Invasion of the Dinosaurs

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

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• Although The Time Warrior was the last full story to be telerecorded onto 16mm black and white film, at least the first and second episodes of WWW were also transferred to film.
• However, by August 1974, only six months after the serial had aired in the UK, it had been marked by the BBC as having no further commercial use - i.e. they did not want to sell it overseas.
  • CONSPIRACY THEORY: Where does one even begin?

• To make some sense of what happened with this serial, let's bullet-point the key events:
• 12 January to 16 February 1974: Invasion of the Dinosaurs airs on BBC TV.
• 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.
• 28 June 1974 and 10 July 1974: Tele-recordings are made of episode one (and possibly also episode two).
• 30 July 1974: The censors in Australia view and assess The Time Warrior (on b/w film).
• 1974: A BBC sales 'brochure' includes Invasion of the Dinosaurs as being available.
• August 1974: BBC Enterprises confirms it has no interest in serial WWW.
• 26 September 1974: The censors in Australia view and assess Death to the Daleks (on PAL video).
• 10 October 1974 : The censors in Australia view and assess The Monster of Peladon (on PAL video).
• 1975: A BBC sales 'brochure' includes Invasion of the Dinosaurs as being available.
• 24 November 1976: Pre-production on Whose Doctor Who. BBC Enterprises does not hold any tapes for Serial WWW.
• 28 February 1977: A memo is drawn up recording foreign sales of Doctor Who (See BBC Records). Invasion of the Dinosaurs is blank.
• 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. 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 month after UK transmission, but that by that time WWW was not available indicates that 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).

• 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 16mm film copy?

GO INTO SOME DETAIL ABOUT HOW THIS WAS "MISSING" UNTIL 1985

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AS TO HOWS AND WHYS

BULLET POINT OF EVENTS

• A film recording for part one was subsequently recovered in early 1983.

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.
• 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 serial was sold to:

United States	from Mar 85	NTSC
Australia	Nov 84	PAL
New Zealand	Sep 86	PAL
Canada	1990s?	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.

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