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| The Doctor watches dinosaurs battle for territory in central London! |
6 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 147 minutes. Written by: Malcolm Hulke. Directed by: Paddy Russell. Produced by: Barry Letts.
THE PLOT:
The Doctor returns journalist Sarah Jane Smith to London - except something is wrong. The city has been evacuated, with no activity outside of scattered bands of looters. Eventually reuniting with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT, the Doctor learns that dinosaurs have been rampaging all over central London. The creatures appear, wreak havoc, and then vanish.
This is no natural phenomenon. Someone is deliberately causing this chaos, using the dinosaurs to clear out the area. Sarah is able to offer a lead: a missing scientist named Whitaker (Peter Miles), disgraced after the scientific community laughed off his theories about time travel.
It's clear that enormous power is required to bring the dinosaurs to present day London. The Doctor and Sarah each follow individual trails to the truth. But their efforts are complicated by sabotage. Somebody inside UNIT is working against them!
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: As a Time Lord, he has a level of immunity to the time eddies being generated. This allows him to see time reversing when a dinosaur is sent back, something that the UNIT soldiers can't observe as time reverses for them too. He is delighted to meet Charles Grover, the Minister in charge of the emergency, having followed Grover's pro-ecology campaigns, and he tells the MP, "This planet needs people like you." He has less time for Gen. Finch (John Bennett), who is in charge of the military response and whom even the Brigadier regards with thinly veiled disdain. He has a degree of sympathy with the motives of the villains, but he agrees that what they're actually doing is madness.
Sarah Jane Smith: She is far too enthusiastic about telling people that she has information that she hasn't yet shared with others. She makes that mistake twice in this serial, which ends with her being abducted both times. That aside, this is an excellent story for her. As with The Time Warrior, she's presented as a character who could be the lead in her own series (which would, of course, eventually happen). When she feels dismissed by the Doctor and the Brigadier, she actively investigates on her own, and she turns up vital clues. Near the end, actions that she takes are almost enough to resolve the crisis, if not for a single flipped lever. She and the Doctor are separated for almost the entire second half, but the first two episodes allow her and Jon Pertwee to demonstrate good screen rapport, and they are charming together in the final scene.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: Though he values the chain of command too much not to show proper respect to Gen. Finch, it's still clear that he dislikes both the man and his orders. He's particularly exasperated when the general insists on devoting resources to stopping looters rather than focusing on the larger problem. His faith in his men is such that he has difficulty believing that any member of UNIT could be working with the villains.
Capt. Yates: After he's reunited with the Doctor, he admits that he had to take "a spot of leave" to recover from his brainwashing in The Green Death. He still seems to be suffering from a hint of PTSD, with him openly musing about how peaceful the evacuated London is. He organizes detention centers for looters and other details, and this seems to earn him a degree of trust from Gen. Finch. He uses that to advocate for the Doctor; when Finch dismisses the Doctor's reports as "rubbish," Yates interjects to say that he shouldn't be dismissed so casually. He goes even further in a later scene, stating that the Doctor is "probably the greatest scientist on this planet."
Sgt. Benton: He acts fast when a traitor within the ranks pulls a gun on the Brigadier, jumping the man and disarming him at the first opportunity. When Gen. Finch orders him to arrest the Doctor, he agrees - only to immediately tell the Doctor to knock him unconscious in order to stage an escape. He later pulls a gun on Gen. Finch to enforce UNIT's jurisdiction. Finch vows to court martial him, a threat that doesn't seem to bother Benton in the slightest.
THOUGHTS:
To get it out of the way up-front: The dinosaur effects are pretty much what you'd think they'd be, greenscreen shots of what look suspiciously like cheap plastic toys, and the directorial choices make them look even worse than they had to.
Too many of the shots featuring the dinosaurs are in bright daylight, showing off the cheapness to full disadvantage. Worse still, most of these shots are allowed to run for entire seconds longer than they should. Late in the story, there is one scene featuring a dinosaur underground, in dim lighting, and the scene works much better - but that scene is, sadly, the exception.
Outside of the "very special" effects, Invasion of the Dinosaurs has a lot going for it. In a series filled with evil megalomaniacs, this serial's villains believe that their actions are fully justified. I confess to preferring antagonists who believe they are in the right, rather than ones who are simply "Eeevil." They even have a worldview the Doctor can sympathize with, to a point; they've just taken it to an extreme conclusion.
The first episode is reminiscent of the first part of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, with the regulars exploring a mostly empty London and trying to determine what has happened. The T-rex doesn't get unveiled until the cliffhanger, leaving most of the episode to build atmosphere and mystery. This opening installment also allows us to see the Doctor and Sarah together as a team - a good thing, given that they were separate for much of their first story and are separated again for the back half of this one.
The final two episodes are quite good. The Doctor gets involved in a car chase that's one of this era's better such sequences. There's genuine cleverness as he uses the environment to his advantage. The scene also creates momentum by giving him a double problem: evading Finch's soldiers while at the same time racing to reach the villains' lair before they can put their plan into action.
Unfortunately, the narrative bogs down in the middle. There is repetition, from multiple attempts to sabotage the Doctor to multiple trips back and forth between locations. It never devolves into tedium, but there's a sense of the action being stretched to fill six parts.
Even in the midst of the tedious middle episodes, the serial manages to deliver what I think might be one of Doctor Who's best cliffhangers. Episode Three doesn't end with characters in danger. Instead, it delivers a sudden narrative curveball, one that doesn't at first glance seem to fit with the rest of the story at all. It's well-executed, from the reveal itself to Sarah's look of shock at hearing it, and it does its job of hooking you into the next episode if only to get an explanation.
OVERALL:
There's a lot to like about Invasion of the Dinosaurs. The ideas are interesting, and there are several memorable sequences, including an excellent car chase and an outstanding Episode Three cliffhanger. The story does a good job of showing off new companion Sarah Jane Smith, who gets strong material with the Doctor in the first half and on her own in the second half.
I remember when this story was almost universally derided by fandom simply because of the cheap dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are cheap, and iffy directorial choices make that even more apparent than it should have been - but this is a good, solid story at its core, and I've been glad to see its reputation recover over the last decade or so.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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Next Story: Death to the Daleks
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