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There is something utterly wonderful about
the comedy face Pertwee pulls while having his picture taken by the
authorities. It is probably my favourite single facial expression until
Colin Baker’s smug smile when the Inquisitor backs him in a dispute with
the Valeyard a decade later.
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When the Doctor and Sarah are apprehended as
looters the soldier fires a warning shot. Except, despite it being a
time for conserving resources because they’re in the midst of a crisis,
he fires into the air for a good five seconds. Dozens of wasted bullets
when one would’ve (a) sufficed and (b) let all the other looters know
they should hide.
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The looter held with the Doctor and Sarah is
determined to go to prison. How else can you explain the way he delivers
his evidence. He all but winks at the faux-judge. "I… er… FOUND the
stuff, see" he says, leaning forward and nudging people with his elbow.
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The looter suggests they jump their guard
and escape. The Doctor says "I think we can be a little more original
than that" before staging a brief fight and then… jumping the guard and
escaping. He should’ve been more original still and had Sarah pretend
she painfully ill and jump the guard when he comes to help. Then
escaping.
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"You’re the nark what grassed on us"
announces Pertwee in a crudely Cockney accent. Never mind that everyone
heard him chatting away in his normal voice a few minutes before. This
added verisimilitude to the scene and no mistake.
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As assassination methods go, trapping the
Doctor in a broom cupboard and bringing a pterodactyl sixty five million
years through time to (presumably) flap him to death isn’t the first
that springs to mind.
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What was the point of the dinosaurs? We have
a group of people who want to carry out a secret plan in the heart of
London. So they decide the best way to avoid anyone noticing their
underground base is to fill London with monsters and so bring the entire
British army in to take command.
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And what is their plan? To roll back time
and let a bunch of middle class, middle aged hippies persuade the cave
men not to develop the motor car. Did the idea of simply travelling back
through time not occur to them? Or is it somehow easier to transport a
planet with some people on rather than just transporting the people?
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The only good reason to have the dinosaurs
is the obvious glee Benton has inventing a colour coding system for his
map. He explains it with childlike enthusiasm and elicits a "Yes, thank
you Benton" which is as good as anything Courtney has done before or
since.
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Benton earns the story a full bonus point
for using the phrase "your actual Pterodactyl" while explaining the map
key. "Your actual" is a particular favourite of mine and I may well have
picked it up here. Who says it’s just a television programme?
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Speaking of Benton, why did he ask the
Doctor to knock him out while aiding his escape? Since Venusian aikido
leaves no visible mark, and since everyone knows the Doctor can do it
(or wouldn’t believe it was possible if they didn’t), wouldn’t it just
have been easier for him to lie down and not get fingered?
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What the hell kind of geek is Sarah?
Introduced to a famous athlete she announces that he jumped "two point
three six two metres". Who knows stuff like that?
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And who would believe that a civilisation
that could develop space travel would still be wearing flared denim?
There is a bunch of other stuff about the time paradox of destroying the
very civilisation which developed the technology to allow them to go
back and destroy the civilisation but I’m more concerned about the
trousers.
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The first cliffhanger – a close-up of a
dinosaur – is unbelievably long. It must last all of ten seconds. We can
only wonder how long it would’ve lasted had absolutely everyone on the
production team not been horribly embarrassed by the monsters. On top of
all that, it isn’t even the first time we see a dinosaur so it isn’t a
surprise.
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The Doctor is strangely irritable when first
he meets General Finch. We’re used to him showing a degree of disrespect
to authority figures but this is downright rude. And for no obvious
reason – he wasn’t to know that Finch would try and erase everyone from
history (though not, presumably, the Doctor himself as he wasn’t born
here). "May I ask where you've been?" says the general, "Certainly" says
the Doctor before a pause which is just long enough for most viewers to
understand the joke. "You can ask but I don't guarantee that you'll get
a reply" he explains for those who don’t.
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General Finch’s heel turn isn’t at all
surprising. He has one of those faces. Not for him the warm, round,
comfortable face of Nicholas Courtney. No – Finch is all angles and
sharpness. Neither honest nor open.
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So Finch is a traitor but so is everyone
else. Barely an episode goes by without someone revealing that they
aren’t what they appear to be. Well, they do say that three identical
surprises are three times better than one surprise. Oh, wait, no they
don’t.
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When the truth is explained to the dimwits
on the "space ship" one of them – who reminds me of Terry Jones for some
reason – says it must be bona fide because he went into everything "very
thoroughly". Ah, but did he actually ask the salesman if they would be
locked in a tunnel beneath London? I think not. "Very thoroughly" my
arse.
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Another of them announces that he sold his
house to join the expedition. That’s quite a middle class thing to say.
Why not go the whole way and have someone opine "rolling back time will
be disastrous for property prices in the area."
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For reasons of story telling – that being
the singular lack of chattiness in your average dinosaur – the policy of
bringing monsters forward from the year sixty five million BC is shelved
so a bloke from the thirteenth century can accuse Pertwee of being a
wizard (not, sadly, with a mighty nose) and tell them that King John is
on the throne. See – it is time travel and not what the girl thought it
might be.
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I can’t help but think that the Who Mobile
misses the point of everything, entirely, as few things have ever missed
the point before. I know Peewee was a gadget freak but a space car from
the future is doesn’t really fit in for a character who previously drove
an old classic.
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Equally, whatever happened to lash-up
devices which look like they were assembled in a hurry? The Doctor
confronts a dinosaur with a home made gun which looks for all the world
like it was made in China and sold in Toys R Us. Just how long did that
plastic casing take him? Really, fannying around with aesthetics while
monsters roam the capital. What is the man playing at?
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The only thing more absurd than the shape of
the gun is that our baddies had a device to hand which would jam it. And
one which was seemingly invisible as the Doctor misses it completely
when trying to work out why his toy won’t work.
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And the dinosaurs weren't going to be any
better if Barry Letts had made them himself in his own laboratory. This
is the BBC in the 1970s - this is what dinosaurs looked like back then.
Computers played Pong and dinosaurs were jerky rubber things which
looked like they belonged on the blunt end of a pencil.
