Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Six

The one where the Brigadier meets a triceratops on the London Underground...

Doctor Who really shouldn't have attempted a dinosaur fight on the budget it had in 1974. It's easy enough for Malcolm Hulke to write "the T Rex and the brontosaurus fight", but it's not so easy for director Paddy Russell and producer Barry Letts to make that happen convincingly on screen, certainly not with the dinosaur models being used. It was Hulke (and script editor Terrance Dicks') responsibility to dial that back, but they didn't, so what we're left with is two inflexible giant lizards appearing to nuzzle each other gently.

While the Doctor tries to avoid the ferocious dino-wrestling outside, Sarah is locked up in a storage room, where she's reassured by Butler that she will be going with them on their crazy voyage back to the "golden age". But why do the bad guys insist on keeping Sarah around? She's clearly a disruptive influence, and it would be much easier to dispose of her to enable them to get on with their dastardly plot. Luckily for Sarah, she's been locked in a room with one of those handy ventilation shafts. You know the type, the ones you never see in real life but seem to be commonplace in the Doctor Who universe. Always big enough for a human to crawl through.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the story where we see the heart ripped out of UNIT, and it's pretty brutal after all these years of cosy alien-busting adventures. The Brigadier is forced to disobey orders from his superiors, which is clearly very difficult for him to do. And then he's faced with the realisation that one of his most trusted men, Captain Yates, is a traitor. He seems reluctant to accept Mike's deceit at first, claiming he was merely obeying Finch's orders, but the moment Yates pulls a gun on the Brigadier and Benton is the turning point.

The chat between the Doctor and Yates is wonderfully written, and Jon Pertwee plays it with an appropriate softness which recognises that Yates is misguided, not evil. Still, when Pertwee fixes Richard Franklin with that stare, you really do have to listen. "There never was a golden age, Mike," he says. "It's all an illusion." And was there ever a finer rallying call for the green movement than: "Take the world that you've got and try to make something of it. It's not too late." It might not have been too late in 1974, buy it may well be now, watching almost half a century later.

Meanwhile, up in space (actually a pretend spaceship built under central London!) the Elders have begun to revive some of the sleeping 'travellers', and Mark is trying to convince Ruth and Adam that they're not in a spaceship at all. The travellers refuse to entertain the idea that they haven't been crossing the void of space for three months at all, because it's just too crazy to contemplate. I feel sorry for Robinson, who says he even sold his house before he embarked on this "voyage"! It's up to Sarah to try and convince them of the truth, but her old friend Sir Charles Grover is getting in her way.

Adam calls Grover, who he thinks is on another spaceship in the fleet, and asks him if he can have a word because things are getting out of hand. So instead of just talking to Adam over the radio, Grover pretends to travel across space in a shuttle to the ship, donning full astronaut costume and going through the motions of entering through the airlock. You'd have to be pretty close-minded to not catch on that something's amiss by now. I love the rigmarole Grover goes through, entering through the airlock, depressurizing, then loping into the ship, unscrewing his space gloves and removing his bulbous helmet, and without a single hello, says: "Well Adam, what's the problem?"

I can't sing the praises of Noel Johnson enough. He's so good, and so believable, as Grover, despite the character being clearly mad. He's not misguided like Mike, he's mad. But Grover believes so utterly in Operation Golden Age that he carries on extolling its virtues even when faced with reasonable arguments against it, like mass murder. Grover absolutely believes that the ends justify the means, and despite the fact he's planning to erase billions of lives from existence, he still refuses to have Sarah or Mark killed. It'd be easier to silence them that way, but instead he simply hopes they will "adjust" to the new world when Operation Golden Age has been successful.

It's great to have the Doctor and the Brigadier team up, something that rarely happens without somebody else around, and the scene where they drive a jeep through the legs of a brontosaurus is breathtakingly audacious! It's a brave production team that decides to keep a scene like that in, and for once CSO is the perfect tool to make it happen. When they reach Moorgate station they find a very placid stegosaurus camped outside. This stegosaurus is so placid that even when the Brigadier chucks a grenade at it, it very very slowly backs away from the explosion, like it's moonwalking through treacle. It's stunning just how unconvincing some of the dinosaur scenes are in this story, while some others are perfectly acceptable!

While the Doctor rigs up an explosive to clear the lift shaft down to the bunker, the Brigadier occupies a triceratops on the station platform. Fourteen years later the Seventh Doctor would mention the Brig's dinosaur encounter to Ace when they arrive on Terra Alpha in The Happiness Patrol. I love random references like this!

Sarah manages to convince Ruth and the others that they are not in space at all, and urges them to do that very British thing of "demanding an explanation"! As Grover's plans start to unravel before his eyes, he remains resolutely calm and dedicated to his cause. It's when you see Johnson playing Grover that you realise just how poorly written the parts of Whitaker and Butler are. They've expressed very little by way of motivation, and come across as mere two-dimensional stooges. Although Whitaker has a bit of back-story, Peter Miles doesn't give the character very much extra at all, while Martin Jarvis is as bland as ever as Butler.

At the last moment, Grover lurches for the time controls, but the polarity has been reversed and he ends up zapping himself and Whitaker back in time, along with an entire computer panel. They've been sent "back to their golden age," says the Doctor. "And I hope they like it." It would have been perfect at this point to show Whitaker and Grover (and their computer bank) in prehistoric times, cornered by dinosaurs. As it stands, the climax is rather sudden and final, and we don't get a very satisfying comeuppance for the baddies.

"Poor Grover..." says Sarah, who can see how the politician meant well, and showed admirable ideals, even if the way he went about it was utterly crackers. The Doctor expresses his sympathy for the ethos behind Operation Golden Age too, delivering an anti-pollution message that still rings true today.

Mike is to be granted extended sick leave and the chance to retire from UNIT quietly, but despite him being merely misguided, not bonkers, I'm not sure that's enough punishment. He was, after all, working against his government and country, and betraying his friends, colleagues and family, by siding with a cause which would result in the erasure of billions of human beings. Whitaker and Grover were zapped back to prehistoric times, where they'd surely be eaten by dinosaurs. General Finch is to be court martialled, and Butler will no doubt be arrested and tried for treason too. But all Mike gets is a slapped wrist and a cosy retirement plan?

The story arc for Captain Yates has been so well done, though. Starting as a dedicated and loyal hero in Season 8, he almost gets blown to bits in The Time Monster, and doesn't return to the screen for an entire year, in The Green Death, only to be brainwashed by BOSS and sent on extended leave to recover. While he's recuperating, he falls hook, line and sinker for Grover's Operation Golden Age, which leads to his ultimate undoing. It's a sad story when you look at it on the whole, and it's not over yet...

The final scene is beautiful. Sarah vows not to step back inside the Doctor's TARDIS again after everything that's happened to her, but the Doctor tries to tempt her by mentioning his imminent visit to the planet Florana, which is carpeted with perfumed flowers, where the seas are like warm milk, the sands as soft as swan's down, and the streams flow with water clearer than the clearest crystal. It's a very tempting offer (especially when spoken with such woven magic like Pertwee does), but if Florana is anything like Metebelis III, Sarah really should give it a miss.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs is by far one of my favourite Jon Pertwee stories. Yes, the dinosaurs do let it down, but look beyond the lizards and the actual story Malcolm Hulke writes is compelling and very well told. There's loads of gorgeous location filming, and some great twists which keep the narrative and the viewer on their toes. As I say, it really is a shame about the dinosaur models, and I hope that one day, there'll be the cash and technology to replace the puppets with convincing CGI, because the story deserves it. Invasion of the Dinosaurs is like rolling back time to the golden age of Season 7, where it really would not be out of place at all.

Rooooaaaaaaarrrrrr!

First broadcast: February 16th, 1974

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Hulke gives Pertwee some great speeches, which the actor treats with due respect. The ecological message running through the story is even more relevant today.
The Bad: Doctor Who tries to make a T Rex fight a brontosaurus with a budget of five shillings and sixpence.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 8.0 out of 10)

"Now listen to me" tally: 32 - "Now listen to me, Mike..."
Neck-rub tally: 15

NEXT TIME: Death to the Daleks...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/invasion-of-dinosaurs.html

Invasion of the Dinosaurs is available on BBC DVD as part of the UNIT Files box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-U-N-I-T-Invasion-Dinosaurs/dp/B006H4R8W6