Aquatic powerplays and Armageddon games in Warriors of the Deep. Art composition by Will Brooks Design.
The year is 2084, and two power-blocs are poised on the brink of war. Using a series of undersea complexes and deep-space satellites, each bloc carefully monitors the other's movements, slowly edging towards the moment when one will launch an all-out nuclear attack on the other.
Arriving on Sea Base Four, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are rapidly drawn into the web of intrigue which enmeshes this era's paranoid political manoeuvrings. Not everyone on board the base is working for the same team, and the officer directly responsible for implementing the base's nuclear capacity has died in mysterious circumstances.
Amid this already tense atmosphere, the crew of Sea Base Four faces an even greater threat linked to mankind. The Silurians and Sea Devils, prehistoric reptile men who went into hibernation millions of years before, have reawoken and intend to launch another attempt to reclaim the Earth from humanity. The Doctor must tackle enemy sabotage and face the Myrka, a giant marine monster - but can he prevent their "final solution" - launching the missile to start a war that threatens to wipe out the human race?
Original 1995 VHS release sleeve synopsis.
I had been enjoying the in-full-swing celebrations for Doctor Who's Twentieth Anniversary during 1983. So far in my personal journey recollections there had been the satisfying but sadly Dalek-less Season Twenty, whilst the epic Longleat weekend of the Easter Bank Holiday had proved a momentous never-to-be-forgotten experience. The surely epic The Five Doctors wasn't far away when July saw the shock announcement that Peter Davison was leaving his title role after what would be just three seasons. The actor's reasons for departing (avoiding typecasting, wanting more diverse work, and listening to advice from former Doctor Patrick Troughton) were understandable, but that didn't mean that I wasn't absolutely gutted by the news that his tenure would be way too short for my personal taste- I was hoping for a minimum of four years from him at least. When 1984 arrived and Davison's finale story run was partially revealed in a special new year trailer airing across BBC 1, I was very impressed with what was revealed footage-wise, and it was thankfully clear from just these few minutes aired that the star was going to get a deservedly fine and diverse adventures end to his memorable run.
Peter Davison returns for one final season.
I wasn't prior aware that both classic villains the Sea Devil and their underground cousins, the Silurians, were going to be the primary foes of Johnny Byrne's season opener until I literally bumped into my regular school friend, and fellow Who fan, Stephen, in the busy corridors of our secondary school a few months earlier, where he excitedly told me the news of their return which he'd gleaned from the then latest issue of the DWAS newsletter, to which he was avidly subscribed to. Could this sequel tale top the originals, I wondered, especially after the redesigned and revitalized success of the Cybermen with Earthshock two year's earlier? Hopes were high for all fans with Warriors of the Deep when it debuted in weekly double episodes during early January 1984, especially for those die-harders from the seventies, but the final results would soon garner mixed emotions...
Special guest star Ingrid Pitt poses for a great publicity image alongside Davison. It's a shame that the two didn't share any full characters scenes together in the story.
But Warriors did start well enough, competently made (with a welcome return from Tom Baker later seasons directing regular Pennant Roberts), featuring nice production design (that ultimately went against the scripted descriptions of the Sea Base environment), a solid guest cast and lots of building intrigue and action on the Sea Base Four side of things, amidst a future Cold War scenario, whilst the reptilian Silurians prepare to awaken their Sea Devil warrior cousins. The designs of the shell-chest covered Silurians proved okay (at that point I had not yet seen Doctor Who and the Silurians on VHS for proper comparisons) but I preferred the new Sea Devils visual look, what with their clearly Samurai-influenced realisations, and featuring a lead warrior, played by Christopher Farries, who brought conviction and powerful body language (vital ingredients for any series monster to make an impact on screen) within his unique costume. No mean feat back in the day.
The infamous last stand between Dr. Solow and the Myrka.
Then, like the commencement sinking of the S.S. Titanic, things start to go wrong by Part Three. Behind the scenes woes, now legendary, would be the primary cause for such woes, linked to the loss of production preparation time (especially for the visual effects team - poor Mat Irvine, having to take responsibility for problems ultimately not of his making) and rushed studio recording. The infamous Myrka Pantomime horse monster is a partial let down by the time it's fully revealed - it should have remained just shot in close-ups/medium frame for the most part. And as for special guest Ingrid Pitt's infamous karate kick death against it? Well, I didn't know whether to laugh or shudder once I saw it on live transmission. I can only assume that the moment may have been improvised by Miss Pitt herself and was too late to be changed.
The Myrka behind the scenes, rushed into production before fully completed and dry painted.
To say that this third episode, with actors barely moving convincingly or wobbling under their bulky monster costumes, alongside a lack of good video effects in combat sequences, plus other moments clearly needing more rehearsal time than was available, would be the straw that broke the camel's back, would be an understatement, especially with the show now a visible target in the roving eyes of the BBC 1 channel's new controller, the venomous and loathsome (then and even more so now) Michael Grade. Oozing corporate sadism, the cigar-chomping, trouser braces-wearing Grade finally had the opportunity to get his revenge on the show whose once regular Saturday early evening seventies time slots regularly trounced his work for the opposition on ITV, of which he would soon order the show's axe after the completion of Colin Baker's eventual first season (the show couldn't be taken off air anytime before that, much to his frustrations). If the Who production team themselves had felt pangs of painful disappointment with Warriors, I personally was to suffer insult from it following the transmission of Part Three at school (a shame, really, as the opening Davison season had been enjoyed by my fellow class mates), with one super-intelligent British-Chinese associate (who was also clearly going to be a super-rich business man by the time he was twenty) happily telling me how stupid I was to still be watching such rubbish (though it didn't personally stop him from watching the very same episode the night before, to use as his evidence against me!) Despite the outlined problems, and with the thankful demise of the Myrka, the story would get back up to speed for its finale, as the Doctor (Davison getting to echo Pertwee's often disdain for war and slaughter) once more tries hard to broker peace between the humans and the resentful aliens in a race against time before the potential nuclear holocaust. It doesn't end well, however, with both races on the base having near exterminated themselves. "There should have been another way," the weary and bruised Time Lord says in a genuinely sad finale.
The production team's early enthused hopes for an underwater Earthshock, in terms of status and production achievement, may ultimately have been denied them, but there's still enough quality material in Warriors of the Deep to launch the season in generally satisfying style.
Having followed the Doctor and Adric to the famous block transfer mathematics world of Logopolis, the recently rejuvenated Master has struck a deadly blow towards his nemesis, shrinking him and his TARDIS 'down to size' in front of a shocked Adric and other recent arrivals in Nyssa of Traken and the inadvertently kidnapped air hostess Tegan Jovanka.
A classic moment from Tom Baker's intriguing classic finale adventure.
Extinct no more, as the Invasion of the Dinosaurs begins. Art by Daryl Joyce.
Arriving back on modern-day Earth, the Doctor and Sarah discover London is deserted and under martial law. They eventually find an army patrol but are arrested as looters, and are sent to a detention centre as prisoners. But as their journey begins, their transport comes under attack by a tyrannosaurus rex. Dinosaurs have invaded London!
UNIT has been called in to assist the army with the running of the city, and to try and find a solution to the problems. Released from captivity, the Doctor takes up his old role of UNIT's scientific advisor in order to help try and discover why dinosaurs keep appearing and disappearing from London's streets.
The Doctor suspects a deliberate plan is causing the dinosaur menace, but who is behind the scheme? Who amongst his allies can be trusted? And when Sarah vanishes, just how does she find herself on a spaceship carrying hundreds of people in suspended animation towards a new life on a distant New Earth...??
BBC VHS official release sleeve synopsis - 2003
Invasion of the Dinosaurs has a special place in this writer's heart, being the first Doctor Who story that I can pretty much fully remember seeing back during its original transmission. As a near four-year old I was discovering the magic of the series starring Jon Pertwee, alongside my beginning obsession and fascination with dinosaurs at that early age (as all children especially do for the intriguing and powerful creatures between the impressionable ages of four and eight years old). I wouldn't fully enjoy the whole of Malcolm Hulke's splendidly conceived tale again until young adulthood in the mid-eighties (thanks to Australian copies of copies on VHS) but I never in 1974 thought that the now-derided special effects work was of a poor standard. I was intelligent enough to know that the dinosaurs weren't real, of course, and that they were puppets or models, but that didn't mean I didn't enjoy seeing them in slow, very slow action over the course of the next month of Saturdays, especially the T-Rex versus the Brontosaurus confrontation. All-in-all, the story rightly remains a fan favourite, and there will be a fully CGI makeover at some point when Season Eleven comes to Blu-ray as part of The Collection Range. I just hope that I'll still be alive to see that at the rate the range release is going of two seasons a year...
This story was also a great one for actor Richard Franklin, whose character of Captain Mike Yates was developed further and even became a traitor of sorts opposing the Doctor and UNIT in his quest, alongside other renegade scientists, to bring to reality their plans for Operation Golden Age on planet Earth. I was very sorry to hear of Mister Franklin's sad passing at this past Xmas, and after a long illness. I met the actor and writer/director several times, once in 1985 and in 2007, where he was always very amiable and talkative about all kinds of things, and not just about his four year tenure on Who. He will be missed, though his contribution to the series will be forever celebrated and remembered as part of its own very special Golden Age linked to the 1970's.
Back in present day London, the Doctor and Sarah are caught up in violent past time incursions.
The classic image of the Doctor being terrorised by a Pterosaur.
Sarah, now brandishing a continuity conflicted hairstyle after The Time Warrior, is also terrorised by the creature in a classic image.
Reunited with UNIT, our heroes try to find out who is behind the Dinosaurs appearance.
The Doctor soon locks horns with the bullish General Finch (John Bennett) and his liaison Captain Mike Yates.
Jon Pertwee debuts the Whomobile as he searches London for the culprits behind the time scoop operation.
Great image of a Triceratops trapped in the London Underground.
Sarah watches the Doctor at work developing a weapon that should stun a dinosaur.
Another classic posed image from the story, promoting Jon Pertwee in his now confirmed final season.
Though prior captured, the T-Rex escapes thanks to human sabotage, and almost kills Sarah Jane.
A T-Rex and Brontosaurus clash in a memorable scene.
Conspirators gather in their underground base - Butler (Martin Jarvis), Yates, and Professor Whitaker (Peter Miles).
Having been prior captured, Sarah tries to convince new friend Mark (Terence Wilton) that he and others have been duped into finding a New Earth from a fake spaceship.
Sarah tries hard to convince another space ship believer in Ruth (Carmen Silvera) of the fraud.
Posed shot of Pertwee and Sladen especially taken on set for a UK Doctor Who Holiday Special magazine for 1974.
Classic Radio Times artwork promoting the story, whose first episode was originally transmitted under the truncated title, Invasion. Art by Peter Brookes.
Wonderful art by Chris Achilleos for the first Target printed adaptation of the story. With such memorable art, its no surprise that the original book release was a huge sales success.
Equally striking cover art for a later 1978 reprint edition, by Jeff Cummins.
1993 Target Books reprint cover by Alister Pearson.
American Pinnacle Books paperback releases art, by David Mann, that is equally memorable.
T-Rex unleashed in this fine cover for An Adventure in Time and Space issue 86. Art by Steve Rogers.
One of the last UK VHS releases with photo montage cover.
The unusual but interesting art for the US VHS release.
Clayton Hickman's ingredients packed UK DVD release photo composition.
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