“The Ark in Space” is an adventure of the twelfth season of “Doctor Who” classic series which aired in 1975. It follows “Robot” and it’s a four parts adventure written by Robert Holmes and directed by Rodney Bennett.

The story

The Tardis materializes in the wrong place because of Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter), who touched a control. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) tries to figure out where and when they arrived: that’s clearly a space station but it seems thousands years old. The air is so thin that Harry and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) are struggling to breathe and trying to restore the environmental conditioning the Doctor realizes that some wires were cut.

Soon, the Doctor and his companions discover that the space station is home to many human beings in a state of suspended animation. Unfortunately, Sarah Jane is put in stasis by an automatic system activated by mistake. Looking at ways to revive her, the Doctor and Harry discover the corpse of an alien insectoid, what was it doing and how did it get there?

Extras

This DVD has a good amount of extras. There are typical contents such as production subtitles and a gallery of pictures from this adventure.

There are comments in the adventure alternative audio track by protagonists Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen and producer Philip Hinchcliffe.

Designing Doctor Who. This adventure’s designer Roger Murray-Leach talks about his contributions to “Doctor Who”.

News Item. An interview with Tom Baker held while he was filming the adventure “Revenge of the Cybermen”.

Model Sequences. The original sequences with the models of the ark, the shuttle and the Wirrn spacewalking.

BBC1 Trailer. A trailer for the original broadcast of the first episode of this adventure.

Unused Title Sequence. A test version of the title sequence created when Tom Baker became the Doctor.

TARDIS-Cam. An animation focused on the Tardis.

CGI Feature. The option to see this adventure with some scenes replaced by others created in CGI for the DVD. Some scenes outside of the ark, created at the time with the limited budget available, can be replaced with modern ones that give this adventure a bit of modernity. These changes are purely aesthetic.

At the end of this adventure a short promo for “Doctor Who Exhibition” runs automatically.

There are two “Easter eggs” but nothing extraordinary.

“Doctor Who” new producer Philip Hinchcliffe wanted to change the series with stories suitable for a more adult audience but he knew that the audience was predominantly juvenile. The monsters existed from the beginning, Hinchcliffe wanted to put them into stories with a darker tone. This was not just about adding more dramatic elements but also greater risks to the safety of the Doctor and his companions.

“The Ark in Space” script was rewritten a few times before they actually produced it. Christopher Langley wrote the first version but producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes decided to produce a following adventure connected to it and another one set again in the ark to be able to reuse its sets.

The script written by Christopher Langley wasn’t deemed suitable therefore another writer who had worked in “Doctor Who” in the ’60s, John Lucarotti, was commissioned to write a new version taking into account the new production requirements.

John Lucarotti lived in Corsica, the island in the Mediterranean Sea, and his contacts with “Doctor Who” production were kept only via mail so Philip Hinchcliffe got a completed script but again it wasn’t considered suitable. The deadline was near and eventually it was script editor Robert Holmes who rewrote the script another time and that’s why he’s credited as its author.

Those weren’t the best conditions to write a script but Robert Holmes was an excellent writer with some years of experience in “Doctor Who” who was working on a story that already had a plot. As a result, he was able to finish in time a script with the required features.

If “Robot” was a story in the style of the Third Doctor, “The Ark in Space” is the one that launched a style typical of the Fourth Doctor stories. The adventures with the the UNIT became the exception and the plots took on darker tones.

The concept of space ark had already been explored in the adventure of the First Doctor “The Ark”. In “The Ark in Space”, violent solar flares destroyed life on Earth and a group of humans saved themselves remaining in suspended animation in the space station Nerva.

An automatic system was supposed to wake up the first human beings after some millennia, when according to forecasts life would start to develop again on Earth. However, a Wirrn, an insectoid creature, entered the ark and some years before the movie “Alien” laid its eggs in some humans.

The Doctor and his companions arrive on the ark when the Wirrn larvae are developing. In the first episode they’re the only ones to confront the dangers of a space station now old and malfunctioning. The pace is slow but the episode works because of the tension kept high because of the various dangers faced by the protagonists.

This series of dangers isn’t used just to fill the first episode but it also provides information about the systems on the space station and their status of operation. These are the bases for understanding the development of the plot in the other episodes.

After this kind of introduction the protagonists meet some of the crew of the ark, in particular Vira and their leader Lazar, nicknamed Noah. The meeting doesn’t go well because in a story written by Robert Holmes the situations aren’t black and white but in shades of gray so there aren’t exactly good human beings against evil aliens.

The crew of the ark were chosen for their skills and those who are awakened are reluctant to act outside of their responsibilities. To survive, humans have waived part of their humanity however during “The Ark in Space” some hope for their future is given.

Noah in particular doesn’t show a lot of humanity and behaves aggressively towards the Doctor and his companions. His story is the most tragic in “The Ark in Space”: contaminated by a Wirrn larva, he starts turning into an alien.

Noah’s Wirrn side grows stronger yet in his mind there’s still a part of the person who was supposed to guide himanity towards its rebirth. This allows the Doctor and the humans to discover why and insectoid alien entered the space station increasing the ambiguity of the situation.

Unfortunately, this dramatic part suffers from the limitations of the Wirrn costumes. Because of the usual limited budget of “Doctor Who” classic series the larvae and Noah’s body parts that are turning are made using bubble wrap film painted green. The insectoid adults costumes are a bit better but they’re clumsy. It’s a shame because for the rest the very basic sets of the space station are well suited to the story.

These problems were common in “Doctor Who” classic series and if you can turn a blind eye you can enjoy an excellent adventure that behind a seemingly simple plot offers a number of complex elements. “The Ark in Space” DVD contains extras not extraordinary but overall pretty good however the story is enough to place it among the must-have ones.