The Ark in Space Part Four

The one where Noah saves the day...

The Wirrn costumes are a triumph of design over practicality. They look splendid, they have some nice texture and a great silhouette; they really are very memorable Doctor Who monsters. But they look nothing more than a rubber monster suit, thanks to a lack of flexibility. Whenever you see them move, the first thing that comes to mind is how they're walking. In reality, they'd scamper along on their many legs, but as far as we can ascertain (because director Rodney Bennett never shows us!) they're hobbling along on the end of their abdomens. One behind-the-scenes photo on set shows operator Stuart Fell's little legs sticking out of the bottom!

Mutant Noah takes time to explain the Wirrn's modus operandi, revealing that this is all the humans' fault to start with. Mankind destroyed the Wirrn's breeding colonies on Andromeda, making the creatures homeless, so now they are wandering through space looking for new territories to colonise and breed from. And what better place than a space station crammed full of defenceless human bodies? This is about revenge, as well as the survival of both species.

It's great that Sarah is the one to put two and two together and come up with the winning plan of action to defeat the Wirrn, marking her out as one of Doctor Who's most resourceful companions ever. Sarah suggests they use power from the transport ship, and volunteers to crawl through the ducting to link the cable from there to the cryogenic chamber. This is in stark contrast to Harry's enthusiastic willingness to jump back into the TARDIS and scarper, leaving the fate of humanity to poor Vira and Rogin. The Doctor states that he cannot possibly leave without trying to do everything to stop the Wirrn. Sarah agrees, casting Harry as something of an unthinking coward. In that moment, Harry is the Mickey Smith of classic Doctor Who!

When the team reaches the cockpit of the transport vessel, Nigel Wright - one of the unsung heroes of these first two Tom Baker stories in my opinion - reverts to the beautiful chiaroscuro tones reminiscent of Dario Argento or Mario Bava's works, which Wright briefly dabbled with in Robot. The moonlight blue works beautifully against the clean white of the Nerva sets and costumes. Stunning.

Sarah has to wriggle along a service duct to link the power cable from the transport vessel to the cryogenic chamber, and it really does look like a claustrophobe's living nightmare. I love how the Doctor bullies Sarah into persevering when she thinks she's stuck, hitting her where it hurts the most: her feminist pride. "Stop whining, girl. You're useless," he taunts. "Stupid, foolish girl. We should never have relied on you. I knew you'd let us down. That's the trouble with girls like you. You think you're tough, but when you're really up against it, you've no guts at all. Hundreds of lives at stake and you lie there blubbing." And then she comes wriggling out of the hatch all guns blazing, incensed by his cruel words and giving as much as she gets. Still, it's not quite as crushing as the Seventh Doctor's deconstruction of Ace in The Curse of Fenric...

The finale comes as lots of little Wirrn finger puppets scamper across the outer hull of the transporter, and are led inside by what transpires is the still active human side of Noah. He leads the Wirrn out into space aboard the ship, which then explodes, killing them all. It's a sad demise for a proud species which deserved to survive in some form, even if the means by which they intended it was wrong. There's a lovely moment when Vira realises it was Noah, deep within the Wirrn collective consciousness, who saved them all along, perfectly captured when Wirrn Noah comes over the intercom and utters his final message: "Goodbye Vira." It's terribly sad.

Because Rogin insisted on sacrificing his life to save both the Doctor and the human race, Vira is the only one left awake. It is up to her to continue the revivification process while the TARDIS trio transmat down to the surface of Earth to fix the corroded diode receptors. The Doctor regains his hat (which he'd left on a table back in part 1), Sarah dons a bright yellow sou'wester, and Harry gets something on his feet again (there's something wonderfully Doctor Who-ish about the fact he spends 90% of this story in his socks!).

The Ark in Space is an atmospheric story which preempts Ridley Scott's Alien film by several years. The plots are markedly similar in parts, and it's interesting to note that Alien writer Dan O'Bannon said he started to put together the screenplay for Alien around 1976. "I didn't steal Alien from anybody, I stole it from everybody!" O'Bannon once admitted, and although it's unlikely the screenwriter ever saw The Ark in Space, the two can probably be traced back to similar common influences, namely the films The Thing from Another World (1951) and Planet of the Vampires (1965), Clifford D Simak's 1953 short story Junkyard, Philip Jose Farmer's Strange Relations (1960), and various EC Comics horror titles. The Ark in Space as we know it today may have been written by Robert Holmes, but it was based on an idea submitted by former Doctor Who writer John Lucarotti (Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve). The details of that initial idea are muddied in time now - and may have only really entailed the space station setting - but one thing's for sure, the finished product remains an outright classic of the era, and cements Tom Baker as one of the very best Dr Whos.

Just ignore the bubble wrap.

First broadcast: January 25th, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: "Goodbye Vira."
The Bad: As much as I dislike the character of Rogin, his sudden self-sacrifice is an unnecessary twist. I hate self-sacrifice, as it's so very rarely set up properly, or convincing.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 8.5 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05 - First the Doctor offers a jelly baby to anybody listening (but only he has one), then he offers one to Vira before transmatting down to Earth (in fact, he gives her his entire bag).

NEXT TIME: The Sontaran Experiment...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-ark-in-space.html

The Ark in Space is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Ark-Space-Special/dp/B00AHHVQE0