History Recap / DoctorWhoS11E2InvasionOfTheDinosaurs

The Doctor and Sarah discover a conspiracy led by a scientist, Whitaker, to clear London of people by bringing dinosaurs forward in time, before using a time machine to return London to a pre-technological age and repopulate the city with "colonists", who are currently in mocked-up spaceships believing they are on their way to colonise a new world.

The Doctor and Sarah are stymied at every turn as they discover just how high up the conspiracy grows - Sir Charles Groves, the government minister responsible for the crisis is involved, as is Captain Mike Yates, the Brigadier's UNIT subordinate.

The Doctor and the Brigadier raid the underground HQ of the conspiracy, and succeed in changing the settings of the time machine so that Whitaker simply transports himself only back to the time of the dinosaurs. The Brigadier offers Yates the chance to resign quietly.

* EasilyForgiven: [[spoiler:Yates is simply removed from UNIT.]]

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Captain Yates.]]
* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: There is a short but extremely gory shot of the dead mugger with half his face ripped off.

** TheBigBad: [[spoiler:Grover]]

** TheBrute/ TheDragon: [[spoiler:Finch]]
** TheDarkChick: [[spoiler:Mike Yates]]
* FridgeBrilliance: The last time we saw Mike Yates he'd been [[MindRape Mind Raped]] by a corrupt industrialist and nursed back to health in a hippie commune. [[spoiler: Little wonder he joined Operation Golden Age.]]
** [[spoiler: The Brigadier is strangely quick to forgive Mike for his betrayal. However, since this is the same man who ordered the total genocide of a sentient, hibernating race (in a story written by the same writer no less) it's easy to see why he would sympathise with Yates's actions.]]
* [[HaveYouToldAnyoneElse Have You Told Anyone Else?]]: [[spoiler:General Finch]] to Sarah Jane. She didn't, but she left a note on the desk.
* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Grover and Whitaker]] are sent back in time when their device is sabotaged by the Doctor. Best case, they manage to eke out a meagre existence for a few years before falling victim to some disease they won't be able to cure. Worst case, they get dumped right in front of a Tyrannosaurus and rapidly become dino-chow.
* MissingEpisode: This is the most recent ''Doctor Who'' story to be in some way incomplete, due to the fact that the master tape of the first episode was for some reason destroyed almost immediately after its original transmission. Fortunately, this was one of the last ''Doctor Who'' stories that BBC also made a black and white film copy of, and the first episode survives in that form.

* PullTheThread: [[spoiler:Sarah Jane does this with the FauxtasticVoyage]].

** SpotlightStealingTitle: The serial's really about Operation Golden Age's schemes. The dinosaurs are secondary to the plot. Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks (writer and script editor receptively) had wanted to name the story ''Timescoop'', but the higher powers vetoed it.
* TokenEvilTeammate: Project Golden Age may not be good guys by any standard but Whitaker probably qualifies as it's strongly implied he's only interested in advancing his research in contrast to his well meaning accomplices.

* WhamEpisode: The suspenseful tone of the first episode as well as the morally ambiguous villains and the Robber's bloody death heralded the darker tone the series would take in the Robert Holmes era. [[spoiler: However, probably the most devastating event in the story is Yates's betrayal, not only marking the first time a regular had outright turned on the Doctor but also shattering the secure, cosy feeling of the UNIT family and heralding the series return to the Doctor's more nomadic lifestyle.]]

* ActionGirl: Sarah tackles a knife weilding thug and stops him from stabbing the doctor.

** Not to mention Grover, and the chosen in operation Golden age though they're closer to Type IV.

** [[spoiler: The Brigadier is strangley quick to forgive Mike for his betrayl. However, since this is the same man who ordered the total genocide of a sentient, hibernating race (in a story written by the same writer no less) it's easy to see why he would sympathise with Yates's actions.]]
* [[HaveYouToldAnyoneElse Have You Told Anyone Else?]]: [[spoiler:General Finch]] to Sarah Jane. She didn't, but she left note on the desk.
* KarmicDeath: The Operation Golden Age nutjobs are sent back in time when their device malfunctions. Definitely going to be eaten by a hungry dinosaur.

** It's believed that the reason the first episode was wiped was this: In order to keep the big reveal of the dinosaurs a surprise, the first episode was simply titled "The Invasion." When the older serial titled ''The Invasion'' was ordered to be wiped, that episode was pulled and erased with it.

* TokenEvilTeammate: Project Golden Age may not be good guys by any standad but Whitaker probably qualifies as it's strongly implied he's only interested in advancing his research in contrast to his well meaning accomplices.

* WhamEpisode: The suspenseful tone of the first episode as well as the morally ambigous villains and the Robber's bloody death heralded the darker tone the series would take in the Robert Holmes era. [[spoiler: However, probably the most devestating event in the story is Yates's betrayl, not only marking the first time a regular had outright turned on the Doctor but also shattering the secure, cosy feeling of the UNIT family and heralding the series return to the Doctor's more nomadic lifestyle.]]

** SpotlightStealingTitle: The serial's really about Operation Golden Age's schemes. The dinosaurs are secondary to the plot.

* [=~Don't Shoot The Message~=]: The gist of the Doctor's speech at the end.

* [=~Everything's Better With Dinosaurs~=]

* LostEpisode: This is the most recent ''Doctor Who'' story to be in some way incomplete, due to the fact that the master tape of the first episode was for some reason destroyed almost immediately after its original transmission. Fortunately, this was one of the last ''Doctor Who'' stories that BBC also made a black and white film copy of, and the first episode survives in that form.

* BringingItBackAlive. The Doctor and U.N.I.T. attempt to capture one of the dinosaurs alive.

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: There is a short but extremely gorey shot of the dead mugger with half his face ripped off.

** SpotlightStealingTitle: The serial's really about Operation: Golden Age's schemes. The dinosaurs are secondary to the plot.

* {{Utopia Justifies The Means}}/{{Well Intentioned Extremist}}

* ReverseThePolarity: TropeNamer.

The Doctor and Sarah are stymied at every turn as they discover just how high up the conspiracy grows - Sir Charles Groves, the government minister responsible for the crisis is involved, as is [[spoiler: Captain Mike Yates, the Brigadier's UNIT subordinate.]]

The Doctor and the Brigadier raid the underground HQ of the conspiracy, and succeed in changing the settings of the time machine so that Whitaker simply transports himself only back to the time of the dinosaurs. [[spoiler: The Brigadier offers Yates the chance to resign quietly.]]

* SpecialEffectFailure: The Dinosaurs for sure. Shame, because the episode itself is great.
** The episode was made because someone convinced the producers that he ''could'' produce really convincing dinosaurs, on a Doctor Who budget. Turned out that he couldn't.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rex_4468.jpg
--> "Good grief, it's a triceratops! Look Brigadier, try and keep it occupied while I'm finishing this off, will you?"

* FridgeLogic: Isn't a population of two hundred people just a bit too low for a stable gene pool?

* MoralEventHorizon: Operation Golden Age would reset the Earth... At the cost of utterly erasing everyone not protected by the device.
** This would RetGone the entire Silurian species, too.
* {{Narm}}: "ROAAARRRR!!!" I kid you not, the Tyrannosaurus really does literally shout that.

* SpecialEffectFailure: Yeah, the dinosaurs really didn't work, even at the time.

!Tropes
* DontShootTheMessage: The gist of the Doctor's speech at the end.
* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs

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The Doctor and Sarah are stymied at every turn as they discover just how high up the conspiracy grows - Sir Charles Groves, the government minister responsible for the crisis is involved, as is Captain Mike Yates, the Brigadier's UNIT subordinate.

The Doctor and the Brigadier raid the underground HQ of the conspiracy, and succeed in changing the settings of the time machine so that Whitaker simply transports himself only back to the time of the dinosaurs. The Brigadier offers Yates the chance to resign quietly.

* FaceHeelTurn: Captain Yates.