Well, there's the dinosaurs for a start...
We'd best get these out of the way first. The Drashigs in Carnival of Monsters had proved to be very popular and their realisation had been deemed a success by producer Barry Letts. (The ironic thing is that they were named by Robert Holmes as an anagram of 'dish-rags', as that's what he thought the VFX team would use to make them). Spurred on by this, Letts decided that it might be time to feature prehistoric monsters in the series. No story had featured them prominently due to the issue of how to make them look convincing. One had appeared briefly in The Silurians, when it had been realised using a man in a suit, filmed using CSO to make it look huge. (It was only afterwards that Letts realised that a small puppet or model would have done the trick much more cheaply).
Letts asked around and was informed that it would be possible to make some dinosaur models for the money he was offering, and they would would look okay on screen. The person who told him this was Clifford Culley, whose VFX company had worked on major movies such as the James Bond franchise, and who had also provided the FX for Planet of the Daleks. His company - Westbury Design & Optical - were being paid to store the Dalek props and refurbish them as necessary.
The problem was, however, that his expertise lay in optical effects such as mattes (he became the head of Pinewood's matte painting department) rather than miniatures and other models.
Culley took on the work for this story by subcontracting out the dinosaur models to someone else - Rodney Fuller - and he's the one responsible for the substandard work which unfortunately made it to the screen.
To be honest, it is only really the Tyrannosaurus Rex which lets the side down. Trouble is, it lets the side down very badly indeed - and features more than any other other monster, even getting three of the five cliffhangers. The other dinosaurs - Triceratops, Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus in old money), Stegosaurus and Pterodactyl - are not that bad. The latter is realised using a glove puppet as well as being swung about on a wire, whilst the others appear as fairly static models. It's the lack of movement that is their saving grace.
One of the problems is that the models are controlled via a cable running up through the foot, which is why the T-Rex isn't terribly mobile. Another problem is with the mix of CSO (on video) superimposed onto film backgrounds. This makes the CSO artefacts appear to float and not really integrate with the surroundings. Again, when they are seen in a model landscape they aren't quite so bad.
On being shown the CGI explosion which DVD viewers could select for the end of The Time Warrior, Letts is said to have turned round and asked "Well, what about these dinosaurs then?".
For some reason the opening episode was wiped in isolation from the other five instalments. Some think that this is because it had the name changed to just "Invasion", and the people doing the wiping mistook it for part of the 1968 Patrick Troughton Cyberman story. Others are convinced Letts intended the entire story to be wiped... Whatever, the first episode is only available in B&W.
The colourisation process for the DVD did not make use of a US television PAL copy, as with other recolourisations. Instead the colour information was taken from hidden data on the film print, and as such renders it grainy and washed out.
Hopefully this will be improved when it comes to a future Season 11 Blu-ray box set release. If you are at all familiar with this story you will know that there are actually very few scenes in which the cast interact with the dinosaurs in the same picture frame. It is therefore perfectly feasible to remake the dinosaur scenes using CGI, losing only a handful of inessential shots.
Before we move on to the actual plot, since we're looking at behind-the-scenes matters, we should mention the controversy over that Part One renaming. Writer Malcolm Hulke thought that the full title would provide a big audience draw, as dinosaurs were as popular with children in 1974 as they are today. It was director Paddy Russell who thought it a smart idea to drop the "of the Dinosaurs" so that it would come as a big surprise to viewers. The first episode sets up the mystery of why London is seemingly empty, and why there are dead bodies and crashed cars on the streets.
Letts took Russell's side in the argument, and Hulke was furious, believing they had just damaged his story's ratings. In the end Letts had to concede he was right and he did write an apology, as did Terrance Dicks. This was the only serious argument the two men had ever had - and Hulke had once been Dicks' landlord as well as writing partner. Russell's whole plan to keep the dinosaurs a secret had been thoroughly spoiled anyway - first in a season preview published in the Radio Times 10th Anniversary Special, and then in the actual Radio Times for the week of broadcast, which featured artwork of the Doctor under attack by the Pterosaur.
Hulke and Dicks did patch things up, but the writer decided never to work on Doctor Who again - a great loss to the series.
On to the actual story itself.
The TARDIS always returns to UNIT HQ after it's been off on its travels, even when the Time Lords weren't in control, so why does it land in the middle of a London park here?
It's a big coincidence that UNIT just happen to have also moved to London for this crisis, but the TARDIS can't know that otherwise it would surely have landed at their temporary school HQ.
The city is supposed to be deserted, and yet we can clearly hear traffic noise in the background.
And we see a film camera crew apparently shadowing the Doctor and Sarah as they walk past all those reflective windows... They're still stalking him in Part Six, as you can see from their shadow on the ground when the Brigadier and General Finch confront each other.
A problem that we can blame Hulke for - every single guest character happens to be in on the conspiracy. It's like a whodunnit where everyone dunnit and we know this from the outset. A couple of red herring characters might have been nice, just to get the audience guessing. What should have been a big surprise is that UNIT regular Captain Yates is a member of Operation Golden Age - but we are told this far too early. Again, raising suspicion about a possible traitor within UNIT would have worked so much better dramatically. It's as if they just wanted to get to the dinosaurs as frequently as possible.
Letts and Dicks were better than most at adding some continuity to the series, yet there was no mention of Professor Whitaker when it came to the scientists rounded up by the Brigadier during The Time Warrior. If temporal mechanics were his speciality, shouldn't he have been prime suspect for the vanishing scientists and equipment in that earlier story?
OGA has its base in an underground command centre which was built beneath London during the Cold War. Why does the Brigadier not twig this sooner, considering he has form when it comes to top secret bases built under London, accessed via the Tube network?
The base has one entrance in Whitehall, and another in Moorgate. That is one hell of a size. The Underground runs throughout this area at its densest, operating on different levels, so the shelter must be very deep indeed. Much deeper than the length of rope brought by the Doctor.
Despite its apparently enormous size, when we see a plan of it, it isn't very big at all.
Mr Robinson, one of the OGA people, claims that he looked into the operation very closely, like he was getting stock market advice from his bank manager. Where exactly would he have been able to research a top secret scheme to plant colonists on an Earth-like planet which must lie well beyond the Solar System? Was there an article in the Guardian newspaper, or an advert in House & Home? If they are all like him, how on earth does Grover hope to build a new society without recourse to technology? He looks like he would fall to pieces if denied a Waitrose home delivery.
Sarah somehow recalls off the top of her head the distance achieved by athlete Mark to three decimal places, despite her just having been concussed and woken up on a spaceship going to an alien planet (and the fact that no sport ever measured anything to that degree in those days).
It's pretty obvious why UNIT are floundering without the Doctor. They have elected to base themselves in the far west of London, when all the action is happening in the centre. No wonder the dinosaurs have always vanished by the time they get there. If Grover can base himself in Whitehall, why can't the Brigadier do the same? Benton mentions that there is some radio interference every time a dinosaur appears. Way back in The Ambassadors of Death the Brigadier was quick to triangulate the alien signals - so why doesn't he do something similar here? The OGA base would have been identified long before the Doctor even got back from Merrie England.
And when the Doctor does arrive, why does he not use the handy little device he used to trace the TOMTIT temporal anomalies, back in The Time Monster?
UNIT were set up to deal with the weird, the alien and the unexplained, yet it is the regular army which has been placed in charge of the government response. The government have shifted to Harrogate. That's way up in Yorkshire. The crisis is confined to central London. Why could the government not move to Brighton or Luton and been a lot closer? And just what day job does Grover have that he is the one to be put in charge from their end? Home Secretary or Minister of Defence are the most obvious roles to lead, but there's no hint he is either of these.
Yates sabotages the Doctor's stun-gun, but we clearly see his device attached to the weapon long before we see him actually placing it there. We also note the Doctor staring right at it but failing to notice the shiny new component he never built.
When Sarah gets attacked in the hangar by the waking T-Rex, no-one questions why she was there alone, and why there were no guards present - yet Finch easily blames the whole thing on the Doctor without a shred of evidence. And even after all this, Sarah still trusts him.
When it comes to journalism Sarah is clearly a Lois Lane, rather than a Jimmy Olsen, as she uses a flash to take pictures through a glass window.
On escaping from the OGA base the first time, she neglects to leave word for the Doctor or Brigadier of where she's been and what she's seen. No wonder she walks straight into another trap within the hour.
Luckily for her she gets locked in rooms that have handy ventilation shafts for ease of escape.
Why put her on the fake spaceship at all? They know she'll kick up trouble. Why not simply kill her and dump the body where a T-Rex will eat the evidence.
Yates isn't much smarter. What did he think would happen when he put the Doctor into the custody of Sergeant Benton?
When exactly is it that the OGA are planning to resettle. It surely can't be the dinosaur era - not with the likes of Mr Robinson in their midst. (Though at least Mark can run away from them). Pick almost any period of history and you are going to end up facing wars or plague or both, so I hope they've chosen very carefully.
And where does the medieval peasant in Part One fit in? Why did Prof. Whitaker bring him into the 20th Century, just to lurk about a garage then give the Doctor a big clue as to what might be going on?
Last, but by no means least, if the Operation Golden Age people do go back in time and completely alter history, surely they can't then have existed to go back in time to completely alter history...
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