Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion by: Malcolm Hulke

 

Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion was written by Malcolm Hulke, based on his own story Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  It was the 19^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Malcolm Hulke proved with his adaptation of Doctor Who and the Silurians into Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters that he could take his often long stories and put them into a very short page count with excellence, while still finding places to expand and compress what needs to be compressed.  Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion is the adaptation of the last story Hulke would contribute to Doctor Who, having a slight falling out with the show after the marketing for this very story ended his relationship with the show.  Yet, he continued to write the novelizations, novelizing all of his television stories bar one (The Faceless Ones was novelized in 1987 after Hulke had passed away, so duties went to Terrance Dicks).  This novelization is another example of Hulke’s perfection in making the story work beyond the simple special effects of the televised dinosaurs and changes just enough to make things work.  The book opens with what is essentially a prologue where a random guy finds himself killed in the dinosaur invasion after going to London and missing the evacuation.  Hulke with one scene gives more weight to the idea that this is a genuine crisis as on television all the viewer saw is the aftermath and deserted streets, this is something which is understandable for a visual medium.  Seeing someone whom Hulke gives the reader enough depth and likability that the death becomes all the more terrifying.

 

Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion is also a book which is quite a bit darker than the televised story with quite a bit of blood and more visceral deaths than the standard Doctor Who fare.  This is an excellent choice as it genuinely sells the terror of a dinosaur invasion while still having that sympathy for the creatures, they are being taken out of their own time after all.  The Operation Golden Age plot which is the main human threat of Invasion of the Dinosaurs also seems all the more real, with Whitaker and Butler both being more antagonistic to one another, giving this plot a more human relationship.  The people they’ve brainwashed also come across as more brainwashed, with a more cultlike behavior of being sold this story of going to a new Earth and blinding themselves to the common sense of the rest of the world.  Their fate at the end also is referenced through a Bible verse, an interesting refolding of some possible myth, though still implying the serial’s issue of giving these people exactly what they want and not implying their immediate death by dinosaur.  Yates is also given some point of view so Hulke can actually get more of why he would go away from UNIT and towards something like Operation Golden Age.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion is unhampered by the fact that the television story is infamous for lackluster special effects.  It’s a read which tightens things up and adds enough of a human element to make it a book in its own right while still staying true to the serial.  It’s an excellent read and another of Hulke’s triumphs.  10/10.