Doctor Who fan Charlie Lowe has used his design skills to breathe new life into ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ – a classic Third Doctor adventure.
As you may know, ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ aired during Jon Pertwee’s final season in 1974, and saw the good Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane tackle an influx of prehistoric creatures as they wreaked havoc in contemporary London. Understandably, this wasn’t the easiest thing to achieve with Doctor Who‘s modest budget, and the effectiveness of the story’s monsters has been questioned many times since the original transmission.
The other problem with ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ is that its first episode only exists in the BBC archives as a black and white film print, the original colour copy having been destroyed shortly after it was broadcast. A sophisticated colour recovery method was used to partially restore its colours for the BBC’s DVD release, although it was still some way from matching the quality of the original.
But Doctor Who fan Charlie Lowe has addressed these issues with an impressive ‘trailer’ for ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ which he shared on Twitter. The video, which is presented in cinematic widescreen, restores some of the story’s original colour, whilst combining new footage with computer-generated dinosaurs to address some of the issues with the 1974 original. The end result could easily be mistaken for an official endeavour, and wouldn’t look out of place on the silver screen.
And at the time of writing, we’re still waiting to hear when ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ will be making its way to Blu-ray as part of a Season 11 box set. Fans are hoping that the eventual release will add new VFX to the classic story, and perhaps fully restore episode one to its original colour. Maybe Charlie Lowe’s dino skills will be called upon to assist with the effort? After all, it looks like half the work has been done already!
Would you like to see ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ updated with modern effects? Or would you like it to be presented in its original state? Let me know in the comments below.
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This looks horrible.
Nah, if it must have an overhaul, lets have something akin to what Barry Letts wanted based on the work done with the Drashigs the previous year – properly articulated physical props – and prehistoric ‘Monsters’, not the copyrighted T-Rex design of Jurassic Park. Fast CGI dinos aren’t going to match the feel of this story. The new effects options have only ever really worked when they’ve been sympathetic to the era, What’s needed is the sort of rubber rod-puppeted creatures that Roger Dicken was creating for things in the mid 70s like The Land that Time Forgot and Warlords of Atlantis. Somebody just needs to do the work of rotoscoping the composited scenes and dropping in new dinosaurs that are better designed and better articulated.