You could be a street fighter come to find your fortune, or a homeworld dissident fighting for freedom. You could be a soldier: a Union ironclad pilot, a federal sheriff, or a rebel blockade runner. Your character could be a bronco rider, riding the dinosaurs for ranchers, farmers, the military, or pure adventure.
In the year 2202, an alien planet full of dinosaurs was discovered, opening new mysteries and establishing the world of Dinosaur Planet: Broncosaurus Rex.
The basic premise is that the Civil War did not end as we know it, but resulted in separate Federal and Confederate nations. Their wagon trails soon trudge west on the rutted path of the Tecumseh Trail, bringing new adventures to Cretasus.ĭinosaur Planet: Broncosaurus Rex is a science fiction world setting.
Lured by free land, gold, and simple freedom, they yearn for a new life. Despite the dinosaurs, human pioneers arrive in droves at New Savannah's busy spaceport. Velociraptors trade in alien weapons, leptoceratops guard their desert secrets, and T-rex dynasties protect their nests from egg raiders. But these dinosaurs are just as smart as the humans now flocking to their home. Otherwise it’s a big, brash story that just happened to be fatally flawed – the will was there but the technology was not.In the year 2202, dinosaurs have been discovered on the planet Cretasus. The grand plan is rather potty, and raises all sorts of questions about how the new, jump-suited generation of mankind was smuggled aboard the fake spaceship, or how a big, nuclear-generator-powered underground base could be built unnoticed. And fledgling companion Sarah is given plenty of material to get her journalistic teeth into. Noel Johnson, John Bennett, Peter Miles and Martin Jarvis make a classy quartet of conspirators. Speaking of whom, full marks to the casting department. At any rate his mental fragility explains the irrationality of siding with Whitaker and co. Perhaps being brainwashed by corporate computer Boss drove him in the opposite direction – towards extreme environmental campaigning. His susceptibility to mind control came to the fore in The Green Death even if, on that occasion, it was inadvertent. As the Doctor himself says of the aims of Operation Golden Age, “In many ways I sympathise… but this is not the way to go about it.”Īnother narrative boomerang is the duplicity of Captain Yates. But Invasion of the Dinosaurs shows the flipside: the mania that comes from breathing the rarefied air of the moral high ground. The same themes of human greed and industrial pollution pervade. There’s also pleasing continuity from an earlier story (The Green Death). The eerie street scenes are efficiently handled by Paddy Russell, and chases involving Land Rovers, a helicopter and (for the first time) the Doctor’s fin-tastic Whomobile are all exciting if extraneous fare.
In short, it’s a roaringly good script from Mac Hulke. Because the other plot elements – the abuse of a scientific breakthrough, London under martial law, a traitor in Unit’s midst, the enforcement of a new world order – are adventurous and meaty. It’s a shame the dinos comprise such a mammoth chunk of the story. Dawdling camerawork and liberal use of CSO merely compound the problem. But despite being set in some impressive urban dioramas, the mini-beasts look exactly like what they are. The dinosaurs are all visibly models, and friendly-faced ones at that, but the production team can’t be held to account for this entirely.Ī freelance effects man had convinced them that he could give them realistic-looking model dinosaurs, and thus was the story commissioned. Many words have already been devoted to the Achilles heel of this Primark Harryhausen, so let’s deal with that aspect as painlessly as possible. But the excitement conjured by the title quickly turns to sniggering disbelief. The rubbery, over-lit antecedent to Jurassic Park and Primeval is in many ways pioneering and stuffed with decent ideas. Just think how CGI would enhance its trickier visuals today. This enterprising reptilian romp was made 30 years too early. Studio recording: October 1973 in TC6 and TC8, November 1973 in TC3īrigadier Lethbridge Stewart – Nicholas Courtney
Location filming: September 1973 at various locations in central and west London Wimbledon Common Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey