Not sure about the Silurians, but the Draconians were the work of John Friedlander - he also had a hand in the design of most of the best monster masks of the 1970s - Zygons, Kraals, Ogrons, Exxilons and others. Really clever work, on a really small budget.

Its also my favourite Sarah Jane story. She really shows her journalist credentials in this one, telling the Doctor what she's going to do/investigate while he's looking into the oil rig disaster.

So sad the commentary wasn't recorded when Lis Sladen was still alive. I would have loved to have heard that.

It's a great story for Sarah. I don;t think Lis Sladen did many DVD commentaries in her later years. Once she got back into DW/SJA on telly, she seemed to do far less "fan" stuff.

Am I right in thinking this is the only DVD commentary with no actual cast involved? All participants are behind-scenes bods?

I just listened to a Spearhead from Space commentary yesterday with just Terrance Dicks (Script Editor) and Derek Sherwin (Producer).

Although, unusually, there were two commentaries on that disk. The other one had Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John.

Thanks for that, I did a little reading about him this evening. Very talented man.

Does anyone know if there's ever been a documentary about his work as an extra on any Who DVD? If not, there really should be.

I agree, there's not much about him out there, and some of his work was sublime. Were there any good articles about him you could point me to?

Sadly very little, there's literally nothing in terms of interviews or direct quotes. If the comments here are true, it sounds as though he wouldn't want any attention - http://briarfiles.blogspot.co.uk/200...iedlander.html

i respect that, but I hope he's aware of how much his work was appreciated.

It's actually a newspaper competition originally called Lobby Lud - the paper would print a secret phrase and a description, then send out a reporter to a holiday town. You had to be carrying a copy of the paper, repeat the phrase, and then end the statement with 'You are Lobby Lud and I claim my five pounds!' if you recognised the reporter in order to win.

There's a variation of it as part of the plot of Brighton Rock, the 1947 film of which stared a young Richard Attenborough and a young... well, younger, but looking exactly the same as he always did... William Hartnell.

Beware, though, that if you recognise David Tennant, he is unlikely to reward you with £5. The chap's a Scot, you know...

Yeah, I've read that before somewhere. I'm not sure anyone actually knows when it was first used in satire or whether it caught on immediately as a general catchphrase.

I suspect it did, it's just part of the British vocab now, much like "does what it says on the tin". As I mentioned, it's long been used in Private Eye and they certainly didn't invent its use as a punchline.

And thanks to the Internet, it's become a bit of a global thing as well, probably with lots of people confused why they are meant to say five pounds rather than dollars.

I actually completely understand MeddlingMonkey if he was sick of the sight of it, overusing meme's and catchphrases can be pretty tedious. I hate seeing the Ronseal thing in product reviews. But of course acting grumpy was an open invite for us to use it even more

Seconded! The scariest nurse ever to appear on television, in my opinion.

I've obviously been living under a rock for the last 50 years because this thread is the first time I've ever heard the phrase!

It's surprisingly absent from Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (1977), though Lobby Lud's heyday was surely past by then. Other newspapers ran similar stunts; I think the Daily Mirror's character was called Chalkie White.

Incidentally, in several scenes in this story, Broton/Forgill seems to be sporting an Oxford University tie. I would have thought he was more of a Cambridge man, myself.

The only bad thing about Terror of The Zygons is the sea monster, though that is forgivable considering the age of the program.
Its hard to think of a better story. Everything else is spot on.

Newly recovered? I thought the whole story survived in full, in the archives?

From what I know from before, all the TB Doctor's stories survive without any footage missing.

In the early 70s, it was mostly the WH and PT stories that bore the brunt of the wiping and dumping. All of the JP and TB stories are mostly intact, apart from Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part 1. It really only survives in B&W because the colour version on the DVD isn't 100%. It's okay, but you can see bits of B&W seeping through at times.

Recovered or restored. There was a sequence that wasn't used in the original broadcast because of the poor technical quality of the footage.

I was really hoping for a CGI version as a special feature. Shame really.

yeah they spend more on Kinda's snake then the Skarasen. Although I guess even the Chewits monster was still better than the rubbery snake.

It was definitely around as a catchphrase - I can recall it appearing in the Dandy and the Beano (who got a new readership roughly every three years or so, so had been recycling pretty much the same gags for fifty years or so by then), and in fact, it's used in the first issue of 2000AD I ever got (Evans the Fist, Strontium Dog 'you are King Clarkie and I claim my five creds!', prog 211 early 1981). So, it's always been around...

I can't wait to get this, one of my favourite stories ever in all of Who. I can't believe it's been 14 years since the last VHS release.

You need to have all the effects footage components for that, otherwise it's prohibitively time consuming and expensive, unfortunately - they had the same problem with 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs'.

I've never minded the Skarasan, to be honest!

Its just the bit at the end that I think is really tacky - when its head is sticking out of the Thames. It looks like one of those rubber gonks you used to be able to get for the end of pencils!

The dinosaurs in Invasion of the Dinasours (I think) aren't too bad at all!

Yes, the stuff on the moors is ok, and it certainly scared the 8 year old me! Pity about the shot as it pops up out of the Thames though...

The 'Thames' bit . . .

It's a scene that was cut before broadcast and has been reinserted in a special 'director's cut' version accessible from the Special Features menu of disc one.

It seems it's been reassembled from a diverse collection of bits of film of varying quality , then coloured in by Babelcolour the colouring in man.

I've long known about the scene, but had no idea that any of it existed! Quite thrilling to see a brand new scene between Sarah and Harry!

Also, there's technically a few seconds missing from the end of 'The Deadly Assassin' part three...

I didn't know that the missing scene still existed, and am looking forward to seeing it!

Love Demolished Man's description of Babelcolour as "the colouring in man"!!