OK, the last time I saw "Invasion of the dinosaurs" I was ten years old. I found it pretty scary and wondered how they got the T-Rex to look so real. Now seeing the farcical model dino, I wonder what the hell was wrong with me. I guess my imagination filled in the detail. I must have imagined pretty hard.
I personally think it was televisions of the day. The analogue signals were pretty dodgy and the tapes/films were unremastered. Ontop of that the bulb back 70s tvs produced a slightly distorted image and werent really capable of showing a great deal of image detail and the screens were alot smaller
I always half-remembered the T-Rex as resembling the stop-motion Godzilla monster from the old Chewits adverts. Then it came out on DVD and I found it it was nowhere near that good.
It's a combo of things, you were a kid, probably watching classic Who on a really old TV. The effects don't look as cheap as they do on a modern monitor.
For those who remember it, the dinosaur in "Invasion Of The Dinosaurs" is less frightening than 'Posh Paws', Noel Edmonds' dinosaur playmate on "Multicoloured Swap Shop"
Fan theory... well, mine: the stress and extremely crude time scoop used by Whittaker in Invasion of the Dinosaurs deformed the appearance, stamina and speed of the Dinosaurs, hence their strange and unrealistic looks. It explains why Rose had a lisp in Turn Left and TSE/JE, primitive technology
@@StamFine Wow... I had no idea Dalek Brel was such an underrated, unsung hero to those of us who like shooting things... Thanks to you AND this review, I have learned a valuable lesson about just how many true visionaries fly under the radar...
I love how the metabelis three crystal fixes "Tommy pretty" 's dyslexia in spiders...stam you sound aussie...we were blessed here down under in the eighties...goodies & dr who at tea time was the shiz nizzle...love yor videos....cheers rollo
I have no memory of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but every other story is utterly familiar after seeing the first run and many repeats. It's possible I just walked out of the room every time a plastic dinosaur appeared, and repressed the memories. At least there was a good reason for the Drashigs to look like tiny models.
This season had a few problems if you were watching it in Australia during the 1970's..firstly Death to the Daleks had a censored opening to episode one and Invasion of the Dinosaurs was missing completely.
"Invasion of the Dinosaurs was missing completely." That is good to know because I could have sworn that I saw Invasion of the Dinosaurs in colour during a re-run in March 1985. Still, it is funny how it was lost so quickly by 1976 or so. I still can't remember if episode one of Death to the Daleks was in Black and White though. Glad they found a colour copy in Canada. It was quite entertaining as one of the original VHS releases.
@@StamFine the Doctor promises to get her back a week before her deadline is due... accidentally gets her back a week before she even got the job and she has to interview all over again!
This whole season is pretty good. I started watch dr who with this season. Got real used to JP. By the time the ark in space was over I was hooked on TB pretty quick lol
Just subbed today - thanks for this extraordinarily well researched, scripted and presented compendium of Dr Who classics. Formative experiences with wonderful characters, these stories made an indelible impression on so many.
.The reason that I have heard that Pertwee left the show was because if the death of his good friend, Roger Delgado (traffic accident in Turkey). I will have to watch your other doctor who reviews.. i am surprised that you didn't use Sarah Jane's line "...I don't think that i can take much more of this." (near the end of the last episode of "The Planet of the Spider" (Spiders...spiders... spiders... Now you have me doing it.) LOL
Correct,but using just the year very nearly all of it was broadcast is better for brevity. For the record the 1972 series started on Saturday 1st January with episode one of Day of the Daleks,but because of the way the calendar works,added to which it was a leap year,Saturday fell on 30th December so the 1973 series began with episode one of The Three Doctors on that date (I remember it well as it was while watching it that something happened that turned into a dramatic evening for us,and for me in particular). The 1974 season started with part one of The Time Warrior on 29th December 1973 and the 1975 series got under way with Tom Baker making his debut in part one of Robot on 28th December 1974. Things changed in 1975 when they started bringing the series back for an autumn run starting at the end of the summer holidays,with the first part of Terror of the Zygons being shown on the last Saturday of August or first Saturday in September 1975 (think it was the latter). After a week or two's break around Christmas the series returned in the New Year,with The Brain of Morbius starting on the first Saturday of January 1976.
@@davidbull7210Was it? I don't remember that but you could be right. Did parts two,three and four follow in the next three Saturdays or was there a gap?
@@rjjcms1 15th Dec-4 Jan each Saturday. I don't think there were any broadcast gaps until they brought the seasons forward to autumn then there'd be a break until new year. So Season 13 showed 4 serials then 2 in the new year, S14 showed 3 then 3 , S15 showed 4 then 2 and then they ran on without a Christmas break for seasons 16, 17 and 18.
A great set of stories let down by poor VFX. It's a shame they didn't see sense with Invasion of the Dinosaurs, cos the concept was top-notch. Surely they could've renamed it and found some other way for the villains to clear out London, like having them revive a bunch of Cybermen left over from The Invasion or something like that.
Remember that song about Agadoor? Agadoor door door, push pineapple, shake the tree Agadoor door door, push pineapple, grind coffee To the left, to the right, jump up and down and to the knees Come and dance every night, sing with a hula melody
When i was 9 I refused to watch the Dinosaurs story because of how unrealistic the dinos were. I saw it decades later on video and loved the story despite the effects. I also lived in a meditation centre in Kent that was not unlike Ling-po's. They had better luck with their mantras though....
i was 6 when i got into Dr Who, i still have vague memories, somethings you never forget. The Time Warrior is a great story but lets be honest that robot built by the Sontaran was flippin useless
I think you get too hung up on the low quality of the special effects or the staging, in all of these videos. To say that these things ruin things is a huge failure of imagination. Both Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Planet of the Spiders were fantastic stories. If anything, the relatively-speaking low production values of Doctor Who was a big part of its charm for American audiences in the 80's, which is when it started becoming popular there. It put the focus of attention squarely on the story itself.
Liz Shaw and Sarah Jane Smith are very different characters. Sarah Jane is a Journalist not a Scientist and Liz Shaw was not a good foil for The Doctor.....She was actually too conservative a character when most Companions even in the Classic show are much more liberal minded. Stargate Atlantis's Dr Elizabeth Weir reminds me a lot of Liz Shaw {especially in her first appearance in SG-1} but done right. They'd have been better off persuading Wendy Padbury to stay for another year and having Zoe join UNIT overseas somewhere after Inferno so they could bring her back from time to time. If they could have persuaded Frazer Hines to stay on for another year too even better - They could have had him join UNIT too and promoted Benton to Lieutenant instead of bringing in Captain Yates. Yes I'm still angry at how Jamie and Zoe got their lives with The Doctor erased!
I do see your point. But while you and I may have seen these episodes before, others haven't and people are always discovering the classic series (and other shows) with the series on streaming services, dvd and bluray releases, and things like Twitch marathons. a spoiler warning at the top of a video costs nothing.
Hilarious 😂 great review! Love your site. Invasion of the Dinosaurs was pure shit. Don't defend it ! Pertwees last season has 2 of the worst series. Peladon and Invasion were unwatchable . EXillions , Introduction of Sontarans an SPIDERS... were good
I've always hated Sarah Jane Whatever. Her whimpering and whining was like nails on a chalkboard connected to my spine. Too bad she was with my favorite Doctor most of the time (Baker).
I love the fact they finally set an episode in Australia, even if they did use only the smallest spiders.
Do the ones over there ever control anyone?
lol🤣
this damn show gave me arachnophobia!
Love the fact that the Daleks use a model Tardis as a target for testing their guns.
That one cliffhanger with the camera zooming in on the floor will always makes me laugh.
The tribute to Dalek Brel is a work of genius, thank you for the fine line between brilliance and insanity, bravo
Stam for president!
I missed Jo ,she and Pertwee were great Togethor and Tom and Liz had great rapport.
OK, the last time I saw "Invasion of the dinosaurs" I was ten years old. I found it pretty scary and wondered how they got the T-Rex to look so real. Now seeing the farcical model dino, I wonder what the hell was wrong with me. I guess my imagination filled in the detail. I must have imagined pretty hard.
your imagination had to do a lot of compensating in regards to invasion.
@@StamFine Love the vid, only thing was at 2:53 breech-loading rimfire rifles aren't remotely flintlock at all.
I personally think it was televisions of the day. The analogue signals were pretty dodgy and the tapes/films were unremastered. Ontop of that the bulb back 70s tvs produced a slightly distorted image and werent really capable of showing a great deal of image detail and the screens were alot smaller
I always half-remembered the T-Rex as resembling the stop-motion Godzilla monster from the old Chewits adverts. Then it came out on DVD and I found it it was nowhere near that good.
It's a combo of things, you were a kid, probably watching classic Who on a really old TV. The effects don't look as cheap as they do on a modern monitor.
Jon Pertwee was great but somewhat underated because of who followed him. Yes, I would like a jelly baby thank you.
I just realised that I was three when Planet of the Spiders aired. I remember the crystal and the rug
Om mane padme hum!
Wonderful work. Long live King Jon!
Indeed!
For those who remember it, the dinosaur in "Invasion Of The Dinosaurs" is less frightening than 'Posh Paws', Noel Edmonds' dinosaur playmate on "Multicoloured Swap Shop"
Fan theory... well, mine: the stress and extremely crude time scoop used by Whittaker in Invasion of the Dinosaurs deformed the appearance, stamina and speed of the Dinosaurs, hence their strange and unrealistic looks. It explains why Rose had a lisp in Turn Left and TSE/JE, primitive technology
But I thought she had a lisp because she tried regenerating her gross british teeth but failed because she wasn't a timelord
Great review. Episode 1 of Dinosaurs is one of the best of the series in my opinion re atmosphere and direction.
these reviews are beautiful
Thank you! Glad you enjoy them.
@@StamFine it has a perfect mix of serious and silly and i really dig them
serious and silly is exactly what we're going for :)
@@StamFine Wow... I had no idea Dalek Brel was such an underrated, unsung hero to those of us who like shooting things... Thanks to you AND this review, I have learned a valuable lesson about just how many true visionaries fly under the radar...
Yes. The true Dalek heroes just keep on rolling.
So many good memories of racing home from school and watching these. I remember them vividly - all the way from age 6
I love how the metabelis three crystal fixes "Tommy pretty" 's dyslexia in spiders...stam you sound aussie...we were blessed here down under in the eighties...goodies & dr who at tea time was the shiz nizzle...love yor videos....cheers rollo
I think it was a shame in billions of ways that the principal villain in Jon Pertwee,s finale could not be the Master
I have no memory of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but every other story is utterly familiar after seeing the first run and many repeats. It's possible I just walked out of the room every time a plastic dinosaur appeared, and repressed the memories. At least there was a good reason for the Drashigs to look like tiny models.
I like classic Doctor Who BECAUSE the special effects don't steal the show
And its better acted
Precisely, just like japanese tokusatsu, they have to compensate the cheesy effects with actual good characters and stories.
the special effects were actually what drew me to watching the classic series as a kid!!! I loved how crappy but awesome all the old effects were
This season had a few problems if you were watching it in Australia during the 1970's..firstly Death to the Daleks had a censored opening to episode one and Invasion of the Dinosaurs was missing completely.
"Invasion of the Dinosaurs was missing completely." That is good to know because I could have sworn that I saw Invasion of the Dinosaurs in colour during a re-run in March 1985. Still, it is funny how it was lost so quickly by 1976 or so. I still can't remember if episode one of Death to the Daleks was in Black and White though. Glad they found a colour copy in Canada. It was quite entertaining as one of the original VHS releases.
I liked this version of Sarah Jane. Tough & brave before she became watered down & weaker in subsequent seasons.
They probably forgot about the journalism part later on since she's never going to hit a deadline travelling in the TARDIS.
@@StamFine the Doctor promises to get her back a week before her deadline is due... accidentally gets her back a week before she even got the job and she has to interview all over again!
I think Planet of the Spiders was a lot of kids in Australia's introduction to Buddhism (that and Monkey).
🤣🤣👍
Yeah the dinosaurs make make those on The Land of the Lost series look like a Steven Spielberg production.
Doing Dinosaurs is hard. Doing Dinosaurs well is harder.
@@StamFine "Doing Dinosaurs is hard" - Well, then......
This whole season is pretty good. I started watch dr who with this season. Got real used to JP. By the time the ark in space was over I was hooked on TB pretty quick lol
How do these awesome reviews have so few views?
Thanks. The audience is slowly growing, but the Tom Baker seasons tend to be more popular.
I know! They are so damn good!
Definitely needs more subscribers! Facebook posts are a must! 😁
Invasion of the DInosaurs was basically a Kaiju story, all it was missing was Ultraman.
Just subbed today - thanks for this extraordinarily well researched, scripted and presented compendium of Dr Who classics. Formative experiences with wonderful characters, these stories made an indelible impression on so many.
I love the T-Rex in Invasion. So potato faced and derpy. Can’t believe five year old me found that scary.
Let's hope they update the dinosaur special effects for the blu ray collection😎😎😎😎😎
Dont let Bette Midler know she's been bested by the Daleks.
.The reason that I have heard that Pertwee left the show was because if the death of his good friend, Roger Delgado (traffic accident in Turkey). I will have to watch your other doctor who reviews.. i am surprised that you didn't use Sarah Jane's line "...I don't think that i can take much more of this." (near the end of the last episode of "The Planet of the Spider" (Spiders...spiders... spiders... Now you have me doing it.) LOL
i heard the same as they were quite close
Talk about euphemism. Traffic accident - a taxi plunging down a ravine.
Btw this season, like the one before and the one after began broadcasting in December, not January.
Correct,but using just the year very nearly all of it was broadcast is better for brevity. For the record the 1972 series started on Saturday 1st January with episode one of Day of the Daleks,but because of the way the calendar works,added to which it was a leap year,Saturday fell on 30th December so the 1973 series began with episode one of The Three Doctors on that date (I remember it well as it was while watching it that something happened that turned into a dramatic evening for us,and for me in particular). The 1974 season started with part one of The Time Warrior on 29th December 1973 and the 1975 series got under way with Tom Baker making his debut in part one of Robot on 28th December 1974. Things changed in 1975 when they started bringing the series back for an autumn run starting at the end of the summer holidays,with the first part of Terror of the Zygons being shown on the last Saturday of August or first Saturday in September 1975 (think it was the latter). After a week or two's break around Christmas the series returned in the New Year,with The Brain of Morbius starting on the first Saturday of January 1976.
@@rjjcms1 Correct except that part one of the Time Warrior was on 15th December 73, I think
@@davidbull7210Was it? I don't remember that but you could be right. Did parts two,three and four follow in the next three Saturdays or was there a gap?
@@rjjcms1 15th Dec-4 Jan each Saturday. I don't think there were any broadcast gaps until they brought the seasons forward to autumn then there'd be a break until new year. So Season 13 showed 4 serials then 2 in the new year, S14 showed 3 then 3 , S15 showed 4 then 2 and then they ran on without a Christmas break for seasons 16, 17 and 18.
@@davidbull7210Thanks.
A great set of stories let down by poor VFX. It's a shame they didn't see sense with Invasion of the Dinosaurs, cos the concept was top-notch. Surely they could've renamed it and found some other way for the villains to clear out London, like having them revive a bunch of Cybermen left over from The Invasion or something like that.
Remember that song about Agadoor?
Agadoor door door, push pineapple, shake the tree
Agadoor door door, push pineapple, grind coffee
To the left, to the right, jump up and down and to the knees
Come and dance every night, sing with a hula melody
PLANET OF THE SPIDERS is my favorite of Season 11.
When i was 9 I refused to watch the Dinosaurs story because of how unrealistic the dinos were. I saw it decades later on video and loved the story despite the effects. I also lived in a meditation centre in Kent that was not unlike Ling-po's. They had better luck with their mantras though....
i was 6 when i got into Dr Who, i still have vague memories, somethings you never forget. The Time Warrior is a great story but lets be honest that robot built by the Sontaran was flippin useless
Lynx obviously inspired his co-star Jeremy Bullock, or am I the only one who sees a suspicious resemblance to Boba Fett?
I thought that was Jeremy Bullock!😃
12:23 surprisingly worse than McCoy's rendition of "Spiridon"! 😁
McCoy also pronounced it "MeTEbelis 3". Not a good record!
This channel is spot on apart from one defect- it entertains NuWho at all.
Ashame Jon Pertwee never stayed for season 12
In fairness, while quite a lot of the dino fx are woeful, there are plenty that are really much better than this story's rep suggests.
I think you get too hung up on the low quality of the special effects or the staging, in all of these videos. To say that these things ruin things is a huge failure of imagination. Both Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Planet of the Spiders were fantastic stories. If anything, the relatively-speaking low production values of Doctor Who was a big part of its charm for American audiences in the 80's, which is when it started becoming popular there. It put the focus of attention squarely on the story itself.
Liz Shaw and Sarah Jane Smith are very different characters.
Sarah Jane is a Journalist not a Scientist and Liz Shaw was not a good foil for The Doctor.....She was actually too conservative a character when most Companions even in the Classic show are much more liberal minded.
Stargate Atlantis's Dr Elizabeth Weir reminds me a lot of Liz Shaw {especially in her first appearance in SG-1} but done right.
They'd have been better off persuading Wendy Padbury to stay for another year and having Zoe join UNIT overseas somewhere after Inferno so they could bring her back from time to time.
If they could have persuaded Frazer Hines to stay on for another year too even better - They could have had him join UNIT too and promoted Benton to Lieutenant instead of bringing in Captain Yates.
Yes I'm still angry at how Jamie and Zoe got their lives with The Doctor erased!
Spoiler warning for a 1974 production. Hilarious :-)
I do see your point. But while you and I may have seen these episodes before, others haven't and people are always discovering the classic series (and other shows) with the series on streaming services, dvd and bluray releases, and things like Twitch marathons. a spoiler warning at the top of a video costs nothing.
Hilarious 😂 great review! Love your site. Invasion of the Dinosaurs was pure shit. Don't defend it ! Pertwees last season has 2 of the worst series. Peladon and Invasion were unwatchable . EXillions , Introduction of Sontarans an SPIDERS... were good
Daft hair and ridiculous hair both tend to have stripes. Aye, the Brigadier finally gets to view the transformation.
Spiders ...iders ....iders ...ₑᵣₛ ...ₑᵣₛ ...,,,
Awful saurus 😂
Aren't all wars between people with foolish hair and ridiculous hair.
And moustaches.
I've always hated Sarah Jane Whatever. Her whimpering and whining was like nails on a chalkboard connected to my spine. Too bad she was with my favorite Doctor most of the time (Baker).