If you read Dr Who weekly or the genre books according to them IoTD is terrible.

I think it is great

I will grant you the tyranosaur and pterodactyl arent great but the script by Malcolm Hulke is tight and exciting. The eco-fanatic message is original and the "twist" after episode 4 and the spacecraft is clever.

The main stumbling block for most people is Cliff Culleys naff dinosaurs particularly the awful fight between tyranosaurus rex and the brontosaurus outside Moorgate tube - to be fair it is bad. The puppets dont move let alone convince but the stegosaurus isnt bad and the triceratops convinces from a distance. But you just have to take it with a pinch of salt. After all the story isnt about them, they were just a way of getting an exciting story title to bring viewers in.

But there is so much to like about IotD..

The deserted streets of London in the first episode, John Bennetts unpleasant General Finch, the paranoid and ruthless people aboard the starship, Sarah piecing the clues together, Charles Grover, the "the road to hell is laid with good intentions" message, Sergeant Benton overpowering Finch, the Brig rolling his eyes as yet another dinosaur is spotted.

Its a good little thriller spoilt by the wrong people doing the special effects. But still exciting anyway

My only real gripes about this story are that the reveal of Captain Yates as a traitor comes far too early, and that virtually the entire guest cast turn out to be in on Operation Golden Age, which gets a bit repetitive after awhile as each one is shown to be a bad 'un, one after another...

Invasion of the Dinosaurs is one of the best Pertwee stories, and one of the best DW six-parters. The story is excellent, and the London location stuff is very atmospheric. Yeah, the dinosaurs are rubbish, but DW fans are quite capable of looking beyond rubbish monsters.

Love this story.

never seen this one, will it be out on DVD soon?

The DVD schedule is never confirmed very far in advance. It'll be out "sooner or later".

Ep.1 is B&W, while the rest is colour. That might delay its release while they invent some whizzbang boffo technology to colour it in with felt-tips.

thanks, just a waiting game as usual

I really hope they do CGI dinosaurs as a DVD option.

I don't mind the story but it does have a lot of getting captured, escaping and being recaptured again stuff going on, especially where Sarah is concerned.
The story is sadly spoilt by the dodgy effects but maybe that's because we see it from today's standards, but would we have thought that at the time? Maybe, Barry Letts certainly thought so and he was producer!

On the plus side, I loved the relationship between The Briagdier and Benton in this. Always liked it but reached it's humourous peak in this one!

They did something similar with The Dalek Invasion of Earth

It's ironic that this story was apparently devised in the first place because Cliff Culley told the producers he could provide some really great dinosaurs, and his dinosaurs are exactly what lets it down.

I certainly don't rate this story as high as chuffnobbler - there are a number of better Pertwee stories and many better six-parters - but it's not bad.

There are a number of better Pertwee stories, I'll agree ... but (I've said it before and I'll say it again), six part DW stories are, more often than not, CRAP.

There are not that many better six parters (Talons, Seeds Doom, Seeds Death, Green Death, Genesis, Dalek Invasion of Earth, etc) and there are plenty of worse six parters (Colony in Space, Time Monster, Armageddon Factor, Planet of the Daleks, Keys of Marinus, Invasion of Time, Sensorites, Mutants, Space Pirates, Monster of Peladon, Planet of the Spiders, etc etc etc).

I think it was recognised that the dinosaurs were a bit rubbish, even at the time. Same as the tank in Robot: someone should have been brave enough to say or do something about it before it was too late.


I seem to remember reading that CGIing the monsters would be a bit tricky. The original film of backgrounds doesn't exist anymore: they've only got the finished product, with monsters against backgrounds. They'd have to paint out the rubber monsters and paint in computer monsters. Far too big a task to be cost-effective. If they still had the "raw" film without the rubber monsters on, it would be much easier to just add new computer monsters.I could be wrong, though. (It does happen).

I loved IotD as a kid and I think that helped me see straight past the naff Dinosaurs when I rewatched it on VHS years back and concentrate on the fact that the bottom line is, it is a cracking good story (and script, thank you Mister Hulke) and at the risk of courting controversy, I can think of several New Who stories that look flawless in FX terms but are so dull and lifeless in all other areas...this is a problem not just with DW now but the Movie world too: look at The Phantom Menace and then at Star Wars (the original print) and tell me which film works best?

I totally agree. The Phantom Menace was clearly created with a range of action figures in mind, with the script as a fairly low priority. I hated it so much that I have not seen the two subsequent films. They weren't "films" so much as "a cynical marketing ploy".

Whizzbang FX don't necessarily make something good, just as rubbish FX don't necessarily make something bad. (Says he, who has not long since watched the Blake's 7 episode "Harvest of Kairos").

Wobbly sets and rubber monsters were the staple for Classic Who, why change this endearing aspect of the programme!

I think the story is a goodun!

Be grateful Barry Letts isn't alive to hear you say that-he used to get very annoyed about the wobbly sets accusation, which he insisted was, during his time at least, totally unfounded.

The whole "wobbly set" misnomer surely stemmed from good, old "Crossroads" in the 60's/70's and has now, rather unfairly, been taken on to describe any show of that era - I agree with BL that the sets never really "wobbled", they may not have been the best in some stories but in others, given all the constraints that DW especially was under in production terms, they were nothing short of amazing.

I think unless you can actually understand just what it meant to be two scenes down and knowing that the TVC studio lights would be turned off in 17 minutes (absolutely NO exceptions) it isn't possible to feel the pressure that not just DW but all shows of the time were under to deliver. And we haven't even talked "budget" yet.

I use the term generically I hasten to add!

An idea of the time is to remember the viewer excitement/media whingeing (isn't this a waste of Licence Payers money?) when DW actually went abroad to Paris for "City of Death"...in Series SEVENTEEN!

Agreed. I have nothing but admiration for the guys who produced all that stuff-not just Doctor Who, but many other technically challenging and labour intensive shows as well-under conditions and with limitations that many working in the industry today couldn't concieve of and that most of the audience never really understood or appreciated. It's easy to slag off sixties, seventies or eighties TV now as looking cheap or rushed, but the fact is, by comparison it was cheap and rushed because everything was; it was a miracle half of it got made at all, let alone made to such an amazing standard as much of it was.

Yep: amazing work done by the Beeb. Turn up, say your lines, get it right first time ... the lights are going off on the dot of 10pm.

The stress of it!

It was even more stressful for the cast and crew of Z Cars: that was transmitted live for most of its first four years!

Yeah the original print of Star Wars looks 'real worldy'-Phamtom is just silly.

I remember Noel Gallagher of all people saying that he still had'nt worked out in later life how he was going to explain to his son how Star Wars ended up as cartoon from the way it started-meaning the prequels.

Anyway, yeah I love IOTD-you dont see much discussion about it anywhere and I loved the old Target novel which I think had an Allosurus on the cover that was supposed to be a TRex-I think. This was second cover version.

Also I read a long time ago that when the first episode was broadcast, it was simply called 'Invasion', and they kept the 'of the Dinosaurs' held back as a surprise until ep2. Not sure if this is true?

I saw it at the time it was first shown and thought the dinosaurs were rubbish then.

Yes, it's true. Ep.1 is "Invasion", eps.2-6 are "Invasion of the Dinosaurs". The first ep looks glorious in B&W.

Well, you've named six better six-parters yourself - that's many!