Poll: Rate & Review The Ark In Space

[Peri-Peri]

This weeks story takes us again to the Fourth Doctor, this time in his second outing The Ark In Space.

The TARDIS arrives on an apparently deserted and deactivated space station Nerva, otherwise known as the Ark, orbiting Earth in the far future. There the Doctor, Sarah and Harry find the last survivors of the human race in suspended animation. Earth was evacuated thousands of years ago, when solar flares threatened to destroy all life.

The station has been visited by a Wirrn, an insect life form. it has laid its eggs in the solar stacks and absorbed the body and mind of one of the sleeping humans. The Doctor's reactivation of the station's systems causes the humans to start to revive. Their leader, nicknamed Noah, becomes infected by one of the emerging larvae and is slowly taken over.

The Doctor and his friends gain the trust of the other humans, now led by a med-tech named Vira. Together they lure the hatched Wirrn insects into a shuttle craft and eject it into space.

In a final act of humanity, Noah - by this time fully transformed into a Wirrn - deliberately neglects to set the shuttle's stabilisers, making it explode.

The Ark in Space was the second story of Season 12 of Doctor Who. It was the Fourth Doctor's first full, post-regenerative story. It proceeded from a mild-cliffhanger at the end of Robot, showing what happened after Harry Sullivan climbed into the police box in UNIT's laboratory. It importantly established the location of Nerva Beacon, which would be the narrative lynchpin of the season.

Ark had a somewhat tortuous scripting process, having slipped past two writers before its scripts were finally accepted. Both Christopher Langley and John Lucarotti tried and failed to write a script about a space station for season 12. Of the two, Lucarotti came closest. However, because he then lived on a boat anchored in the Mediterranean — and there was a postal strike afflicting Corsica — Lucarotti was essentially incommunicado to script editor Robert Holmes. It was impossible for Holmes to conduct timely consultation with the Doctor Who veteran. Lucarotti was paid fully for his work, and Holmes undertook a page one rewrite, retaining only the central conceit of Lucarotti's tale.

Despite its difficult birth, the story won kudos from the BBC Wales production staff. Russell T Davies once called Ark his favourite storyline of the 1963 version of Doctor Who, while Barnaby Edwards confessed to being "petrified of the Wirrn" as a child.

It was a particularly popular serial with contemporary audiences, as well. Part 2, in fact, was the fifth-most-watched programme of its week, making it the highest-charting episode of the original version of the programme. In fact, it retained its crown until the transmission of Voyage of the Damned in 2007, which was the second-most-watched programme of its week.

The next story will be posted on Sunday 8th July.

[Nyki]

Just a site-related thing - why are these posts showing up as 24th June?

[poprockgeek]

Because PP is away this weekend, but she planned ahead. She created the posts & then made them viewable only to mods. That meant all I had to do today was make them visible 

[Nyki]

Fair enough

[Kovarians-Eye-Patch]

I rarely do this, but I am giving this story full marks. I love it. It's easily one of the best Who stories in my opinion and belongs to one of the best seasons in the run. Some of the effects were a bit poor but other than that I think it's great. It's a story that always reminds me of the RTD style of stories. I've no idea if he was a fan or it or anything but there are definite similarities.

[Nyki]

I rarely do this, but I am giving this story full marks. I love it. It's easily one of the best Who stories in my opinion and belongs to one of the best seasons in the run. Some of the effects were a bit poor but other than that I think it's great. It's a story that always reminds me of the RTD style of stories. I've no idea if he was a fan or it or anything but there are definite similarities.

Lots of corridors

[Peri-Peri]

Just a site-related thing - why are these posts showing up as 24th June?

Because PP is away this weekend, but she planned ahead. She created the posts & then made them viewable only to mods. That meant all I had to do today was make them visible 

I do like to keep organised

[Peri-Peri]

I'm going with a four on this. It's a great story and everyone puts on a great show but I don't think it's quite as amazing or groundbreaking as some areas of fandom hype it up to be. Some of the effects are dodgy and the Wirrn looked pants. I think 4/5 is fair.

[Nyki]

I went with a five.  I suppose I sort of agree with some of PP's comments, but I marked it up rather than down.

[Exterminate]

I actually sat and stared at the votes for ages, flitting between 4 and a 5 and trying to decide. In the end I went with a 4, for pretty much the same reasons as PP. The good in it far outweighed the bad but there are far better stories out there that are far more overlooked.

[Aneurin]

Sorry to lower the average but I've gone with a three. I think there is just as much about this story that doesn't work for me as there is that I like. It's not so much that I think it's a bad story, but more that it's just not really to my tastes. There's a lot out there that's worse but also a lot that I like a lot more.

[The Cyber Mistress]

I have given this story a score of 5/5. I think it has a great, engrossing plot that keeps pulling you in and just gets better as it goes along. Unlike a lot of Tom Baker stories, even the more serious ones, there was a lot less humour in this and I think that really added to the tension. It wasn't missed though and the story didn't feel too heavy or anything. I'd even say, disagreeing with some of the above, that the effects were pretty good. The Wirrn looked like a Blue Peter creation but the technical stuff was pretty good for the era I think.

[Vampyros Adric]

A great story (the result of lots of different collaborative elements rather than the fruits of one single creative venture - but to be fair so is a lot of DW). I think that this was pretty much a perfect story to come after Robot. It was suitably 'outer-space' to indicate that this was very much a different approach being adopted by the new production team. It had a great atmosphere, Sarah and Harry are both marvellous and Tom Baker was just amazing. The great gamb1e by Barry Letts of bringing in an unknown to play the Doctor was starting to pay off handsomely.

Yes, the effects weren't particularly good, but not unforgivably bad either so, for strength of story and performances, I gave it 5/5

[Twisted-Sister]

Full marks from me this week. It's a great story with some brilliant performances from everyone. It's nice to see Harry have a more active role and I think the ideas behind the Wirrn were potentially terrifying even if they didn't look the greatest.

[Tardis-Console]

This is getting 4/5 from me. I've never watched it before and didn't know anything about it so I didn't have any inbuilt ideas of how great it is or whatever. I didn't even know it was particularly popular among fandom. I think it was a stronger story than Robot and if they could have worked the regen parts into this I think it would have been an excellent first story for Tom Baker. Not that Robot was bad, but it looked naff. This wasn't perfect either though and I think that what let's it down the most is the poorly made Wirrn but the story is strong and the characters do a good job.