An Introduction
Dinotopia is a series of young readers books written by artist James Gurney (you read that right – written by the artist). First printed in 1992, it depicts a secluded island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sentient dinosaurs that cohabitate a medieval steampunk world. The premise of the episodic series following a single father and son who become washed up in a storm finding themselves trapped on this mysterious island. Both father and son adventure across the island as outsiders discovering new places that they hope that could benefit their society.
The book became hugely popular among young readers thanks to its elaborate world building and detailed illustrations (see: DINOSAURS). This would spawn several more illustrated books and tie-in novels that found varying degrees of success. Naturally, there would be calls for a Dinotopia to be made into a film. Thanks to the success of Jurassic Park, it is suddenly possible to create dinosaurs that looked believable on screen. Eventually, a miniseries was produced in 2002 to a cult success – but as we will soon elaborate, there were some shortcomings that we’d love to see re-explored.
Part 1: Strengths and Weaknesses of the Hallmark Miniseries
Dinotopia would find its way to the small screen via ABC’s Hallmark channel. There was a surge of anticipation as Hallmark advertised it as the first large-scale series ever to be pushed on Television. Released as a 3-part mini-series, Dinotopia starred a cast of relative unknowns along with a few veteran names including David Thewlis (Harry Potter), Jim Carter (Downton Abby), and Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact).
As a kid, I was introduced to the universe of Dinotopia through this series and I ate this up when it was released. However, looking back 20 years later I’m noticing more and more things that failed to hold up for several crucial factors.
What must be discussed first is the effects. This was one of the first attempts to produce a TV series on a large scale budget. The effects for the dinosaurs were provided by Framestore CFC who provided the animation from the Walking with Dinosaurs documentary and the puppets done by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Despite their efforts, it was clear that they were limited to technology back then. The CGI may have looked good at the time, but it does look very out of place today. Despite this, they do make an effort to make the locations resemble their book illustrations.
One of the show’s biggest problems however is the main human characters. The show follows 2 teenage brothers Carl and David Scott whose lives are derailed when their plane is lost in a storm, losing their father in the crash.
Karl (Tyron Leitso) is written to be like a late 90s type rebellious troublemaker trying to be the cool guy, which could work if he had some level of charm or charisma. But Karl is so bland and so unlikeable that it is hard to feel anything for him. His only motivations are to get off the island and woo Marion (Katie Carr), that’s it. And he never really changes that much over the course of the series. This would be so much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact the show revolves around him. Even as a gullible kid I never liked him.
A clear contrast to his half-brother was David (Wentworth Miller – Prison Break) who’s basically his polar opposite. Unlike Karl, David is much more open to accepting life inside Dinotopia, learning to speak saurian, and finding new meaning on this island. His main plot is joining up with the local “Skybax” riders – which is essentially the island’s own pterodactyl air force who protects cities and inhabitants by luring predators away. Despite his intelligence, he does struggle with his assigned role of training to be a Skybax rider. Skybax are Dinotopia version of air patrols. Despite his shortcomings (and fear of heights) he learns to fly an albino Pteranodon, a species that unlike the other flying dinosaurs regularly attacks humans. David is certainly a more 3-dimensional character than Karl to the point where I wish the show was more about him.
The big problem with these two brothers (much like Supernatural) is that because of their opposite personalities, they constantly fight throughout the movie. In almost every other scene the discussion is interrupted by them fighting and arguing constantly, sometimes violently over the same issue. Karl doesn’t want to stay on the island. David believes there is no way out and wants to embrace it. This wouldn’t be a problem except there are very few moments of them bonding like real brothers (in stark contrast to Supernatural). It also doesn’t help they are in a love triangle of sorts with the love interest of this show, Marion.
Speaking of Marion, on paper she could be an interesting character, the daughter of the Mayor of Waterfall City (Dinotopia’s capital in the show) and training to be a matriarch like her mother, she plays the role similar to Silvia Romano in the books being Dave and Karl’s human guide. Unfortunately, Marion’s performance is very wooden, often robotic in some scenes. it also doesn’t help that she gives non-stop dinosaur exposition as if she was in a documentary.
Since Dinotopia is an island of sentient dinosaurs, their main perspective is conveyed through the biped Zippo – who also serves as the comic relief. Serving as Waterfall cities librarian and keeper of the island’s histories he is both intelligent and clumsy but always serves as a mentor and companion to our characters. He is among the few dinosaur species that can speak human languages and is fascinated with their cultures in the same way Arthur Weasley is with muggles from Harry Potter.
Despite this being set in modern times, there are some elements that do connect with the books. A few characters are some of the descendants of characters from the books. For example, David Thewlis’s character, Cyrus Crabb, is the son of the book’s recurring antagonist Lee Crabb in more or less the same role – a man who resents dinosaurs and wants to find a way off the island. Crabb in both versions sought to use Sunstones, the island’s only source of power to further their own goals no matter the cost to the other inhabitants.
The climax of the Hallmark show revolves around reviving the island’s Sunstones, as they both provide power to the cities and deter the predators who seek dominion. In the finale’s fight to save Dinotopia’s sunstones, Carl, David, and Crabb journey to “The World Beneath” on the same submarine Arthur Denison and Lee Crabb journeyed on in the books using Denison’s journals as a guide which is clever tie in as the original books, which were written in Arthur’s first-person perspective.
Despite these neat nodes to the lore, I still find the biggest problem with the show was the change in time setting. The miniseries is set in modern-day (well, 2002), while the book series is set in 1863. My guess for this change in the time period is because the studio thought that the show wouldn’t connect with its audience if it was in that time period. This however creates a serious problem as the Island of Dinotopia made more sense being set in the Victorian era as during that period there were still large swaths of earth that had not been explored. This is a massive landmass I’m gonna say is the size of Wyoming with various landscapes and environments that would easily have been discovered if this was set in today. An uncrossable stormy reef means nothing to our high-altitude aircraft and satellites today.
In spite of its shortcomings, there are some good things in this show. Trevor Jones’s Score is the best part, booming and majestic, something that at least holds its own against whatever score John Williams or Hans Zimmer can conduct.
The show found enough popularity for regular TV series to be released on ABC. Unfortunately, the reduced budget began to show and suffered from low ratings. The cast from the original has been replaced by new actors which destroyed a lot of the connection we had with the previous series. After just 6 episodes it was pulled from the air with the remaining episodes on DVD. For a brief time, there was a promising opportunity for a dinosaur-based franchise that could rival Jurassic park. Now this series has been left largely forgotten by the public.
In many ways, 2002’s Dinotopia was both ahead of its time, and a product of its time. There has never been a series launched on this scale of production before. And yet it was still limited by the technology available at the time. However now with high-quality made shows becoming increasingly common such as Game of Thrones, The Expanse, and The Mandalorian the possibility of a new Dinotopia series is more possible now than it ever was 20 years ago.
Read parts 2 and 3 of our pitch meeting here!
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