Review of Invasion of the Dinosaurs (#71)
DVD Release Date:  10 Jan 12
Original Air Date:  12 Jan – 16 Feb 1974
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Sarah Jane Smith, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story:  The Time Warrior (Three, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story:  Death to the Daleks (Three, Sarah Jane)

What can one really say about low-budget mid-70’s television dinosaurs? Certainly nothing flattering. I mean, I give them credit for trying – the script did rather present them with an impossible task, after all. Dinosaurs in Central London? Not something you can just “work around” and keep the story at all intact. That doesn’t disguise the fact that they’re rubber rubbish.

So if we are to take this story anything close to seriously, we need to get one thing straight right off the bat: the effects are heinously poor, but you have to pretend they’re good. Break out some mental steel cable to keep your disbelief willingly suspended if necessary, but make it work. Because behind those shoddy Cretaceous monstrosities is a pretty good science fiction plot.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane are just returning from her first, unintentional adventure with him. When they land, they find London deserted. Eventually, they learn a veritable plague of dinosaurs has descended on the city and prompted a mass evacuation. From there, intrigues abound and chronobabble flows freely while, as they say, the plot thickens.

From a more real world perspective, there are some details of note for Who history here. For example, it is in this story that Sarah Jane is directly named the Doctor’s “assistant.” It also includes an often-overlooked mention of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in Part Three, the introduction of the Whomobile, and the last days of Mike Yates‘ career with UNIT. What’s best for someone with my tastes, though, is that there’s plenty of Sgt. Benton to be had.

How can you not love Benton? The man clearly has both a sense of duty and a Sense of Duty. He knows when the right thing to do is not what he’s been ordered to do, and is willing to wiggle around within the system to make his orders match up with what he feels he needs to do. Case in point: he’s been ordered to lock up the Doctor. He sends his underlings off to prepare a room to be used as a holding cell. Once they’re alone, he turns and says, “Right then, Doctor. You’d better get busy. … You’d better start overpowering me, hadn’t you? You know, a bit of your Venusian oojah?” ~enter the Whovian variation on the Vulcan Nerve Pinch~

There are sterling little moments like that throughout the six episodes. In my opinion, they’re worth suffering through some truly regrettable dinosaurs.

DVD Extras (highlights)

Colorization of Episode One

The first episode of the story actually only survives in the archives in black and white format. For this release, a color reconstruction was done so that you have the option to watch it either in the original b&w or in a colorized version. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the state of the art in colorization technology, but I thought they did a lovely job.

People, Power and Puppetry

The standard “making of” documentary is not so standard here. It starts out by noting the most obvious feature of the story – oh, those awful model dinosaurs – and then promptly sets them aside to talk about the themes of Invasion instead. There is also mention of various, regrettable plot holes, but the overall sense is that if not for those dratted dinos, the story would have stood up much better both then and now.

Doctor Who Stories: Elizabeth Sladen Part 1

Using footage from a 2003 interview, this piece gives us a first-hand account of what it was like working on Doctor Who those first couple of years for our beloved Lis (Sarah Jane Smith). Keep an ear out for the story of how the pronunciation of the word “Sontaran” was solidified – it’s one of my favorite anecdotes.

John Levene Commentary

I’m not sure how they knew that this is exactly the kind of thing I’d love, or why it got recorded in the first place (in June 2005), but I’m quite pleased to have it here anyway. For 10 minutes at the beginning of Part Five, the actor who plays Benton talks about his impressions working on this story. I was particularly chuffed to hear that one of my favorite bits (quoted above) is also one of Levene’s.

Purely from a story perspective, there’s plenty to enjoy in this Invasion. Hum a little tune to yourself, go to your Happy Place, or do whatever it is you need to do in order to ignore those godawful dino-effects. If you can manage that, I think you’ll be glad you gave this one a chance.