Day 184 — July 3rd 2021
Invasion of the Dinosaurs Parts Three and Four
Invasion of the Dinosaurs — Part Three
This is very much Sarah Jane’s episode, isn’t it? Jo used to get them too — opportunities to shine while Doctor Who himself takes a bit of a backseat for the week. Pertwee’s only role in this episode is to set up his experiement, tinker with equipment and to express concern when things get sabotaged. By contrast Lis Sladen has got so much to do; she’s the target of an attack which makes her the one present when the T-Rex wakes up. She’s the one who stumbles into discovering that Sir Charles is secretly working against them. She even gets the (brilliant) cliffhanger, waking up three months later on a spaceship.
Perhaps most importantly, everything she does in this episode feels absolutely informed by her character brief — she’s a journalist, and we really see that put to the test here, in a way that I don’t think it ever will be again. The reason she’s there to be attacked when the dinosaur wakes up? Because she’s duped the men into letting her back in with a camera, so she’s got some evidence for a story when all of this is over. I love the way she seethes when the Brigadier won’t let her take pictures;
Sarah: ‘Can I bring a camera back here with me?’
The Brigadier: ‘Whatever for?’
Sarah: ‘Well, for my story. I’m a journalist, remember? You don’t think I’m going to miss an opportunity like this?’
The Brigadier: ‘I am sorry, Miss Smith. This whole affair’s under strict security black-out. You can take your photographs when the crisis is passed.’
Sarah: ‘When the crisis is passed, there won’t be anything to photograph!’
It’s such a contrast to the way Isobel behaved in The Invasion under a similar restriction, and I think it’s an example of what a brilliant character Sarah Jane can be. She’s often cited as the first ‘feminist’ Doctor Who companion, and while I think that’s oversimplifying things a bit, it’s telling how much more maturely the subject is being handled here compared to the rest of the Pertwee era — ‘the good ship women’s lib’ indeed…!
She discovers Sir Charles’ true allegiances based on journalistic instinct, too. Her discovery of Whitaker’s time travel experiments (and surely that’s an in-joke about David Whitaker?) come because she’s been doing her own digging off screen and has called in some favours from friends at The Times. When no one takes her seriously, she sneaks off and investigates anyway, and she manages to have some cheeky fun while she’s at it;
Benton: ‘Where do you want to go, and what shall I tell the Doctor?’
Sarah: ‘Tell him I’ve gone out to play, hmm?’
Benton: ‘Oh no...’
I’m gutted that Malcolm Hulke won’t be writing for Sarah again after this one, because he seems to get such a great handle on her character, and it’s in episodes like this that you realise how brilliant she can be. I took to Jo fairly quickly, and I hate to make it sound like I’m putting her down, but I’ve gotten to grips with Sarah immediately. There’s something about her that’s so brilliant.
Now then, it’s a while since we’ve broached the thorny issue of UNIT dating, but Invasion of the Dinosaurs is a pretty good place to bring it up again. This episode especially seems to be going out of its way to be set in the future, most obviously in an exchange between Sarah and Sir Charles;
Sarah: ‘Wasn’t there a plan once to build underground quarters for the government in the event of an atomic war?’
Sir Charles: ‘Yes, back in the cold war days. Oh, I see what you’re getting at.’
In reality the Cold War stretched right through the eighties, but let’s be a little fairer and suggest that this episode is postulating that it came to an end around the time of broadcast. Taking that assumption and adding in that the plans found in the records room indicate the secret base was built ‘twenty years ago, right in the centre of London’ then we’re looking at a hypothetical date of the early-to-mid 1990s for this story, depending on whether Sarah is rounding that date up or down. That’d be the latest indication we’ve had for the setting of these tales so far.
And yet… oh lord the outfit Sarah’s wearing on the spaceship is very 1970s, isn’t it?
Episode One gives us a more definitive date in hindsight. The Sarah Jane Adventures confirms that Sarah Jane was born in the spring of 1951, and here she confirms her age as ‘23’. We can assume she’s not fudging that number as she gives it during her questioning following arrest, and at least until Doctor Who starts grinning in the photographs she’s definitely quite frightened of the repercussions. If she’s 23 in this story that would put the date pretty squarely at the time of broadcast — early 1975 at the latest.
There’s a couple more awkward dates to come (one of them from Sarah Jane herself!) but I think the evidence is increasingly mounting that the UNIT stories are set when they were on the telly, and that’s more than good enough for me.
It’s an 8/10 here.
Invasion of the Dinosaurs — Part Four
Oh go on, then. I’ve put it off for half the story but let’s talk a bit about the dinosaurs themselves, shall we? When this story came out on DVD there was much gnashing of teeth about the fact that it didn’t include an alternate edit featuring CGI dinosaurs. It still gets talked about to this day, especially after the brilliant Gavin Rymill produced a clip showcasing how it could look (although with a lot of work involved).
The general consensus among fandom seems to be that the dinosaur models in this story are so bad that they actively drag the story down with them. Even Lis Sladen gives them a good bashing in her autobiography;
‘There were whispers that Barry et al weren’t happy with the results. By the time Paddy [Russell] had to film the things, everyone knew they weren’t good enough. You can imagine how much this improved our director’s mood! When I saw one of the models, I could have cried. We all could. Awful. Just so amateur looking. But what can you do? The serial was called Invasion of the Dinosaurs, so they must be included, terrible as they were.’
I’m guessing it won’t come as any great surprise to anyone given the all-round love in this story has been for me so far that I actually quite like the dinosaurs as they are. Okay, yes, they’re not the greatest models ever created for the programme. Yes, they look a lot like plasticine and there are some shots — like the T-Rex smashing through the house in Episode One — which actually do look rather amateur. But on the whole I don’t have to work any harder to suspend my disbelief for these effects than I do with any other shot the series has given me up to now. You certainly could replace them all with CGI creations, but I think I’d still be more likely to watch the originals when I stick the disc in the player.
And there are some shots which look actively very good. They built a couple of models of the T-Rex, including a larger-scale on which was used for close ups, and that one is actually great. The eyes open and close, there’s far more detail on the face and the skin… yeah, I think they get away with that. There’s far worse effects issues in this story, and it’s the usual culprit of CSO.
Sladen goes on in her autobiography to say that the ‘scene where I have to photograph a sleeping T-Rex looked okay’, noting that it only fell apart when the creature began to move. She’s not wrong — the model T-Rex does look better when it’s simply laying still, but the CSO used to put any other actor into shot with the thing is dreadful. yellow fringing all around. And it’s not only confined to people — CSO is used a lot in this episode, to put in images on screens and even to fill in the background of the warehouse outside the main room, and in every instance it’s not especially well done. I know studio space is at a premium but it makes me long for the days when they used back projection for things like this!
By contrast, the shots in Part Two where Doctor Who is put into frame with the Stegosaurus look rather brilliant. Perhaps the harsher lighting in the film sequences makes all the difference?
There’s something else controversial which needs to be addressed in this episode;
The Brigadier: ‘You’ll never get it off the ground, Doctor. Wouldn’t you rather have a jeep?’
Doctor Who: ‘Not a bit of it, Brigadier. This new car of mine is exactly what I need. Speed is of the essence, you know.’
I feel like the Whomobile shouldn’t work. It’s a vaguely ridiculous idea, and if I thought Bessie was a bit silly then this takes things to a whole new level. The idea of Doctor Who driving around 1970s London in a space-age car with wings is about as stupid as you can get…. and yet I sort of buy it! I fully expected to sit here today and slate the thing, but there’s something oddly endearing about how happy Pertwee looks to be driving it around. Again, I think it’s the nostalgia talking. If this weren’t my very first Who, would I be so willing to overlook the thing?
And since I’ve already mentioned Gavin Rymill once, I may as well also say that I found it oddly exciting when he tweeted a few years ago to announce that the Whomobile had been rediscovered in a garage in London.
As for the episode itself… it’s a bit of an odd one, this. I was going to say it’s a typical ‘middle’ episode of a story, in which not a great deal happens. But that would be total nonsense, because actually a lot happens in these 25 minutes. For starters we finally get all our ‘villains’ together in the same place. There’s been some pretty clear hints dropped in the first three episodes about these people working for ‘the other side’, but this is the first out-and-out confirmation.
And then you’ve got Doctor Who stumbling into their secret hideout, and being outsmarted by the scientists, forced like a rat in a maze back to the entrance, and then returning only to find it’s all been blocked off. As if that weren’t enough they turn everything on its head in the cliffhanger, by pinning the blame on Doctor Who himself. In a story where there’s already been a lot of talk about people switching allegiances, it’s an exciting set up for where we go next.
It’s only a shame that, once again, the cliffhanger is let down by some atrocious CSO!
Overall I think I’m going with a 7/10.
