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Valley of the Dinosaurs
"Forbidden Fruit"
TV episode
Written by: Unknown
Directed by: Charles A. Nichols
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Greg causes a chain reaction of problems
when he takes a bushel of arok fruit forbidden by the cave
dwellers.
Didja Know?
Valley of the Dinosaurs was a fully-animated Saturday
morning series for children, produced by Hanna-Barbera
Productions for the CBS television network for the 1974-1975
season. It lasted just one season. It had similarities to the
NBC live action series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft,
Land of the Lost, namely both feature a family that travels
down a raging river until an accident flings them into a world
filled with dinosaurs and primitive men. Both series premiered
on the same date, September 7, 1974, but
Land of the Lost lasted for three seasons.
The storytelling of
Valley of the Dinosaurs seemed to be geared towards
including scientific lessons for the children who watched.
It seems to have been a requirement that, despite the stories
being largely dramatic themselves, each episode must end with a
gag (usually a lame one, at that), undercutting the moral or
lesson the story sought to tell.
The voice of Greg Butler, the modern-day boy character, is
provided by Jack E. Haley, who would go on to be become better
known as Jackie Earle Haley, portraying such characters as Rorschach in
the 2009 film Watchmen and Freddy Krueger in the 2010
remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The story editor of the series was Sam Roeca, who would later go
on to write a few episodes of the third season of
Land of the Lost.
The writers of each TV episode are not specifically revealed,
but the end credits of every episode listed the series writers
as: Peter Dixon, Peter Germano, James Henderson, Ernie Kahn, Ben
Masselink, Dick Robbins, Henry Sharp, and Jerry Thomas.
Below is an advertisement for the series that appeared in comic
books published by Archie Comic Publications dated October 1974.
The synthesizer background music of
Valley of the Dinosaurs is also similar to
Land of the Lost.
The pterosaur seen at 1:31 on the DVD is a Pteranodon.
The dinosaur called Maligue by the cave-dwellers appears to
be an apatosaur.
The creature seen at 1:50 on the DVD may be a
Postosuchus, a reptile of the family Rauisuchidae
during the late Triassic period, and not a true dinosaur.
The long-tailed pterosaur that flies past Maligue at 2:07 on
the DVD is a Rhamphorhynchus, from the Jurassic
period.
John describes the valley's arok fruit as tasting like a cross between a
peach and a pineapple.
The pet baby dinosaur Glump, kept by Gorok's clan, is not a
Stegosaurus, as evidenced
by the widely-spaced, parallel rows of plates along his back. The
wide-spacing makes it hard to place, but appears the closest
to Wuerhosaurus.
Glump is also depicted with small ear flaps. It
is not known that stegosaurids (or other dinosaurs) had any
such protuberances on the ears; the feature was probably
added by the animators to up the character's cuteness factor
a bit.
As he eats the arok fruit, Greg remarks on how it beats
"spoiled moths for breakfast and owl eggs for lunch,"
an indication of staples of the cave dwellers' diet.
Somehow the Butlers and the cave-dwellers are able to
understand each other. For purposes of the television
viewership, all parties speak English, but we might assume
that the Butlers have learned to understand and speak the
language of the cave-dwellers and that is what is really
intended to have been spoken.
At 2:50 on the DVD, notice that Lok is carrying a small dead
dinosaur over his shoulder that he and Gorok have apparently
hunted and killed for a clan meal.
At 3:02 on the DVD, Lok is suddenly no longer carrying the
dead dinosaur over his shoulder!
John and Kim both still wear boots, but for some reason both
Greg and Katie go barefoot throughout the series, as the
cave dwellers do. Have the two kids gone native?
Why did Tana help the Butlers gather the arok fruit? She
should already have known the tribal law that forbids it.
Greg remarks that Maligue has got to be bigger than the
Empire
State Building. An exaggeration, of course.
Another unidentified species of pterosaur appears at 4:52 on
the DVD. The lack of crest or tail suggest it may be of the
genus Pterodactylus.
At 5:22 on the DVD, Maligue seems to have eaten not only all of
the arok fruit from the tree, but all of its leaves as well!
At 5:36 on the DVD, a wooden post mounted in Gorok's cave
has a couple of skulls mounted to it...one of them
apparently human.
For some reason, Gorok and his entire family have blue eyes.
The entire Butler family have brown eyes.
At 7:48 on the DVD, Maligue is depicted with a rather long,
lizard-like tongue.
Throughout the series it is subtly hinted that Katie has a
crush on Lok.
As Katie soothes his wounded head, Lok remarks on her
kindness and says he will teach her to catch the giant eel.
A double entendre? But seriously...Katie responds, thanks
anyway but she'd rather catch the 8:10 to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is a borough of New York City. Was the Brooklyn
mention merely for the sake of the joke or could it be an
indication that the Butlers are from the New York area?
John refers to the water flow that suddenly springs up in
the cave after the mouth collapses as an Artesian flow. This
refers to an underground water source that flows up and out
of the ground due to hydrostatic pressure, seeking an
equilibrium.
Greg remarks that the inner chambers of Gorok's cave,
discovered by he and Tana, are like
Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
The young theropod dinosaur that threatens Greg, Katie,
Digger, and Glump at 14:20 on the DVD is probably of the
clade
Ceratosauria, judging by the four-fingered claws on its
forelimbs. It is also presented with a
lizard-like tongue.
When the
Ceratosaur bites onto the broken stalagtite wielded by
Katie, Greg remarks the creature is hanging on like a Gila
monster. Indeed, the Gila monster is known to grip tightly
to its victim, not letting go for some time as the lizard's
venom is slowly worked into the wound.
When Greg and Tana escape from the cave and go to the
village for help, Tana calls for Bakor, Doga, and Tok, but
finds that all of the villagers are gone except for an old woman who
tells them all the others have gone on a hunt. It seems unlikely the entire village
could have gone on a hunt without Gorok and his family
knowing about it ahead of time.
Greg reveals that his father was a science teacher at
school.
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The group saves Digger and Glump for
last in the rescue from the cave,
hoisting them up and out together in
a sling. But if the two animals were
last to be lifted out, who put them in
the sling and tied the vine to the
ends to hoist them out? Someone
above must have lowered a second
vine so that the last person
(probably John or Gorok) could tie
the sling for the animals in
preparation before being hoisted out
himself. |
Unanswered Questions
If there is no time- or dimension-hopping occurring in the
creation/preservation of the Valley of the Dinosaurs, then
how did dinosaur species which originated on different
continents all come to be located in the Amazon jungle of
South America? For example, Wuerhosaurus originated in
China, while Stegosaurus is from North America, etc.
Memorable Dialog
pteranodon.wav
who's scared'a dinosaurs?.wav
who or what got devoured yesterday.wav
you are kind to Lok.wav
a
strange world.wav
all kinds of choices.wav
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