Originally Posted by chuffnobbler:
“I think this is a fantastic story, and one of the best Pertwees. A shame it gets slagged cos of rubbish monsters (which are only sometimes rubbish).
There is enough story to last six episodes, which is a rare treat for a Pertwee. the characters are well realised. the deserted London stuff is great. The spaceship stuff is a real shocker. Really, i don't see what's not to love about this one.”
Originally Posted by brouhaha:
“I completely agree on every point! I've never understood why Invasion of the Dinosaurs is so poorly regarded. Maybe some people would like to downplay the stories with "dodgy" special effects because it's one of those things that people who know nothing about Doctor Who always sneeringly associate with the series. Yet there are plenty of things in Invasion of the Dinosaurs - great performances all round, a well-written script full of twists - that sum up the often great things about Doctor Who, the things the sneerers never mention. As you say, the monsters aren't as rubbish as they're made out to be anyway. OK, we're not talking Jurassic Park here, we're talking 1973 BBC budgets, but in comparison to the, erm, "less successful" shots in Dinosaurs, there are actually far, far worse special effects in, say, the previous season's The Green Death (the fly, some awful CSO, Dinky car Bessie with plasticine model passengers trundling across the screen - for my money, one of the worst shots in the history of Who) and yet The Green Death is considered a great story (which, of course, it is; so is Invasion of the Dinosaurs). And it's a fantastic story for Sarah. Any story which gives Lis Sladen lots of stuff to do is definitely worth watching.”
Well that makes 3 of us -I really like this story too & don't know why people bag it -It didn't drag, it had a good twist & the use of Mike Yates was a good idea following on from The Green Death. Plus the use of a deserted London was good too. The dinosaurs, okay were not great in some shots, but I think they tend to be remembered & therefore weigh down people's view of the story itself. In some scenes they actually worked fine given the budget, limitations, comparisons to other stories & no CGI.
The only real disappointment for me was the DVD release itself. I think episode 1's colourisation was hurried & done on the cheap. For me it was a real shame that they couldn't have gone to the extra effort to do the same colourisation as episode 1 of The Mind of Evil -where like this episode there was no colour left to fuse into the images, and at the same time done a second new version the story, putting CGI dinosaurs over the top of the original dinosaurs (or completely reshooting parts of London now -areas which still have pre 1980's buildings, thrown in some deserted old cars & then simply overlaying where necessary with CGI dinosaurs). The street setting model work was obvious too in the original. I'm sure the response to this is -but they didn't have the budget, but watch the story again I say. You don't actually need CGI all over the place -there are only a few really poor dinosaur/ model setting shots. In any case I would have been quite prepared to pay a bit more for it, as with Day of the Daleks, had I known I would have got something similar to that with a new version of Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
I wonder if it wasn't necessarily cost, but more of time & time restrictions to do all of this & try and get the original series fully released in time of the 50th anniversary.
If there was ever a call for one more "Special Edition" story to be released, then this is it in my books!
