Difference between revisions of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs"

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{{episodes|WWW|11|3|12 Jan to 16 Feb 1974|The Time Warrior|Death to the Daleks|}}
 
{{episodes|WWW|11|3|12 Jan to 16 Feb 1974|The Time Warrior|Death to the Daleks|}}
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+
*According to the BBC's index cards, black and white film recordings of part 1 were created on two different days -- '''28 June 1974''' and '''10 July 1974'''.
−
.
+
*The original broadcast PAL tape of part 1 was wiped once these film-recordings had been made. It's not clear why.  
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*Although [[The Time Warrior]] was the last full story to be tele-recorded onto 16mm black and white film, at least the first and second episodes of WWW were also transferred to film.
+
**One possibility is that it was wiped in error - the BBC held an early longer edit of Part 3, and the tape containing Part 1 may have been erased in its place by mistake.
−
* However, by '''August 1974''', only six months after the serial had aired in the UK, it was not being offered to foreign broadcasters.
+
**It has been suggested that Part 1 was wiped due to it having a similar on-screen title as the fifth episode of the William Hartnell story [[The Web Planet]], and the Patrick Troughton story, [[The Invasion]], but that notion is often dismissed since the master tapes of that 6-parter and 8-parter had already been erased in 1969 and 1971 respectively. However, there is the possibility that this is in fact true. The BBC began junking the bulk of the negatives and film prints of the Hartnell and Troughton serials in 1974 (see [[Bicycling Chains]]) and Dinosaurs 1 may well have been mistaken for [[The Web Planet]] 5: "Invasion" and/or [[The Invasion]] 1 after all. The BBC junked the negatives and positives for [[The Invasion]] part one in 1974, and a clerical error may have seen the tape for "Invasion" (WWW1) incorrectly catalogued as a tape for "Invasion" ({{N}}5), and/or for "The Invasion" ({{VV}}) and it was thus assigned to the magnetic eraser... So when the request came from the ABC for colour tapes, the PAL master for part 1 had only just been wiped in error... Ooops.
−
'''WHY?''' That is the 1974 dollar question...
+
*Season 11 was offered to [[Australia]] by mid-1974. [[The Time Warrior]] (as 16mm b/w films) was assessed by the censors on '''30 July 1974'''. Although it had accepted and classified that story in b/w, the ABC wanted to broadcast that season in colour (PAL transmissions were due to commence from March 1975). The BBC reported it was able to furnish all the serials in colour, but not '''Invasion of the Dinosaurs''' because Part 1 had by then already been erased. Serial WWW was therefore 'rejected' by the ABC on account of its format.
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*A '''"No Further Interest"''' notice for the story was issued by Enterprises in '''August 1974'''. The BBC did not make 16mm recordings of the other episodes.  
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'''CONSPIRACY THEORY''': Where does one even begin? To make some sense of what happened with this serial, let's bullet-point the key events:
+
*The first PAL colour serial on offer - [[Death to the Daleks]] - was assessed in [[Australia]] on '''26 September 1974'''. There is no record of the Dinosaurs story being sent, received or assessed.  
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*'''12 January to 16 February 1974''': [[Invasion of the Dinosaurs]] airs on BBC TV.
+
*A non-sale to [[Australia]] meant that the only other Commonwealth country still buying the series in black and white at that point -- [[Gibraltar]] -- could not afford to purchase it. (Sales to the [[United Arab Emirates]], [[Hong Kong]] and [[New Zealand]] were also not possible, as they were all broadcasting in colour at that time.)
−
*'''15 January to 17 February 1974''': [[Invasion of the Dinosaurs]] airs on BBC Cymru (Wales)TV. It is understood that the original BBC transmission tapes were used.
+
*Once it was clear that there would be no overseas sales of Serial WWW, the black and white prints of Part 1 were junked. One of the two copies was salvaged by a film collector; it was subsequently returned to the BBC in '''1983'''.
−
*'''28 June 1974''' and '''10 July 1974''': Tele-recordings are made of episode one (and possibly also episode two).  
+
<!--*By late '''1976''', when the documentary '''[[Whose Doctor Who]]''' was in pre-production, BBC Enterprises no longer held sales copies of the serial on film or on tape. (The other five original broadcast tapes plus the longer earlier edit of part three were, however, always held by the BBC's Engineering Department.)-->
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*'''30 July 1974''': The censors in [[Australia]] view and assess [[The Time Warrior]] (on b/w film).
+
* A clip of the Brigadier from part six was used in part four of [[Logopolis]], which aired in early '''1981'''.
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*'''August 1974''': BBC Enterprises confirms it has no interest in selling serial '''WWW''' overseas.
 
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*'''26 September 1974''': The censors in [[Australia]] view and assess [[Death to the Daleks]] (on PAL video).
 
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*'''10 October 1974''' : The censors in [[Australia]] view and assess [[The Monster of Peladon]] (on PAL video).
 
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*'''1974''': A BBC sales 'brochure' includes [[Invasion of the Dinosaurs]] as being available.
 
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* '''1975''': A BBC sales 'brochure' includes [[Invasion of the Dinosaurs]] as being available.
 
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*'''24 November 1976''': Pre-production on '''Whose Doctor Who'''. BBC Enterprises does not hold any tapes for Serial WWW.
 
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*'''28 February 1977''': A memo is drawn up recording foreign sales of '''Doctor Who''' (See [[BBC Records]]). [[Invasion of the Dinosaurs]] is blank.
 
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*'''1978''': When the newly-formed Film and Video Archive is established, PAL video-tapes of episodes two to six are found to be held after all.  
 
−
*'''1983''': One of the 1974 tele-recordings of episode one is recovered early in 1983. It is of poor not-broadcast quality.
 
−
 
 
−
Right. That's the chain of (known) events. But what does it all mean? Given that the rest of season 11 was supplied to [[Australia]] less than six months after UK transmission, but that by that time '''WWW''' was not available, then '''WHATEVER IT WAS THAT HAPPENED''' happened sometime between 10 July 1974 (when the serial aired in Wales) and August 1974 (when Enterprises declared no further interest).  
 
−
 
 
−
BUT WHAT DID HAPPEN?
 
−
 
 
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*The two 1974 tele-recordings were apparently of very poor quality. Maybe the reason why it was done '''twice''' was because the first did not pass the quality test. But did something happen to the original video tape of part one during this conversion process? Did the tape get mangled beyond repair after / during a '''third''' attempt to make a usable 16mm film copy?
 
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*It has been suggested that the two low-grade film copies were made for other reasons: one was for training purposes. Did the tape get damaged during the test session before an official tele-recording intended for foreign sales was made?
 
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*The BBC could have made tele-recordings of the remaining episodes and sold the serial in black and white only, but since very view countries were still buying black and white material at that time might not have justified the cost.
 
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*Producer Barry Letts has gone on record saying he was far from satisfied with the special visual effects; did he perhaps pull some clout and have the story withdrawn to prevent further embarrassment by pushing less-than-satisfactory product on their colonial cousins?
 
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*And what happened to the tapes between 1974 and 1978? It is thought that the ones found in 1978 had been returned from BBC Wales. But why did they not also return episode one? Were the tele-recordings made in Wales? Did '''THEY''' lose/damage episode one?
 
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*And if the story was not available in any format, why was it included on two separate sales brochures? Or was this purely down to a clerical error?
 
−
 
 
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Yes, it is all very confusing. And we may never find out the answer to this one.  
 
−
 
 
−
Okay, but for what it's worth, here's our take on this: all six original tapes were sent to Cardiff. The tape for just part one was returned to London for the sole purpose of making a tele-recording, with the intention that the others would be sent in due course. (But why just part one? Maybe the BBC wanted to re-edit the episode, to add on new title captions that read the full title "INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS". But first they wanted a film copy with the original "INVASION" title for the record...) Two attempts at tele-recording were made - by inexperienced junior technicians? - to get a satisfactory film print. On the third go, the tape got damaged...
 
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The BBC now had an unusable video tape, three unusable film prints, and five further tapes that were now worthless. The story couldn't be sold as a black and white serial, and certainly not as a colour 6-parter. THe BBC had no choice but to have the serial pulled from sale...
 
  
  
 
==Issue==
 
==Issue==
−
* The story was '''finally''' released for foreign sale in early 1985, when it was included in a package of all 24 [[Jon Pertwee stories]].
+
[[File:WWWABC84.JPG|thumb|right|350px|The edited five-parter finally goes to air -- in Australia; Canberra Times, 5 November 1984]]
−
*However, the black and white part one was not included; the story was offered as a five-parter only. The opening titles captions were also adjusted, so PART TWO was now "PART ONE", PART THREE became "PART TWO", and so on. Part Two was also edited slightly to remove all references to scenes from part one (such as the attack by the pterodactyl).  
+
* The story was eventually released for foreign sale in 1984; it was re-edited as a five-parter because part 1 was only in black and white.  
−
* The serial was sold to:
+
**The opening titles captions were adjusted, so PART TWO was now "PART ONE", PART THREE became "PART TWO", and so on. Part Two was also edited slightly to delete all references to scenes and events that occurred in part one, such as the Doctor and Sarah's discussion about the origin of the pterodactyl that had attacked them. To maintain the episode's duration, the 'deleted' sections were replaced by the dropping-in of shots extracted from elsewhere within the same episode - for instance, a cutaway of soldiers shooting at the T-rex was duplicated and dropped in to mask the above 'discussion' scene.
 +
*It was also included in a package of all 24 [[Jon Pertwee stories]] sold to the [[United States]] in 1985. The story was offered in its re-edit 5-part format or as a movie omnibus.
 +
* This new five-part version of the serial was sold to:
  
 
{| {{small-table}}  
 
{| {{small-table}}  
 +
|-
 +
|[[Australia]]||Nov 84||PAL
 
|-  
 
|-  
 
|[[United States]]||from Mar 85||NTSC
 
|[[United States]]||from Mar 85||NTSC
−
|-
 
−
|[[Australia]]||Nov 84||PAL
 
 
|-
 
|-
 
|[[New Zealand]]||Sep 86||PAL
 
|[[New Zealand]]||Sep 86||PAL
 
|-  
 
|-  
−
|[[Canada]]||1990s?||NTSC
+
|[[Canada]]||Jun 90||NTSC
 
|}  
 
|}  
  
−
* All six parts - the black and white first instalment included - were released in later years. [[New Zealand]] aired all six episodes in a Jan 2001 repeat season.
+
 
 +
==Reissue==
 +
* All six parts – including the black and white first instalment - were re-issued in the 1990s - [[UK Gold]] aired it episodically in '''July 1993'''; UKTV [[Australia]] screened all six in 1997; and Prime in [[New Zealand]] aired all six in January 2001. Prime also aired the extended first edit of part three.
 +
* The black and white first episode was shown for the first time (as best as we can determine) in the [[United States]] on station [[WXEL]], on '''17 December 1994'''. It was later shown by other stations, sometimes on its own as a "special", such as on [[KSPS]] in [[Spokane]], which aired a single "never-before-seen-on TV 'lost'" Jon Pertwee episode on '''18 March 1995'''.
 +
** We suspect the reason why part one was not available until the 1990s was, when the BBC released the serial in 1984 only stories that existed entirely in black and white or in colour were offered since many US broadcasters wanted to air omnibus versions, and colour serials with some parts in black and white were not as attractive to US stations. There were only two serials affected by this - [[Planet of the Daleks]] and the Dinosaurs. Each was edited to "remove" their sole black and white episode. And since repeat fees had to be paid to the actors with speaking roles, with part one out of the equation, the BBC did not have to pay repeat fees to the half dozen or so actors who appeared only in part one. But after 1991, when the seven years rights period (1984-1991) had expired, the black and white first episode could finally be marketed under fresh repeats contracts, which now included the actors in Part One.
  
  
 +
{{TV Guide blurbs
 +
| part = episode
 +
| title =
 +
| Pertwees = {y/n}
 +
| ep1=The Doctor and Sarah return from a visit to the Middle Ages only to find present-day London deserted.
 +
| ep2=In an effort to solve the mystery of the monster invasion, the Doctor decides to capture a dinosaur.
 +
| ep3=The Doctor bags his dinosaur, but loses Sarah to kidnappers.
 +
| ep4=New clues bring the Doctor closer to solving the mystery of the dinosaurs.
 +
| ep5=The Doctor makes a desperate attempt to stop Operation Golden Age.
 +
| comp = The Doctor must foil and attempt to reverse time and return the Earth to its primitive stages.
 +
}}
 
==Links==
 
==Links==
 
*[[Main Page]]
 
*[[Main Page]]
Line 65: Line 56:
 
*[[Doctors]]
 
*[[Doctors]]
 
**[[Jon Pertwee stories]]
 
**[[Jon Pertwee stories]]
 +
__NOTOC__

Latest revision as of 03:07, 31 October 2024

Story Code: WWW / Season 11 UK Airdate: 12 Jan to 16 Feb 1974 Doctor: Jon Pertwee
First airings by location UK Repeats / Foreign Cable and Satellite Previous Story / Next Story
  • According to the BBC's index cards, black and white film recordings of part 1 were created on two different days -- 28 June 1974 and 10 July 1974.
  • The original broadcast PAL tape of part 1 was wiped once these film-recordings had been made. It's not clear why.
    • One possibility is that it was wiped in error - the BBC held an early longer edit of Part 3, and the tape containing Part 1 may have been erased in its place by mistake.
    • It has been suggested that Part 1 was wiped due to it having a similar on-screen title as the fifth episode of the William Hartnell story The Web Planet, and the Patrick Troughton story, The Invasion, but that notion is often dismissed since the master tapes of that 6-parter and 8-parter had already been erased in 1969 and 1971 respectively. However, there is the possibility that this is in fact true. The BBC began junking the bulk of the negatives and film prints of the Hartnell and Troughton serials in 1974 (see Bicycling Chains) and Dinosaurs 1 may well have been mistaken for The Web Planet 5: "Invasion" and/or The Invasion 1 after all. The BBC junked the negatives and positives for The Invasion part one in 1974, and a clerical error may have seen the tape for "Invasion" (WWW1) incorrectly catalogued as a tape for "Invasion" (N5), and/or for "The Invasion" (VV) and it was thus assigned to the magnetic eraser... So when the request came from the ABC for colour tapes, the PAL master for part 1 had only just been wiped in error... Ooops.
  • Season 11 was offered to Australia by mid-1974. The Time Warrior (as 16mm b/w films) was assessed by the censors on 30 July 1974. Although it had accepted and classified that story in b/w, the ABC wanted to broadcast that season in colour (PAL transmissions were due to commence from March 1975). The BBC reported it was able to furnish all the serials in colour, but not Invasion of the Dinosaurs because Part 1 had by then already been erased. Serial WWW was therefore 'rejected' by the ABC on account of its format.
  • A "No Further Interest" notice for the story was issued by Enterprises in August 1974. The BBC did not make 16mm recordings of the other episodes.
  • The first PAL colour serial on offer - Death to the Daleks - was assessed in Australia on 26 September 1974. There is no record of the Dinosaurs story being sent, received or assessed.
  • A non-sale to Australia meant that the only other Commonwealth country still buying the series in black and white at that point -- Gibraltar -- could not afford to purchase it. (Sales to the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and New Zealand were also not possible, as they were all broadcasting in colour at that time.)
  • Once it was clear that there would be no overseas sales of Serial WWW, the black and white prints of Part 1 were junked. One of the two copies was salvaged by a film collector; it was subsequently returned to the BBC in 1983.
  • A clip of the Brigadier from part six was used in part four of Logopolis, which aired in early 1981.


Issue

The edited five-parter finally goes to air -- in Australia; Canberra Times, 5 November 1984
  • The story was eventually released for foreign sale in 1984; it was re-edited as a five-parter because part 1 was only in black and white.
    • The opening titles captions were adjusted, so PART TWO was now "PART ONE", PART THREE became "PART TWO", and so on. Part Two was also edited slightly to delete all references to scenes and events that occurred in part one, such as the Doctor and Sarah's discussion about the origin of the pterodactyl that had attacked them. To maintain the episode's duration, the 'deleted' sections were replaced by the dropping-in of shots extracted from elsewhere within the same episode - for instance, a cutaway of soldiers shooting at the T-rex was duplicated and dropped in to mask the above 'discussion' scene.
  • It was also included in a package of all 24 Jon Pertwee stories sold to the United States in 1985. The story was offered in its re-edit 5-part format or as a movie omnibus.
  • This new five-part version of the serial was sold to:
Australia Nov 84 PAL
United States from Mar 85 NTSC
New Zealand Sep 86 PAL
Canada Jun 90 NTSC


Reissue

  • All six parts – including the black and white first instalment - were re-issued in the 1990s - UK Gold aired it episodically in July 1993; UKTV Australia screened all six in 1997; and Prime in New Zealand aired all six in January 2001. Prime also aired the extended first edit of part three.
  • The black and white first episode was shown for the first time (as best as we can determine) in the United States on station WXEL, on 17 December 1994. It was later shown by other stations, sometimes on its own as a "special", such as on KSPS in Spokane, which aired a single "never-before-seen-on TV 'lost'" Jon Pertwee episode on 18 March 1995.
    • We suspect the reason why part one was not available until the 1990s was, when the BBC released the serial in 1984 only stories that existed entirely in black and white or in colour were offered since many US broadcasters wanted to air omnibus versions, and colour serials with some parts in black and white were not as attractive to US stations. There were only two serials affected by this - Planet of the Daleks and the Dinosaurs. Each was edited to "remove" their sole black and white episode. And since repeat fees had to be paid to the actors with speaking roles, with part one out of the equation, the BBC did not have to pay repeat fees to the half dozen or so actors who appeared only in part one. But after 1991, when the seven years rights period (1984-1991) had expired, the black and white first episode could finally be marketed under fresh repeats contracts, which now included the actors in Part One.


US TV Guide descriptions

More Information
Title: Invasion of the Dinosaurs

  • Episode 1: The Doctor and Sarah return from a visit to the Middle Ages only to find present-day London deserted.
  • Episode 2: In an effort to solve the mystery of the monster invasion, the Doctor decides to capture a dinosaur.
  • Episode 3: The Doctor bags his dinosaur, but loses Sarah to kidnappers.
  • Episode 4: New clues bring the Doctor closer to solving the mystery of the dinosaurs.
  • Episode 5: The Doctor makes a desperate attempt to stop Operation Golden Age.
  • Compilation: The Doctor must foil and attempt to reverse time and return the Earth to its primitive stages.


Links

Retrieved from "http://broadwcast.com/index.php?title=Invasion_of_the_Dinosaurs&oldid=29053"