Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (TV story)
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was the second episode of the seventh series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales.
Synopsis
An unmanned spaceship hurtles towards certain destruction -- unless the Doctor can save it, and its impossible cargo… of dinosaurs!
Plot
When in 1334 B.C. Egypt with Queen Nefertiti, the Doctor receives a call from the Indian Space Agency in 2367 A.D. about a spaceship which will crash into Earth in six hours; if it is not stopped, they will fire missles to destroy it before it crashes into earth. Taking Nefertiti with him, he picks up Edwardian explorer John Riddell from the African plains in 1902 A.D., and his companions Amy and Rory ten months after he last saw them in "Asylum of the Daleks", accidentally taking Rory's father Brian on the TARDIS as well. They land on the spaceship and come face-to-face with ankylosaurus dinosaurs. The Doctor uses the ship's computer to locate the engines, accidently transporting him, Rory, and Brian to the engine room, which appears to be a beach. The Doctor and his companions discover that the ship is a Silurian ark designed to carry the reptilian humanoids to a new planet along with flora and fauna from their time period. After escaping from a group of pterodactyls, the Doctor, Rory, and Brian are escorted by two robots to a human called Solomon who was injured in a raptor attack, believing the Doctor to be of the medical type. Solomon reveals himself as a exotic black market trader, who believes everything and everyone has a price, though is surprised that the Doctor is not listed in his system. Solomon had boarded the spaceship and killed its inhabitants in order to sell the dinosaurs on board, and now threatens the Doctor into repairing his legs and into giving him Queen Nefertiti after seeing her value.
Missiles are fired from Earth to stop the ship from crashing. The Doctor disables Solomon's robots and rescues Nefertiti before he tricks the missiles into targeting Solomon's ship and detaching it from the Silurian ark, whereupon the missiles destroy his ship, taking Solomon with it. Meanwhile, Rory and Brian pilot the ark away from the Earth, as the ship can only be piloted by two people of the same gene pool.
The Doctor then takes the Ponds back home after letting Brian view the Earth from orbit. The episode ends after showing that Brian Williams has now taken to travelling across the planet and that the dinosaurs now reside on the planet Siluria.
Cast
- The Doctor - Matt Smith
- Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
- Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
- Riddell - Rupert Graves
- Brian Williams - Mark Williams
- Solomon - David Bradley
- Queen Nefertiti - Riann Steele
- Indira - Sunetra Sarker
- Robot 1 - Noel Byrne
- Robot 1 voice - David Mitchell
- Robot 2 - Richard Garaghty
- Robot 2 voice - Robert Webb
- Bleytal - Richard Hope
- ISA Worker - Rudi Dharmalingam
Crew
to be added
References
Culture
- Brian calls the Doctor Arthur C. Clarke when the Doctor, Rory and he are in the engine room.
- When the Doctor disables Solomon's robots, they sing "Daisy Bell" - a reference to HAL's disabling in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Amy says that John needs a lesson in gender politics.
Sports
- Brian enjoys golf and carries golf balls around with him.
Story notes
- The Doctor claims to be a Sagittarius, but qualifies this statement by adding, "Probably." Interestingly enough, November 23 (the first airdate of Doctor Who in 1963) falls during the time that Sagittarius is occupied by the sun.
- The Doctor kisses Rory affectionately on the mouth after Rory suggests checking if the Silurian Ark has defence systems. This is the second same-sex kiss featured in the series and the first initiated by the Doctor. The first kiss was between Captain Jack Harkness and the Ninth Doctor in The Parting of the Ways.
- Rory gives his father a shot and promises it won't hurt. Afterwards, when Brian yelps at the pain of the shot, Rory says, "I lied." This scene paralleled the one done in DW: The Time of Angels when, like her father, River Song gave Amy a shot and promised it wouldn't hurt, only to later explain that she lied.
Ratings
- The episode received overnight ratings of 5.5million viewers in the UK.
Filming locations
to be added
Production errors
- The Doctor's socks constantly change from stripey blue socks to his normal black socks.
- On the final postcard sent by Rory's dad, the TARDIS exterior resembles how it looked before the redesign in The Eleventh Hour.
- The flying reptiles identified by the Doctor as pterodactyls are actually pteranodons, a relation, though different species of pterosaur, as noted by the distinctive spike-like crest on the back of its head.
Continuity
- Rory states that he is 31 years old. If Rory was born in 1989 (considering that Amy and Rory are the same age in DW: Let's Kill Hitler and Amy's birth year according to DW: The Big Bang was 1989), then The Doctor picks up Rory, Amy and Brian in 2020, which seems to be the same year that Amy and Rory went back to the hill and waved to themselves in DW: The Hungry Earth, an episode also featuring Silurians. Alternatively, he could be including time spent with the Doctor.
- Rory's mobile phone rings on the spaceship and Brian is shocked by how it can work in space. On previous occasions the Doctor has been shown to convert a mobile phone into a "superphone". He has done this for Rose Tyler, (DW: The End of the World), and Martha Jones. (DW: 42)
- It has apparently been 10 months since the Doctor dropped Amy and Rory off in "Asylum of the Daleks (TV story)."
Home video releases
DVD releases
to be added
Blu-ray releases
to be added
External links
to be added
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