Invasion of the Dinosaurs - Episode 5

Today is day 364 of my marathon and it starts off with General Finch telling the Brigadier that the Doctor is a monster maker and by the end of the reprise he is under arrest. The plan to discredit the Doctor doesn’t really seem to have had much thought apart from placing the Doctor in the right place at the right time. Even the Brigadier clues up to the fact that the Doctor might not be guilty. Sarah is still stuck with trying to deal with the natives. It doesn’t take her long to sus out what is going on. It takes her less than 10 minutes to escape right in front of Mark. She manages to make it out for most of the episode before being recaptured by General Finch. It’s hard to believe that she is as dim as she is in not suspecting that General Finch is basically leading her back to where she started the episode. To be fair to her she does realise her mistake just as Finch is holding a gun at her.

This is the episode where it becomes clear to the Doctor that Yates is working with General Finch and it’s a lovely moment. There is moment when it seems that the Doctor thinks that the Brigadier is involved and it ends with Benton willing being knocked out by the Doctor. Going back to Yates, after being revealed that he’s involved he then proceeds to do nothing. It does seem like a bit of a waste but apart from my annoyance with the dinosaur models, this is the only issue that I had with the episode.

There is a portion of this episode which seems to be a tad bit indulgent as it’s the Doctor being chased by the army and to be fair it does at least have a purpose to it and is less like a Bond film that the similar scene we get in ‘Planet of the Spiders’. It does mean we get a bit of Jon Pertwee doing a cockney accent which is far better than the one Dick Van Dyke attempted to do in Mary Poppins.

There is a nice shot of Butler smashing a mug and then it reforming and even though it’s a relatively normal effect it looks good on TV. I still like the relationship between Whittaker and Butler and think that there is a potential spin-off series that Big Finish could do wonders with.

Apart from the reprise, its 22 minutes before we see any naff dinosaur models and they saved the worst still the end because yet again the T-Rex is chosen to pose a threat to the Doctor but a five year old couldn’t find it scary. It’s a shame really because up until this point I had found the episode to be a lot of fun and built upon the good work that came from the previous episode. As I am about to watch the final episode I do so knowing that the story is building up to something and it will be a corker.