Walking with Dinosaurs (partially lost pitch pilot of BBC documentary series; 1997)

The pilot version of the Eustreptospondylus.

Status: Partially Lost

Tim Haines created the pilot for Walking with Dinosaurs in 1997 to sell the show to the BBC, as the BBC wanted a television series centred around dinosaurs following the success of Jurassic Park. All publicly-released clips from the pilot were featured in the Trilogy of Life (2005) documentary, which was a featurette on the Walking with Monsters DVD.

History and Production

In 1997, Tim Haines pitched Walking with Dinosaurs to the BBC. The BBC allowed Haines to create a short film that would be a proof-of-concept and gave him a budget to do so. The initial runtime was intended to be two minutes but the pilot ended up becoming six minutes long. ^[1] ^[2]

To find a filming location, Haines talked with an unknown paleobotanist and they determined that the best place to film would be coastal forests in the Mediterranean because its environment matched the time period and setting the film was intended to take place.

Haines would then ask Mike Milne of the Framestore VFX company to create high-quality computer-animated dinosaurs on a television budget for the show. Milne initially declined the offer but later agreed to help Haines. Haines then went to the filming location with an unknown cameraman and, to help Milne's team, made dinosaur tracks with prosthetic boots. He also used the "ball-and-stick" technique. Milne and his team created four CGI models for the pitch-pilot, a theropod, a pterosaur, a pliosaur, and a plesiosaur. They worked on the sequences for 8 to 9 weeks without a day off. A practical effect was also used in the pilot, where an animatronic Liopleurodon is stranded onshore.

A single silent shot from the pilot, showing a Cetiosaurus grazing, was used in The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs documentary to represent inaccurate depictions of Diplodocus without acknowledging where the footage comes from. This aired on October 6, 1999, and has been included on many home video releases of the series. More substantial footage from the pilot would be released to the public in 2005. The documentary Trilogy of Life, which gives a behind-the-scenes look at Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Beasts, and Walking with Monsters was released as a featurette on the Walking with Monsters DVD. A brief segment in Trilogy of Life featured short clips of the Walking with Dinosaurs pilot (including the Cetiosaurus with its original audio) along with Tim Haines explaining how it was made. However, most of the pilot remains unavailable. One still on the portfolio for Crawley Creatures, the special effects studio that provided physical props for the show and its spinoffs, would showcase a still of a Liopleurodon prop within the water. This prop was completely different from the final prop used in the show.

Synopsis

Similar to the released show, the pilot is put in a nature documentary format where dinosaurs are shown interacting, hunting, and eating. The pilot is split up into four or three different sequences, though it is difficult to say if the fragments that were released come from one sequence or multiple. The animals featured in the pilot are Eustreptospondylus, Cetiosaurus, Scaphognathus, Liopleurodon, and Cryptoclidus. We see several Scaphognathus' flying over the coastline to feed on fish below the water. Meanwhile, a Eustreptospondylus is hunting in the foliage, using its coloration to camouflage. The Eustreptospondylus then comes across a herd of Cetiosaurus who are browsing on the treetops. In the waters, a Liopleurodon is seen just below the surface. It is later beached on the shoreline.

It is worth noting that Darren Naish, a friend of Tim Haines, said on his blog that there was a partial x-ray shot of the Liopleurodon which showed the inner workings of the nostrils and nasal chambers. Naish also said the pilot also contained a brief segment where a green allosaur is hunting small, white hypsilophodonts. Naish made a clear distinction between the green allosaur and the Eustreptospondylus, saying that the segment containing the green allosaur may have been an early version of the final episode, Spirits of the Ice Forest.

Many aspects of the pilot were later used in the third episode Cruel Sea of the released show. Eustreptospondylus and Liopleurodon were used in the final version while Cetiosaurus and Scaphognathus were cut. The Liopleurodon would end up getting beached in the final version much like how it does in the pilot. The same time period and setting would also be used in Cruel Sea.

Findings

A full-body image of a Cetiosaurus was featured in the book Walking With Dinosaurs: The Official Sticker Album, which came out in August 2000. The sticker book came with the first issue of "Walking With Dinosaurs magazine". The model of the Cetiosaurus featured in the sticker book appears to be very similar if not a tweaked version of the model from the pilot.

On the 8th of December, 2021, Discord user Electric Boogaloo would contact David Martill, the head paleontological consultant on the pilot. Martill responded with information about the reasoning for some of the paleontological decisions made in the pilot, along with possible confirmation that there is a tape of the project.

Darren Naish was contacted on Twitter by the user FragileFragilis about the Walking with Dinosaurs pilot on December 18th, 2021. Naish would later ask Haines about the pilot, and Haines confirmed that tapes of the pilot can no longer be located and that the brief fragments shown in the Walking with Monsters featurette are all that exist. ^[3]

In July of 2022, Mike Milne would be contacted by Discord user Electric Boogaloo. Mike Milne would confirm in an email exchange that four CGI models were built for the pilot for four different sequences. This information, along with another reference to the pilot later in the email, would confirm the existence of a plesiosaur segment. Milne would then state that he most likely wouldn't be able to locate his copy of the pilot, which he showed at CGI conferences in 1997 or 1998. While Framestore may have kept a copy of the pilot, most of Milnes colleagues have left the company, as did he. ^[4]

In August of 2023, Dino Diego released a video saying he had been sent footage by Andrew Wilks, an individual who worked on the pilot who had kept a copy in his personal collection. New images were released to prove it, and he gave a summary of the pilot, however, he decided against publishing the full pilot due to copyright concerns. ^[5] He additionally gave the details that some footage from the Trilogy of Life mini-documentary is not included in the main "pilot" and were just additional clips to be used as test footage.

On September 22, 2023, four out of six minutes from the pilot were anonymously leaked onto the Internet Archive. There are still missing segments, and it is currently unknown who leaked most of the pilot, as the footage shared is missing minutes from the pilot. It was swiftly taken down, presumably due to copyright issues.

Videos

Segment from Trilogy of Life featuring the Walking With Dinosaurs pilot.

DinoDiego's video on the pilot.

DinoDiego's update video on the pilot.

DinoDiego's video on his viewing of the pilot.

Images

Cetiosaurus render found in the sticker book.
Physical model Mike Milne referenced when modelling the pilot's depiction of Cryptoclidus.
Liopleurodon prop found on the portfolio of Crawley Creatures.