OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 364
STORY NUMBER: 071
TRANSMITTED: 09 February 1974
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Paddy Russell
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who - Invasion Of The Dinosaurs
Episode Format: 625 video
Mark tells Sarah that the elders are thinking of killing her so she feigns co-operation to escape. Finch has the Doctor locked up but refuses to interrogate him. Captain Yates refuses to listen to him, ordering Benton to lock him up. The Doctor deduces Mike Yates is the traitor and Benton allows himself to be overpowered so the Doctor can escape. Whitaker demonstrates his ability to reverse time to Grover. Sarah attempts to escape through the spaceship's airlock. Finch threatens to court martial Benton. Finch orders the Doctor hunted down and killed. The Brigadier orders Benton to raise some UNIT troops. Sarah realises from her bruise that she's only been on ship a matter of hours and demonstrates to Mark the place is a fake. As the Doctor is pursued by troops Sarah escapes into the base but the lift she uses to escape takes her straight to Sir Charles Grover's office where she escapes. Returning to UNIT's temporary HQ she leaves a message for the Brigadier and takes General Finch back to the government offices where he pulls a gun on her and returns her to the underground base. Whitaker is ordered to produce a new wave of Monsters to clear London while Finch removes the troops. Grover explains he will use Whitaker's machines to roll back time taking the people on the "ships" back to an earlier age. The Doctor finds himself trapped between two battling Dinosaurs.......
Oh dear. Sarah does the escape/recapture routine while the Doctor escapes and spends the entire episode running around and evading the the troops on Wimbledon Common, close to where he picked up Dodo in the closing moments of the Massacre. In fact Dodo's first full story, The Ark, also features the human race in deep sleep being shipped off to a new planet like the people in the ships believe is happening to them here. It's a theme we'll return to shortly in the Ark in Space. Talking of reused things I'm pretty sure I can see the UFO Moonbase panels again in the wall of Whitaker's control room!
Doctor Who likes Invasion stories. The word has been used several times over the years in story titles:
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
The Web Planet 5: Invasion
The Invasion
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
The Android Invasion (These last two will be paired in January 2012's UNIT box)
The Invasion of Time
The day before this episode was transmitted it was revealed to the press that Jon Pertwee would be leaving Doctor Who at the end of the Eleventh season. A week later his successor was unveiled: a little known actor called Tom Baker who we will hear more about shortly.....
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