The Ark in Space Part Three

The one where the Wirrn attack...

Events are interrupted by a doom-laden female voice claiming to be the Earth High Minister. It's great that writer Robert Holmes makes the boss of Earth a woman, because, you know, this is the future and all, when attitudes have changed. Disappointingly, Harry Sullivan lets the side down with his sexist surprise that a member of the fair sex is "top of the totem pole". Gladys Spencer's High Minister actually chose to record a pretty melodramatic speech, and when she signs off her "pre-match pep talk" with "God speed you to a safe landing", it tells us that mankind still has religion in the far-flung future.

Meanwhile, poor old Noah is struggling to fight against being totally absorbed by the Wirrn consciousness, and Kenton Moore does a grand job of portraying the turmoil and the inner conflict going on inside him. It could quite easily have been a very silly scene, with Noah fighting against his own bubble wrapped hand, but he manages to play it convincingly, and you do actually start to feel for this poor, conflicted victim.

By the time the half-mutated Noah meets the Doctor and Vira in the corridor, things have taken a turn for the worse, and the former commander is starting to look like something out of The Elephant Man or The Fly. This is full-on body horror done with bubble wrap and green paint, but it's nevertheless convincing. Vira reveals that she was pair-bonded with Noah, and looks suitably forlorn, although the Doctor fails to offer much sympathy. The days of the Doctor uttering "I'm sorry" every five minutes are a long way away!

Dr Sullivan and Nurse Smith have managed to revive a couple more crewmembers, who annoyed me almost immediately, especially moany Rogin, thanks to a performance from Richardson Morgan which leaves a little to be desired. I instantly took against grumpy Rogin, who would much prefer to have suffered heat death in the solar flares which destroyed Earth than have a chance at survival on Nerva. "We'll have been happily dead by now," he moans. Not the most endearing creation of Robert Holmes, and a failed attempt at one of his now famous "double acts" with the uber-bland Lycett.

The Doctor (now walking round in his very 1970s grandad cardigan) dissects the Wirrn corpse, revealing that the creatures must live in space, visiting planets only to feed. The moment where he peels off a layer of the Wirrn's compound eye is rather icky, but this leads to a scene where he refers to the controversial science of optography: the belief that the eye retains an image of the last thing it saw before death. This is a fascinating theory stemming from Victorian times, and some evidence for the possibility of developing optograms was obtained by German physiologist Wilhelm Kuhne in 1876 when he successfully developed the last image seen by an albino rabbit before death. There was less conclusive success when he tried to develop a human optogram four years later, but Kuhne's experiments were reassessed in 1975 (the year of The Ark in Space), and proved just as successful, although were dismissed as a convincing forensic tool. In 2013, Doctor Who would revisit the theory of optography in The Crimson Horror.

The Wirrn has begun to step up its offensive, and poor Noah has almost completely mutated into a space bug when Harry (who's still in his socks) and Rogin encounter him in the corridor ("Fools! Human fools!"). They zap him repeatedly with fission guns, which don't actually have the effect on him that I expected. Fission is, after all, the act of splitting or dividing into two or more parts, so would shooting Noah with a fission gun not actually divide the man from the monster? A missed plot point there, maybe?

Then the lights go down. The Wirrn have caused a power failure, and once again lighting designer Nigel Wright plays a blinder by casting our heroes into sharp silhouette and shadow. The once bright and clinical Nerva sets are now gloomy and suddenly much more dangerous. The contrast is startling and very effective.

When the Doctor ventures down into the solar stacks, it's disappointing to see the cardboard Wirrn chrysalises hanging on a black backcloth, gently swinging in the breeze of Television Centre's Studio 1! But other than that, the scene is marvellously spooky, thanks to Dudley Simpson's fantastic horror film score. And the final shot - of the completely absorbed Noah in Wirrn form - is truly horrible.

First broadcast: February 8th, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Ignoring the fact it's bubble wrap, the mutated Noah is a disturbing sight, and even the Wirrn grub writhing at the door is yucky.
The Bad: The cardboard Wirrn chrysalises pinned to a black backcloth.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 03

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

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

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