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. With this episode, a member of the Williams family is finally introduced by name; specifically Rory's father. It also shows how much more technologically advanced the Silurians were; they created the Ark to house dinosaurs and some of their species when the Moon was about to align with Earth.

Synopsis
The Doctor is recruited to help with an spaceship hurtling towards Earth. He has very little time to find a way to change its destination, Earth, and save its impossible cargo… of dinosaurs!

Plot
The Doctor has saved Egypt from trouble and is trying to return to his TARDIS. However, Queen Nefertiti, attracted to the Doctor, stops him and tries to get his attention. The Doctor's receives a message. Telling her that it is unimportant, he learns that the Indian Space Agency needs his help; he's forced to take "Neffy" with him. Arriving in the 24th century, the Doctor is informed of a spaceship coming closer to Earth that has failed to respond to any of their attempts to communicate; if it gets within ten thousand Km of Earth, they will send up missiles to destroy it. The Doctor decides to get a "gang" together to help explore the vessel. Arriving in Africa in the 20th century, the Doctor meets his old friend John Riddell, a game hunter he left behind after saying he left to get some sweets; Riddell eagerly agrees to join in the mystery adventure.

In Leadworth, 2020, Rory has his father, Brian Williams, over to help fix a light bulb. After explaining the fixture may be the problem, Brian says Rory is lucky to have Amy; Amy finds this amusing. As Brian continues working on the light, the sound of the TARDIS materialization is heard. Amy and Rory quietly argue that the Doctor picks the worst times to show up and she wants to "kill him"; Brian thinks they left the door open. The TARDIS materializes around them, shocking Brian in place while the Doctor (not looking at them) greets Amy and Rory, telling them to grab a torchlight and head outside with him, Neffy and Riddell.

As they head out, Amy questions the Doctor about what he's up to this time; he decided he needed a group, so he picked them up. Brian exits the TARDIS and the Doctor immediately questions him with hostility. Rory explains that Brian is his father, calming the Doctor. The Doctor, who Brian seems to have not met, greets him as he walks off with Amy, Neffy and Riddell. Rory explains he and Amy honeymooned throughout time and space aboard the TARDIS to his confused father. Amy and the Doctor catch up in the meantime, wondering if Neffy and Riddell have replaced her and Rory as his companions; the Doctor explains that it's not the case. Rory and Brian catch up as the doors in front of them begin opening. Seeing what's coming out of the other side, the Doctor tells everyone to run. However, he has to be pulled away by Amy because he is surprised to find "Dinosaurs, on a spaceship!" Hiding as the dinosaurs go past, the Doctor keeps Riddell from trying to harm them as they need to be preserved. They run into a triceratops that sniffs Brian, forcing him to toss away one of the Golf balls he keeps in his pocket. The Doctor then examines the ship, discovering an interactive monitor. The Doctor asks to be shown where the engines are on the map, saying they need to get to them; he, Brian and Rory vanish in flash of light. Amy is left annoyed; they always get separated at some point during an adventure. The Doctor, Rory and Brian arrive on the shore of a rocky beach. Immediately, the Doctor orders them to dig while he "examines rocks"; Brian complies, producing a digging tool from his pocket. Elsewhere, someone sees the Doctor on a monitor, ordering that he be brought to him as a doctor has finally arrived.

Brian hits metal while digging, becoming shocked; they're actually still in the ship. The Doctor, having found another monitor in a rockface, explains the ship's engines are powered by the waves. He said they needed to go to the engine room and the ship complied with it's short-ranged teleporter. However, Pterodactyls make the Doctor cut his explanation short, telling his companions to run; the teleporter in this room is fried, making it impossible to use now. They hide from the dinosaurs in a cave, where robots (using another entrance in the cave) enter after them, demanding they come with them.

Elsewhere, Amy, Neffy and Riddell explore the ship, with Neffy questioning Amy about the Doctor, saying that she found her husband boring (a "human sleeping potion"). Finding the archive room (while Neffy and Riddell begin flirting, much to Amy's annoyance). Amy inserts one of the recordings and tries to get a picture on the monitor, succeeding, she discovers the spaceship belongs to the Silurians, who left Earth when the moon was coming into alignment. In the meantime, the Doctor, Rory and Brian are brought to a smaller spaceship docked with this one; however, only the Doctor is allowed inside. He finds a man missing the lower half of his legs, who introduces himself as Solomon and explains Dromosaurs chewed on his legs; he's been waiting for a doctor to help him. Understanding Solomon's mistake, the Doctor asks him why he should help; Brian is given a painful laser burn as a warning. The Doctor proceeds to work on getting Solomon mobile again while Rory tends to his father's burn.

Back in the archive room, Amy asks the monitor to display life-signs of Silurians, but gets nothing. Amy then compares this image with one of the day the ship launched, discovering there were numerous Silurians onboard; what happened to them? She then asks the computer to zoom in at the core of the ship, discovering that it's been boarded before. Riddell picks up a near by gun, explaining its full of tranquilizer before taking off. Neffy, now infatuated with Riddell is told by Amy "Human sleep potion or walking innuendo; you pick."

In Soloman's ship, the Doctor finishes fixing prosthetic limbs to Solomon's knees just as Amy manages to contact him and explain the ship belongs to the Silurians. The Doctor questions him on what happened to them; Solomon explains that he woke them from their hibernation and tossed them into space. However, the Doctor quickly deduces that Solomon cannot control this so-called ark of the Silurians and his attempt to do so made its auto-pilot head for Earth, its launching point. The Doctor explains that the ISA will soon be launching missiles. Solomon, being greedy, believes the Doctor is lying and wants the dinosaurs for himself. The Doctor tricks the robots guarding Brian and and Rory to buy some time for them to run.

Finding another triceratops, the Doctor, Brian and Rory board it and toss Brain's remaining golf ball away to make it run from the robots. They succeed in getting away, but have a hard landing. The Doctor then receives a message from the ISA, saying that the missiles will be launched, despite his protests that the ship can be piloted away with a most precious cargo. Solomon easily finds them with the monitors and teleports to them with his clumsy robots. He shoots the triceratops to make sure the Doctor knows he's serious; Solomon demands Neffy as she is the most valuable thing on the ship that he can take with him. Amy, Riddell and Neffy arrive via the teleporter and Neffy willingly goes with Solomon to ensure the safety of everyone else. Solomon teleports them to his ship.

The Doctor quickly leads everyone to the control room, explaining that Solomon couldn't control the ship because it needs two from the same DNA to pilot it; Brian offers to pilot with Rory as they are father and son, thus they share the same DNA. The Doctor has them sit down and explains how to work the controls. While working inside a part of the console, the Doctor is questioned by Amy, expressing her fear that his visits are becoming longer and longer apart; one day, he might never show up. However, he quickly comforts her by explaining he'll always show up. The Doctor takes a glowing green orb from inside where he's been fiddling with the controls and teleports to Solomon's ship to conduct Phase 1; Phase 2 was this. Amy guards the entrance of the control room with Riddell, knocking out several raptors.

In the meantime, Solomon has realised the Doctor magnetised the Silurian Ark to prevent him from leaving, just as he appears behind him and shorts out the robots. The Doctors watches as Neffy knocks Solomon down and pins him to the ground with his crutch after he insults her. Amused, the Doctor tells Solomon that he'll get a consolation prize: the missiles meant for the ark. He places the orb, which emits the signal the missiles are locked onto, in Solomon's ship and teleports away with Neffy. The ship is de-magnetised. Solomon screams in terror as his ship takes off and is hit by the missiles, exploding. At the same time, Rory and Brian manage to pilot the ship away from Earth and into the emptiness of space.

The Doctor says it's time to go, but Amy and Rory tell him they're going home; he accepts this. However, Brian asks the Doctor for a favor before he takes him home. The Doctor complies; Brian is next seen enjoying lunch, sitting on the edge of the TARDIS doors, looking down on the Earth. Amy and Rory look at him with smiles as the Doctor comes from behind them and hugs his in-laws. Elsewhen, Riddell has been taken back to the time and place the Doctor toke him from; only one thing is different: Neffy has decided to stay with him.

Back in Leadworth, Rory is checking the lightbulb Brian previous tried to fix, agreeing that his father was right; it might be the fixture. Amy enters, saying they got another bunch of postcards from Brian. She puts them on the fridge, showing that Brian (who was previously afraid to travel) has now taken to seeing the world. Amy and Rory stare at the last postcard before putting it on the fridge; it's of Siluria, the new home of the dinosaurs that Brian and the Doctor had just visited.

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

Culture

 * Brian calls the Doctor Arthur C. Clarke when he, the Doctor and Rory 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

 * This episode received an Appreciation Index of 87.
 * 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.
 * In a moment of excitement, the Doctor kisses Rory 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 previously kissed the Doctor, believing him to be Amy, in As Time Goes By.
 * For this episode, the Doctor Who logo's texture resembled scales, like those of a dinosaur. It was also given a green hue.
 * Mark Williams (Brian Williams) previously played Maxwell Edison in BFA: The Eternal Summer.

Ratings

 * The episode received overnight ratings of 5.5 million viewers in the UK.
 * It was watched by a total of 575,000 people in Australia.

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors

 * The Doctor's socks constantly change from stripy 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 as pterodactyls are actually pteranodons, a related, though different species of pterosaur, as noted by the distinctive spike-like crest on the back of its head.
 * Shots of the TARDIS and Solomon's ship next to the Silurian Ark show it is nowhere near the size of Canada (10 million square kilometres)

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.
 * 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)
 * The Doctor has previously taken a companion's parent on a TARDIS trip by accident before in DW: Army of Ghosts.
 * The Doctor has travelled with Egyptian royalty before, as he shared many adventures with the princess Erimem in the Big Finish audio adventures (from BFA: The Eye of the Scorpion). As is implied with Nefertiti, Erimem also ultimately ended up staying behind in another time and place (BFA: The Bride of Peladon).
 * A photo of Amy and Rory at their wedding appears on their fridge alongside Brian's postcards (DW: The Big Bang)
 * The Silurians were previously seen to have dinosaurs, using one to guard their base in Wenley Moor. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
 * The Doctor accuses Brian Williams of boarding the TARDIS via transmat. (DW: Bad Wolf)
 * The Doctor say to Rory, when talking about Brian, that the TARDIS isn't a Taxi Service, like the Fifth Doctor said to Adric when he wanted to go back to Alzarius. (DW: Earthshock). The Eleventh Doctor also said this to River Song. (DW:  The Time of Angels)
 * The Eighth Doctor previously expressed an enthusiasm for dinosaurs. (BFA: The Resurrection of Mars)
 * At later points in time, humans would twice also use an Ark to preserve Earth life as the planet faced cataclysms. (DW: The Ark, The Ark in Space)

DVD releases
to be added

Blu-ray releases
to be added