| THE ARK IN SPACE by Robert Holmes |
| Story 76 Synopsis: The TARDIS materialises in a silent room. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah find that it is a space station, seemingly abandoned. Finding traces of green slime is one thing, but when Sarah goes missing, and turns up amongst the ranks of stored humanity, it gets odder. Harry finds an exo-skeleton of a dead alien. Reviving Sarah, the Doctor establishes a mindlink to the dead creature, and sees its arrival. Some of the station staff are revived. Noah, the leader, gets infected by the slime, and begins to mutate into a creature like that found earlier. It is established that the creatures are the Wirrn, an insectoid race slightly akin to wasps, who suffered a defeat at the hands of the human race. The Wirrn Queen survived, and has found her way here, to the former Nerva Beacon, which is being operated as a store for the entire human race, since Earth is currently unhospitable. The Wirrn Queen is going to take over, and will avenge her race by destroying humanity, whilst it is in this vulnerable position. Anyway, Noah becomes a fully-grown Wirrn, with whom the Doctor pleads for a way to save the humans. The Wirrn Queen has laid several eggs in the power hatches, although she herself is now dead. Noah, as Wirrn leader, summons all the grown Wirrn onto a small spacecraft, and leaves Nerva safe again. When clear, he blows up the ship. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah are volunteered to check that the transmat back to Earth's surface is working properly. |
| Review:- There is much that is enjoyable here. The first episode is really special, and a real indication that any pre-ponderance with Earth is now to be replaced by a pre-ponderance with the wonders of outer space. The sets are astounding, my favourite being the gantries (?) where the cast can see out into space. Truly breath-taking. The slow build-up, with mystery over Sarah's diappearance, and curiosity over her predicament leads to the accidental find of the Wirrn Queen's corpse, and things snowball from there. The Wirrn are a popular nasty, probably depending on the viewer's own feelings about wasps. The insectoidal qualities are played up with the horrid green larvae shuffling about, and the full-grown insects being human-size, and rather fierce. Noah is a hide-bound official, set up to pose a greater threat than he could have wished for, then taking the noble self-sacrifice route to save the day. His tragic mutation is every bit as horrific as it needs to be. The story is enhanced by great sets and great pacing. Every setback creates drama, every step forward sustains interest. Whether it's Sarah shuffling through pipes, or the Doctor taking a dangerous gamble to learn from the dead Wirrn, there's a sense of belief all the way through. The ending's a bit tacked-on. OK, the transmat needs testing, but surely they would have revived someone and sent them down. Leaving the TARDIS is a bit of a gamble really, and the folly of this plan is exposed when the group never come back, and are at risk of permanent estrangement from the ship in Revenge of the Cybermen. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Considering that the rest of the season, all 14 episodes follows semi-closely from the end of the story, it is to the production team's credit that they could run a link between stories which doesn't drag them down. I wouldn't think it too much to say it was a successful nod to ye early years of the show. |
| Disclaimer: I've seen the video, and read the book. |