Invasion of the Dinosaurs, by Jon Arnold (and Malcolm Hulke)

When I first watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs in 2007, I wrote:

Notoriously, the first episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs exists only in black and white, while the other five are in colour (it would all have been in colour when shown in January/February 1974). Also notoriously, the actual dinosaurs themselves are absolutely terrible as special effects. There are no two ways about it: they are embarrassing puppets pasted onto their scenes by unconvincing CSO.

If you can ignore the awfulness of the dinosaurs, it’s not such a bad story; like many Pertwee tales, it is a bit too long, but the two basic bits of plot – conspiracy at the highest levels of government to Take Over/Destroy England, and the people who think they are on a spaceship to colonise the nearest star – are both rather good and well enough worked out, with their motives a bit of a reprise of The Green Death but with the environmentalists now the bad guys. The cliff-hanger where Sarah is told that she’s been in space for three months, and the scene where she proves she isn’t by walking out of the airlock, are both real jewels.

The main plot twist involving the regular cast, however, is a slightly different matter. Captain Yates, the Brigadier’s deputy since Terror of the Autons, turns out to be in league with the bad guys, yet can’t quite bring himself to do the Doctor harm. The scene where we discover his betrayal is handled with no dramatic tension whatever, and his motivations are not really explored at all. The Brigadier and Benton get all the good lines, but there’s interesting narrative tension among the villains as well.

If it hadn’t been for the dinosaurs, this would probably be remembered as one of the great Pertwee stories despite the not-quite-connected plot. As it is, you just have to close your eyes when they are on-screen; but it’s still way ahead of, say, The Mutants. (I wonder if an audio version of this, with linking narrative by Elisabeth Sladen or Nicholas Courtney, might work a bit better?)

When I came back to it for my Great Rewatch in 2010, I wrote:

Invasion of the Dinosaurs was Malcolm Hulke’s last story for Doctor Who, and it must be said that with the rather central exception of the dinosaurs it is rather good. It is a shame about the dinosaurs, especially the tyrannosaurus / brontosaurus fight in episode 6 which is a real low point. The assembly of talent among the guest cast is excellent – Martin Jarvis, Peter Miles, Carmen Silvera, John Bennett, Noel Johnson, all had been on Who before and/or would be again, and all take it seriously (I guess they couldn’t see the dinosaurs for the most part).

Hulke takes it seriously too; his sympathies are of course with the New Earth folks, but his message is one of working for revolution and change within the system. Mike Yates’ treachery is the most interesting thing that has been done with a regular character since Katarina and Sara were killed off. It’s a shame that Richard Franklin never quite rises to the challenge, but it twists Hulke’s narrative from being a relatively safe tale of rooting out the dodgy bits of the establishment to a nasty one where your own household may turn against you.

Sarah and the Doctor are awfully cuddly now, especially in their exchange about Florana at the end! NB that this is the second story in a row about bad guys using time travel to transport their innocent pawns between different periods of Earth history.

All the above points occurred to me again as I rewatched it this time. I would also add that the London setting is used effectively, especially in the devastated and empty street scenes of the first couple of episodes, and the sense of enclosure and subterfuge in the Minister’s office later on. (Though the starship passengers look like real idiots for not smelling a rat sooner.) And Elisabeth Sladen is on particularly good form.

I knew Hulke’s novelisation (of his own script) well as a kid. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

‘The signal’s very faint, sir.’ The radio operator turned up the volume control on his console to ‘full’. ‘It’s no good, sir. They’ve faded out altogether.’

When I reread it in 2008 I wrote:

I am not sure if this is the best of this run of novels (and I’m certain it’s not the best of the Season 11 novels, as Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders clearly takes that trophy) but it is certainly the most interesting. As commenters to my last entry noted, it starts with a lovely vignette of a Scot in London for the football who becomes a victim of the dinosaurs; there are other little bits of depth added as well, Professor Whitaker becoming very camp, and a couple of odd extra details – the Doctor is described as having “a mop of curly hair” (shurely shome mishtake?) and he talks about the Mary Celeste again as he did in Doctor Who and the Sea Devils. Also, of course, the book loses the appalling visual effects of the original programme – these dinosaurs are flesh and blood, not rubber!

Yet at the same time it is a bit too over-earnest, not quite as mature as Hulke’s better novels (Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters and Doctor Who and the Green Death), so it doesn’t quite get its fourth star from me.

It is interesting that both this and the previous story are about the bad guys shunting people (and in this case dinosaurs) between the present and the past.

The viewpoint character in the opening chapter is from Glasgow, a point I missed when compiling my list of mentions of the city in Doctor Who last month. One other detail added by Hulke for the novelisation is that Butler, the character played by Martin Jarvis, has a large facial scar, and is also made more complex, doubting the wisdom of the grand plan at an earlier stage. You can get it here.

Jon Arnold, who has previously delivered solid analysis of Rose, Scream of the Shalka and The Eleventh Hour in the Black Archive series, has delivered another decent and readable piece of work here.

A short introduction reflects on the context of the story, with the end of the Pertwee era coinciding with unusual political instability in the UK.

The first chapter, “London Falling”, looks at the way in which London has been portrayed in Doctor Who overall, especially in this story.

The second chapter, “The Politics of the Dinosaurs”. looks in detail at the political disarray of early 1970s Britain and its reflections in Doctor Who.

The third chapter, “The Golden Age”, looks at similar iterations of the Golden Age narrative, including the 2005 reality TV show Space Cadets and Douglas Adams’ Golgafrinchams. The second paragraph, with quote and footnotes, is:

The earliest known mention of a golden age occurs in Hesiod’s poem Works and Days (c700 BCE). In this poem, the author outlined his five Ages of Man: the golden age, the silver age, the bronze age, the heroic age and the iron age, with the last of these being Hesiod’s own time⁴. The names of Hesiod’s ages are derived from the materials from which he believed Zeus constructed humanity (with the heroic age being one of demigods, perhaps an early indication that Hesiod’s metaphor did not quite cover the scheme of society he wished to use – an early example of golden ages being a let-down). The conception of the golden age as an idealised lost nirvana is clear from his description:

“The race of men that the immortals who dwell on Olympus made first of all was of gold […] they lived like gods, with carefree heart, remote from toil and misery. Wretched old age did not affect them either, but with hands and feet ever unchanged they enjoyed themselves in feasting, beyond all ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep. All good things were theirs, and the grain-giving soil bore its fruits of its own accord in unstinted plenty, while they at their leisure harvested their fields in contentment amid abundance.’⁵

⁴ Believed to be around the last third of the eighth century BCE. West, ML, ed, Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, p10.
⁵ Hesiod, Works and Days, p87.

The fourth and longest chapter, “The Immortal Hulke”, looks at the career and beliefs of Malcolm Hulke, who of course was a Communist at one point in his life and also left a legacy of writing about television. It does not explain Hulke’s obsession with reptiles.

The first of three appendices, “20 Years Before Jurassic Park“, makes a case that the dinosaurs are not really all that awful by 1970s standards. It’s difficult to make this a very strong case, hwoever.

The second appendix, “KKLAK!”, looks in detail at the changes Hulke made to the story when adapting it as a novel.

The third appendix, “‘Ullo Jon! Got a New Motor?'” looks at the origin and fate of the Whomobile.

I would have liked to read some analysis of one more topic – the treachery of Mike Yates, which is briefly referred to in passing, but which as I said earlier was the most interesting thing that has been done with a regular character since Katarina and Sara were killed off eight years earlier.

Apart from that, it’s generally a satisfactory and sympathetic piece of work, looking at a flawed but fondly remembered story and explaining where it came from. Normally I like to get a bit more of the behind-the-scenes gossip, but I’m happy with what we get here.

Anyway, you can get it here.

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Invasion of the Dinosaurs, by Jon Arnold (and Malcolm Hulke)

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