‘Doctor Who And The Dinosaur Invasion’ – Malcolm Hulke (BBC Books)

 

Page Count: 179 Pages

My resolution (well, ‘kind of’ resolution) to read books that I already own, instead of just buying more, continues at… Well, kind of a meander if I’m being honest ;o) I’m still picking books but it’s gradually becoming more of an ‘occasional thing’ rather than ‘regular’ but that’s ok. Small beginnings and all that. And thinking about it… If I buy a book, leave it for a few weeks then read it, that counts… Doesn’t it? Hmmm… ;o)

Anyway.

Regular visitors here will know that I’ve built up a small(ish) pile of ‘Doctor Who’ TV novelizations, over the last few years, that I’m slowly working my way through. The other day, while looking for something completely different, I came across my copy of ‘The Dinosaur Invasion’ (hidden away and ‘separated from the herd’, as it were) and figured that it was long overdue a read. I’d also finally watched ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ (a few years ago now) and was interested to see how the TV serial compared to the book. And…

The Doctor and Sarah arrive in London to find it deserted. The city has been evacuated as prehistoric monsters appear in the streets. While the Doctor works to discover who or what is bringing the dinosaurs to London, Sarah finds herself trapped on a spaceship, that left Earth months ago, travelling to a new world…

Against the odds, the Doctor manages to trace the source of the dinosaurs; but will he and the Brigadier be in time to unmask the villains before Operation Golden Age changes the history of the Earth and wipes out the whole of human civilization…?

So that’s ‘book and TV serial’ under my belt and I’ll be honest, the next time I revisit this story it will probably be on the small screen. Nothing against the book, I just think that if dinosaurs are going to feature in a plot then you need to be able to see them; even if they look like actors dressed up in very bad costumes (actually, especially if they look like actors dressed up in very bad costumes).

Like I said though, nothing against the book. Maybe things don’t move as quickly as they do on the screen but Hulke still captures the spirit of the plot very well (to be fair, he wrote the story for the screen so he knew what he was doing) and I got a real feel for the terror that the dinosaurs caused and then left in their wake. And that is down to Hulke just being great at providing context outside of wherever the Doctor happens to turn up. The opening scenes, with hung-over Shughie McPherson, really set the scene for deserted London and a terrifying moment where Shughie realises he’s not on his own after all. I love how Hulke delivers a final bit of punctuation in the form of a massive claw…

Once you get used to dinosaurs appearing, and then suddenly disappearing, there aren’t really any big surprises to be had here. Even if I hadn’t watched the TV serial, the villains of the piece are pretty easy to spot but that’s not a deal-breaker as such. We still get to watch the Doctor puzzle his way through the whole affair, with just enough action to keep him on his toes, and watch Sarah Jane Smith go off with all the best intentions but still manage to fall foul of a T-Rex and other, human, villains. The pacing can hold things back sometimes but the plot is still a lot of fun to follow.

I don’t know quite where ‘The Dinosaur Invasion’ would fall in that list of ‘Favourite Doctor Who’ stories, I keep threatening to come up with, but as an evenings read (that put a little space between me and work) it did just fine. Sometimes, that’s all I need from a book ;o)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth’ (1992)

Image
Every time Halloween comes round, I promise myself that I’ll watch more horror films and read more horror fiction; we’re halfway through the month and you can see how that’s going so far… There’s still plenty of October left though so lets see how I do from now until the end of the month ;o) First up is ‘Hellraiser 3’ which I watched last night, mostly because I love it (you can tell how this post is going to go, sorry…) but also because it was cheap on Prime and I’m still just on the wrong side of payday. Here goes… TV reporter Joey Summerskill’s life is changed forever when she witnesses the horrific death of a teenager, torn apart by bloody chains. Joey’s search for a story leads her to the Lament Configuration Box but it has already been opened, waking an old evil from its slumber… Now Pinhead walks the earth once more, creating a new army of Cenobites from the transmuted flesh of his victims; his one desire to reclaim the Box. Even with help from an unexpected source, Joey Summers...
Read more

'Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone’ – Zub, Scharf, Canola (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures)

Image
It’s starting to look like this could be the week where I make a half decent dent in my ‘Comics TBR Pile’, lets see how we do... I’ve really been struggling with the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ collection just recently (more than one reason but I want to finish the collection first before I talk about it) and I thought that I’d have to take a little step back from ‘Conan’ comics and come back when I was in a better mood for it. Until I realized that there was another ‘Conan’ comic lurking in the TBR pile and maybe I could give that a go instead. So that’s what I did. I’ve caught little glimpses of the ‘Black Stone’ storyline, in other ‘Conan’ comics, but I can’t help but feel that the event has kind of passed me by a little. That’s on me though to be fair, I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish right now and there are so many books that I just haven’t been able to focus on; I suspect a couple of them talk about a Black Stone… Oh well, I’m here now. Where better a place to catch up on ‘B...
Read more

‘Dig Me No Grave’ – Robert E. Howard

Image
  Page Count: Fourteen Pages, eight lines and two words (sorry, it has been one of those weeks) I was looking for something short and sweet, to end the week on, and came across ‘Dig Me No Grave’ courtesy of Paperback Warrior’s write-up . Having read it, I can attest to it being short (all of fourteen and a bit pages in ‘The Dead Remember’ collection) but sweet? Not at all and that is meant in the best possible way :o) ‘Dig Me No Grave’ was originally published in the February 1937 of ‘Weird Tales’ and while it has appeared in other collections since then, I read it in ‘The Dead Remember (The Dark Man Omnibus: Volume 2) and also found it in my copy of ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. If you’re an e-reading type, you can grab yourself ‘Dig Me No Grave’ over at Project Gutenberg. John Kirowan is woken, in the middle of the night, by his friend John Conrad, bearer of bad news and come to beg a favour. The occultist John Grimlan has just died and Conrad asks that Kirowan att...
Read more