July 2: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Parts Five & Six

So part five sees the Doctor arrested -- something the Brigadier appears to be doing more for appearances, but Mike Yates is deadly serious in carrying out his duty.  "So it was you, Mike," the Doctor says sadly.  Still, Sergeant Benton is still on the Doctor's side, and he allows the Doctor to knock him out and escape: "You'd better start overpowering me, hadn't you?  You know, a bit of your Venusian oojah?"  Thus, we get an episode of UNIT and regular army troops chasing the Doctor as he drives around in a stolen Jeep.  It's all played as a matter of course, but it's worth taking a moment to ponder the situation: for the first time (well, except for Inferno, but that was a special situation), the Doctor is alone and being hunted by the people he thought were his friends.  It should be an important moment, but instead it's treated as just more runaround.  Maybe if they'd actually had, say, Mike Yates out on the hunt, it would have had a greater impact.  As it is, though, it looks like it's just typical late-episode fare.

Meanwhile on the "spaceship" side of things, Sarah also manages to escape, after demonstrating to Mark that the ship is a fake -- which she proves by exiting the airlock with no ill effects.  She's able to escape back to UNIT HQ, where she encounters General Finch and decides to show him where the underground base is, only to find that Finch is a part of the conspiracy too.  "Oh boy, I really do choose my friends, don't I?" she moans as Finch points a gun at her and then takes her back to Grover in the underground base.

The Doctor's managed to evade his captors and is heading back through London, when a series of dinosaurs appear around him.  Which means that, for the third time this story, we get a cliffhanger of that same sad T. rex puppet showing up.

And then part six opens with the infamous shot of a Tyrannosaurus and an Apatosaurus attacking each other -- except that, because of the severe limitations of the models that they're using, it looks more like they're going to kiss each other, as they bump mouths together.  They try to redeem things in the next shot, with the Tyrannosaurus "savagely" biting the neck of the Apatosaurus, but that's not a very convincing shot either.  In fact, it's this sequence that probably bears most of the blame for the poor reputation this story's effects have.

But everything else is honestly pretty exciting.  The Brigadier "captures" the Doctor and allows him to get on with breaking into the underground bunker via explosives -- though not before Yates definitively reveals himself as a traitor, holding the Doctor, the Brigadier, and Benton at gun point.  But after a brief struggle they get free, allowing them to head to the bunker -- and on their way they encounter another Tyrannosaurus, and the close-up version is actually really nicely done.  But then they cut back to the full version with a dull thud.  Ah well.

The Doctor fights his way through Whitaker's time field.
(Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Six) ©BBC

And while that's going on, Sarah's made her way back to the "ship" and has told the others what's going on, how they've been unwittingly duped into participating in the erasing of all of civilization (Whitaker's plan, y'see, is to send everything except a small area back in time to a "golden age" -- not necessarily the time of the dinosaurs, just pre-homo sapiens -- and have the group of colonists start afresh).  All this means that, just as Whitaker's ready to pull the switch and send the planet back in time, he's interrupted by the Doctor, the Brigadier, Sarah, and all the colonists.  Whitaker pulls the switch, but the Doctor is able to fight through the effects and switch it back off (because, y'know, Time Lord) -- and a second attempt to throw the switch only succeeds in sending Whitaker and Grover back in time.  The world is saved from misguided anti-pollution people -- although the Doctor has some sympathy for them: "But at least [Grover] realised the dangers this planet of yours is in, Brigadier.  The danger of it becoming one vast garbage dump inhabited only by rats...  It's not the the oil and the filth and the poisonous chemicals that are the real cause of pollution, Brigadier.  It's simply greed."  And so Yates has been offered a chance to quietly resign, and the Doctor offers to take Sarah to the planet Florana, "one of the most beautiful planets in the universe."  And all is right with the world.

There are some interesting ideas at play in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  Malcolm Hulke (who, it should be remembered, was heavily left-wing in his politics) seems to almost be writing a rebuttal of The Green Death and saying, "Look, anti-pollution people can go too far too."  This leads to an interesting dynamic between Grover's people's goals and beliefs and their method of fixing them: the result is desirable (sort of), but the means aren't justified.  You can't just wish the problems away; you have to tackle them head-on.  Add to this the conspiracy elements and you'd think we'd be on to a real winner.

Unfortunately, they've decided to call this story Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and frankly, most of the dinosaurs aren't really up to the task of supporting this story.  Worse, the least successful model, the Tyrannosaurus, is the one they keep using the most -- because when you're ten, the Tyrannosaurus is just about the coolest thing around.  But if they knew they were going to be using it the most, they should have spent more time and money on it.  Even in a world before Jurassic Park these effects were pretty limp.  The other issue is that, while they seem to be trying to get this show done on time and on budget, there's little ambition beyond that -- so even the moments that should be shocking, like Mike Yates' betrayal (Mike Yates!  That's like having Chekov turn out to be a Klingon spy⁸⁰) or the Doctor on the run from his former friends, are treated as business as usual, with little flair or excitement.  If they'd cared a little bit more, Invasion of the Dinosaurs could have been a classic, but as is, the ultimate effect is of a reasonably clever script let down by poor effects and a general sense of "eh, good enough".







⁸⁰ Or, more pertinently, like having Saavik (Spock's pupil in the second through fourth Star Trek movies) turn out to be in on the conspiracy to plunge the Federation and the Klingons into war.  Except they chickened out and gave Saavik's role to a new character, Valeris, for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.