Monster in Dawn of the Gods and Tando in Blake, making him one of four actors to appear in the first and last episode of the series. He can also be seen in the Douglas Camfield adaption of Beau Geste as a Legionnaire.
According to the DWAS Production File Geoff Brighty is the actor should have been in Spearhead from Space as the car park attendant but was fired and replaced by producer Derrick Sherwin! He later appeared in Ambassadors of Death as a UNIT soldier and The Time Monster as a Roundhead returning as an Audience Member/Meditator in Planet of the Spiders. an SRS audience member in Robot and a body in pallet in Ark in Space. IMDB thinks he was in Moonbase 3 as a Technician in Outsiders.
Another crewmember is Ken Tracey, briefly seen in episode 1 as a dispatch rider, and Rory O’Connor, who later plays a Guest/Cricketer in Black Orchid.
The Operation Golden Age Women include Lyn Howard, who was a Woman Elder in The Savages and Judy Rodger, who returns as a Nurse in Armageddon Factor, a Passenger in Nightmare of Eden and a Middle-aged Lady Mawdryn Undead. Annet Peters later plays a Citizen in Pirate Planet, a Passenger in Nightmare of Eden, a Guide in The Leisure Hive and a Lazar in Terminus. In Fawlty Towers she's Mrs. Wareing in A Touch of Class and in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin she's a Woman in Restaurant in Hippopotamus. she later has a recurring role in Tenko as a Female Prisoner of War.
Driving General Finch's Land Rover is Robin Dixon, who I assume is from the vehicle hire company like the other drivers. The soldier in the Land Rover is Kevin Moran, who had been a UNIT Troop in The Time Monster, a Draconian in Frontier in Space and a Spiridon in Planet of the Daleks. He returns as an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks, an Ice Warrior in The Monster of Peladon and a Soldier/Brethren Guest in The Masque of Mandragora. In Doomwatch he plays a man in Flood.
Blink and you'll miss them, but there's two UNIT Soldiers with Brigadier & Benton at when they burst into Whitaker's control room. One is John Cash, who returns just once as a Guard in Planet of Spiders. The other is James Muir who had previously been a UNIT Soldier in The Time Monster. He returns as a Muto in Genesis of the Daleks, a UNIT Soldier in Terror of the Zygons, a Brother in The Masque of Mandragora, a Death Attendant in The Sun Makers, a Technician in The Pirate Planet, a Druid in The Stones of Blood, a Louvre Detective in City of Death, a Mandrel in Nightmare of Eden, then would have been the Man Fishing and a Krarg in Shada, after which he was seen as a Foamasi in The Leisure Hive, a Gaztak in Meglos, a Tharil in Warriors' Gate, a Police Driver in Black Orchid, a Policeman in Time Flight, an RAF Driver in Remembrance of the Daleks, . He'd been in Blake's 7 as a Federation Trooper in Seek-Locate-Destroy, a Phibian in Orac, a Rebel in Pressure Point, a Monster in Dawn of the Gods, a Link in Rescue, a Helot in Traitor, a Pirate Guard in Assassin & a Federation Trooper in Blake. He was the Vl'Hurg Leader in episode 4 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and was a technician in Moonbase 3: Castor and Pollux.
This episode features several locations seen earlier in the story: we start on Lindsey Street getting a good look at the main entrance to Spitalfields Markey.
We're then back at Elderberry Road Electricity Substation, seen in episodes 2 & 3 for the confrontation with General Finch.
The Brigadier and Doctor end up at Moorfields, used in episodes 1 & 4, just outside Moorgate station.
The Brigadier's comment here is rather amusing:
BRIGADIER: Well, I never thought I'd find myself blowing up a tube station. If you're wrong, Doctor, I'm going to have a job explaining this to London Transport.Remember where The Brigadier first met The Doctor? Down in the Underground, while it was invaded by the Yeti in Web of Fear: there was a fair bit of trying to blow up tunnels and stations there!
DOCTOR: Well, don't worry, Brigadier, I'm never wrong. If we don't get down there, there won't be a London Transport to explain to.
The only new location in this episode is, like many in early episodes, found in Kingston Upon Thames, or rather on it's border with Richmond: The Doctor & Brigadier drive under the "brontosaur" at Riverside Drive in Ham.
The shots of the Land Rover approaching the dinosaur have the Richmond end of the road in the background, and the shots of the Dinosaur from their point of view have the Kingston end of the road in the background, yet the Dinosaur is facing to the right in both shots!
The residences to one side of the road are Ham itself while the ground to the other separates Ham from the River Thames on which is Teddington Lock, where Monty Python's Fish Slapping Song was filmed, and Teddington Studios, the home of Thames Television. It is also the closest location to Greycourt Court School where I had my secondary education.
This is Malcolm Hulke's last story for the show and is easily my favourite of the tales he wrote. He would novelise his tales, plus one of the Barry Letts/Robert Sloman stories The Green Death, for Target Books until his death on 6th July 1979. His adaptation of the War Games was published posthumously. A lifelong atheist with communist sympathies, Hulke left instructions that his funeral should have no religious songs or reading. Terrance Dicks recalls turning up and finding himself sitting there with a bunch of his friends unsure of what to do. After a few minutes his friend and fellow writer Eric Paice got up, slapped the coffin, said "Cheerio Mac" and wandered out with the other guests following!
The Invasion of the Dinosaurs was novelised by Malcolm Hulke as The Dinosaur Invasion and published on 19th February 1976. It had one of the shortest availabilities of any Doctor Who book with this cover and was rejacketed in 1978, the second book to get a new cover. My local library, near to several of the filming locations, had a copy and following it's withdrawal from lending it now sits on my bookshelves.
Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the final complete story to be released by BBC Worldwide on VHS, in 2003. It was released on DVD in January 2012 where it was paired with another favourite of mine, The Android Invasion, in the UNIT Box. Attempts were made to recolour episode one for release but, because the results weren't deemed as up to broadcast standard, both the best recolourisation and a black & white copy were included.
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