Invasion of the Dinosaurs

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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


  • A set of black and white film recordings of the serial (a print of part one was struck on 28 June 1974, and another on 10 July 1974) were sent to BBC Sydney circa late July 1974, soon after the completion of broadcast of the season in the UK. The serial was offered by BBC Sydney to the ABC in Australia along with the rest of the season.
  • The serial was viewed and assessed by the Australian censors circa early August 1974, probably between these two dates:
  • The ABC wanted the new season of episodes in colour (PAL transmissions were due to commence from March 1975). The BBC was able to furnish The Time Warrior in colour, but not Invasion of the Dinosaurs because episode one had by then already been erased. Serial WWW was therefore rejected on account of its format.
  • A non-sale to Australia meant that the only other Commonwealth country still buying the series in black and white -- Gibraltar -- could not afford to purchase it. (A sale to the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and New Zealand was also not possible, as they were all broadcasting in colour at that time.)
  • BBC London, probably in direct response to the 'rejection' by Australia, issued a "No Further Interest" notice for the story in August 1974 (shortly after the ABC rejected it), ignoring the possibility of future sales outside the Commonwealth.
  • CONSPIRACY THEORY: It has been suggested that Invasion of the Dinosaurs part one was wiped in error due to it having the same on-screen title as the Patrick Troughton story, The Invasion, but that notion is often dismissed since the master tapes of that 8-parter had already been erased in 1971. However, there is the possibility that this is in fact true, because the BBC was indeed junking the bulk of the film prints of the Troughton serials in 1974 (see Bicycling Chains) and Dinosaurs 1 may well have been mistaken for The Invasion 1 after all. (The BBC junked the negatives and film prints for The Invasion part one in 1974, and a clerical error may have seen "Invasion" part one assigned to the magnetic tape eraser at the same time...) So when the serial came to be offered to the ABC in mid-1974, the PAL Master Tape for part 1 had already been wiped in error in late July.
  • By late 1976, when Brunei and Gibraltar had been offered season 11 (and when the documentary Whose Doctor Who was in pre-production), BBC Enterprises no longer held sales copies of the serial. (The five original broadcast tapes, plus a longer earlier edit of part three, were held by the BBC's Engineering Department; all six black and white prints had presumably been junked on their return from Australia; episode one however was salvaged by a film collector and was returned to the BBC in 1983.)


Issue

  • The story was eventually released for foreign sale in 1984, when it was sold to Australia. It was also included in a package of all 24 Jon Pertwee stories sold to the United States in 1985. However, the black and white part one was not included; the story was offered as a five-parter only or in an omnibus format. 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 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.
  • The 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 1990s? NTSC


Reissue

  • All six parts – with the black and white first instalment included - were 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.
  • 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 having colour serials with 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 Invasion of 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:
  • Episode 6: The Doctor makes a desperate attempt to stop Operation Golden Age.



Links

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