Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Two

The one where we discover one of the Doctor's allies is betraying him...

Most people criticise the dinosaur models in this story for the way they look, and their lack of movement, but I think far sillier is the way they sound. The T Rex is actually saying the word "RAAAAARRRR", like it's really a terribly cultured and refined dinosaur merely pretending to be a carnivorous monster from the dawn of time. It's a bit like how children might play at dinosaurs in the playground!

Everything looks different in colour. Everything looks like low budget Doctor Who again, rather than the glorious grainy "found footage" monochrome film look of part 1 that made it feel like a lost home movie from the 1930s. I miss the eerieness of the black and white part 1!

For once, the use of Colour Separation Overlay (CSO) is warranted and works quite well in getting across the difference in scale between the UNIT soldiers in the street and their giant lizard adversary (despite the fact they're not shooting in the right direction). There's no escaping the inflexibility of the models though, demonstrated too well when the T Rex gently moonwalks to safety behind a building!

The Doctor and Sarah escape to a garage lock-up, and the Doctor manages to unlock the handcuffs that bind the two together. Personally, I think it might have been lots more fun to have them handcuffed together for longer, like a Doctor Who take on The 39 Steps! It's in this garage that they encounter a peasant who has slipped forward in time from the 13th century, from the time of King John, who mistakes the white-haired Doctor for a wizard. But when the Doctor says he cannot send the peasant back home, he sets upon him, only to disappear again - back to the 1200s.

At last the Doctor and Sarah are reunited with UNIT, and back at base (temporarily, a school in west London) they hear more about what's been going on. It seems dinosaurs started to appear in central London almost the moment the Doctor and Sarah disappeared off to medieval times, and as a result, the population has been evacuated. You've got to love the moment when Sergeant Benton proudly explains his coding system on the map: red markers are for T Rex, blue are for triceratops, green are for stegosaurus, and pink "for your actual pterodactyl"! The look on the Brigadier's face is a picture.

The Doctor - who takes at least four heaped spoons of sugar in his tea, not a good example to the kiddiwinks - believes that someone is transporting the dinosaurs forwards from prehistoric times to the modern day, which automatically makes one think it might be something to do with the Sontarans, seeing as Linx was abducting people through time in the last story. It also makes you wonder if somebody notorious with access to time technology might be behind it, such as that old devil the Master...

There's a beautifully written and acted scene between Mike Yates and Sarah Jane in which Mike reveals he took leave after the events of The Green Death, when he was brainwashed by BOSS. Sarah says she finds the evacuated London strange, empty, quiet, but Mike doesn't agree. "I rather like it," he says, a line which is delivered beautifully by Richard Franklin, with just the right amount of wistfulness to make it peculiar (I'd go so far as to say it's Franklin's finest moment). This is the first time I've been really impressed by Franklin's acting, and it's so good to see him rise to the demands of Malcolm Hulke's scripts. He makes Yates seem almost bewitched by the notion of having seen a fox in Piccadilly. A marvellous performance from Franklin.

It's not long before we learn the truth behind Mike's yearning for a quieter life: he's actually working for the scientists who are controlling the dinosaur appearances! Mike Yates is a traitor! It's a blindingly good twist, and a very brave revelation for Hulke to make one of the show's good guys develop a darker side. Although Mike insists on not hurting anybody, and seems to be involved in something called Operation Golden Age for what he sees as a greater good, the fact he's working against the Doctor, the Brigadier and his country is a real shocker. Well done Doctor Who!

Enter Sir Charles Grover MP, a staunch environmentalist who helped found the Save Planet Earth Society and wrote the book Last Chance for Man, which makes the Doctor an admirer. He's probably the first politician the Doctor has respected since he regenerated, and Noel Johnson gives a gentle, understated but genial performance quite apart from the usual gruff and overbearing authority figures such as Chinn (The Claws of Axos) and Walker (The Sea Devils). Something else I love about the scenes with Grover is when director Paddy Russell lingers just that tiny bit too long on him when he's left behind in the lab, when the Doctor and Brigadier go off to capture the brontosaurus. The language of television dictates that this means Grover isn't all he seems.

I couldn't help but use this screengrab. Can you blame me?

The cliffhanger sees the Doctor attempting to capture a brontosaurus. Or is it an apatosaurus? Best not to think about it too much, because palaeontologists tend to get their knickers in a twist over whether they're the same or not! The brontosaurus model isn't actually too bad, at least it has a flexible, moveable neck, which is exactly what you want from a brontosaurus! However, it doesn't hang around and gets zapped back to the Jurassic, only to be replaced by our old pal, the T Rex, "roaring" away like the well-rehearsed theropod that he is.

As embarrassing as the T Rex is, what all this means is that the Doctor's life is in peril as a direct result of traitor Captain Yates, who has sabotaged the Time Lord's stun gun. We must not get distracted by these awful dinosaur models, because the story Malcolm Hulke has woven is far superior and infinitely more interesting.

First broadcast: January 19th, 1974

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Richard Franklin shines with his sensitive, considered performance as the misguided Yates.
The Bad: The T Rex which actually says the word "roar".
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 30
Neck-rub tally: 14

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

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

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