The Doctor's attempt to give Harry a trip in the TARDIS sees the two of them and Sarah arriving onboard a space station in the far future, with some rather deadly security mechanisms.The Doctor's attempt to give Harry a trip in the TARDIS sees the two of them and Sarah arriving onboard a space station in the far future, with some rather deadly security mechanisms.The Doctor's attempt to give Harry a trip in the TARDIS sees the two of them and Sarah arriving onboard a space station in the far future, with some rather deadly security mechanisms.
- Director
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- Robert Holmes
- Sydney Newman(uncredited)
- Donald Wilson(uncredited)
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaBoth Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat named The Ark in Space as their favourite Doctor Who (1963) story.
- GoofsWhen the Doctor and Harry first discover the room full of cryogenically frozen humans, there is a point where the two of them are talking and, from over Harry's shoulder, you can see one of the "frozen" humans opening and closing his eyes.
- Quotes
The Doctor: Homo sapiens! What an inventive, invincible species! It's only been a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable... indomitable.
- Alternate versionsFor the 2002 DVD release, new computer graphics footage was created to replace the rather dodgy original models. The DVD allows viewers the option of watching the serial with the original model work, or the new CGI versions.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Chronic Rift: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
The Doctor, Sarah and Harry find themselves on a space station which turns out to be an "Ark", a vehicle containing the last few survivors of mankind, who have been placed in suspended animation to escape a disaster which has wiped out life on Earth. ("The Ark" made use of a very similar scenario; the next serial after "The Ark in Space", "The Sontaran Experiment", shows us what has been happening on Earth during the interim). Several of the crew of the Ark are revived in the course of the story; we learn that their leader is, for obvious reasons, nicknamed "Noah". (His real name is Lazar, a reference to the raising of Lazarus from the dead). The main threat to the Doctor, his companions and the inhabitants of the Ark comes from the Wirrn, a race of predatory alien insects who see humans as a tasty source of food. (The word "Wirrn" is pronounced, approximately, "wirren"; it does not rhyme with "burn"). "The Ark" is not the only story to have served as inspiration for this one. The Third Doctor adventure "The Green Death" also featured gigantic insects and their larvae, and made use of a toxic fluorescent green slime, a plot device which also appeared in "Inferno".
"The Ark in Space" was the first "Doctor Who" serial to be produced by Philip Hinchcliffe. It is one of those serials (and there were quite a number of them) which suffered noticeably from the programme's notoriously parsimonious budget. The adult Wirrn are not too bad, but their larvae are all too obviously made out of bubble-wrap spray-painted lime green. Hinchcliffe, however, wanted to increase the show's horror content to increase its appeal to adults, and he largely achieves this, particularly in the sequences in which Noah is slowly transformed into an insect. Noah, in fact, is a well-realised character; he is not particularly sympathetic, even in his human form, yet at the end proves himself capable of great heroism.
Despite its dodgy special effects, "The Ark in Space" is not a bad serial. The storyline is well paced and generates significant amounts of tension. And for all its lack of originality, there have been claims that the serial may itself have been the victim of some creative borrowing. It certainly seems to have been an influence on the various "Alien" movies.
- JamesHitchcock
- Oct 14, 2016
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