The Space Museum
015 – The Space Museum | |||
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Doctor Who serial | |||
Cast | |||
Others
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Production | |||
Directed by | Season 2 | ||
Running time | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||
First broadcast | 24 April 1965 | ||
Last broadcast | 15 May 1965 | ||
Chronology | |||
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The Space Museum is the seventh
Jones was not familiar with the show or science fiction when asked to develop the storyline. Story editor
Plot
The TARDIS arrives near a vast Space Museum on the planet Xeros, but has jumped a time-track. The First Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian Chesterton (William Russell), Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), and Vicki (Maureen O'Brien) have a series of bizarre experiences as they venture outside and into the Museum; they see but cannot be seen by the militaristic Moroks who run the museum, and the servile indigenous Xerons who work for them. The museum contains fascinating exhibits, including a Dalek shell, and the four travellers discover that they and the TARDIS are on display. A few moments later, the time track slips back and the exhibit with themselves and the TARDIS vanish, but the travellers are still inside the Museum.
The head of the Moroks, Lobos (Richard Shaw), is a bored and desperate museum administrator and colony governor, who reflects sourly that the Morok Empire has become decadent and declined. The Moroks find the TARDIS and start tracking down the occupants who have become separated. The Doctor is the first to be found, but evades their interrogation tactics. Meanwhile, Vicki has made contact with the Xerons and, hearing of their enslavement, aids them in their plans to stage a revolution. They attack the Morok armoury and Vicki outwits its controlling computer. With their new weapons, the Xerons are able to begin a revolution, which slowly takes hold.
Ian has meanwhile freed the Doctor from Lobos, who had begun the process of freezing him and turning him into an exhibit. Ian and the Doctor are quickly recaptured by the Morok guards, and Barbara and Vicki are captured shortly thereafter. Help comes from the Xeron revolutionaries, who kill Lobos and the other Morok captors. The Xerons destroy the Museum. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki take a time/space visualiser as a souvenir and leave in the TARDIS. On the planet Skaro, their departure is noted by the Daleks.
Production
Conception and writing
Around early October 1964, outgoing story editor David Whitaker asked South African writer Glyn Jones to develop a story for Doctor Who; Whitaker had seen Jones's play Early One Morning (1963) and later encountered him at a dinner party. Jones had never seen Doctor Who, nor was he particularly familiar with science fiction. After Whitaker left the series and was replaced by Dennis Spooner, Jones was asked to develop a four-part serial of his story. By late 1964, the serial was titled The Space Museum;[4] the first episode was originally named "The Four Dimensions of Time", and by early 1965, the fourth episode was called "Zone Seven".[5] Spooner edited out much of the humour from the original script, which Jones was unhappy with; Spooner felt that the serial was more intellectual.[5]
Casting and characters
The script for the third episode was structured to omit the Doctor, as William Hartnell was scheduled to take a week's holiday.
Filming
Early
Reception
Broadcast and ratings
Episode | Title | Run time | Original air date | UK viewers (millions) | Appreciation Index |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | "The Space Museum" | 23:38 | 24 April 1965 | 10.5 | 51 |
2 | "The Dimensions of Time" | 22:00 | 1 May 1965 | 9.2 | 53 |
3 | "The Search" | 23:33 | 8 May 1965 | 8.5 | 56 |
4 | "The Final Phase" | 22:15 | 15 May 1965 | 8.5 | 49 |
The serial was broadcast on
Critical response
An article in the
Retrospective reviews were mixed. In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker considered the first episode promising and the general concept fascinating, but felt that the story "falls as flat as a pancake"; they lauded the main cast, particularly Maureen O'Brien, but criticised the supporting cast, describing Richard Shaw's role as "one of the worst performances yet seen in the series".[3] In A Critical History of Doctor Who (1999), John Kenneth Muir praised the story's use of two prominent science fiction themes—changing the future, and discovering one's own death and attempting to alter it—comparing it favourably to The Twilight Zone, though he felt that it was diminished by the trope of planetary revolution as previously told in The Daleks and The Web Planet.[17] In 2009, Mark Braxton of Radio Times felt that the story "kicks off so well", but failed to take the opportunity to discuss ideas such as predestination; he praised Vicki's "vibrant" character, and described the scene of the Doctor in a Dalek casing as "one of the few elements that make this rather tedious traipse memorable".[16]
In 2010,
Commercial releases
ISBN 0-426-20289-9 | |
A novelisation of this serial, written by Glyn Jones, was published by
The Space Museum was released on VHS in a three-videotape box set by BBC Worldwide in June 1999, alongside the first and third episodes of The Crusade; it also included postcards and a key ring. The serial was released on a DVD box set alongside the following serial, The Chase in March 2010. The DVD includes audio commentary with William Russell, Maureen O'Brien, Glyn Jones, and Peter Purves, as well as documentaries about the production, the cast's holidays, and Hartnell as told by his granddaughter.[24] The serial was released on Blu-ray on 5 December 2022, alongside the rest of the show's second season as part of The Collection.[25][26]
Notes
- ^ Wolf Droysen, Desmond Leslie, and Frank Talley;[27] and the fourth episode uses Duncan, Siday, Talley, and Les Structures Sonores.[10]
References
- ^ a b Anders, Charlie Jane (31 August 2010). "Greatest Doctor Who cliffhangers of all time!". io9. Gawker Media. Archived from the original on 2 September 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ^ a b Ainsworth 2016, p. 56–57.
- ^ a b Howe & Walker 1998, pp. 85–86.
- ^ Ainsworth 2016, p. 42.
- ^ a b c d Ainsworth 2016, p. 43.
- ^ Ainsworth 2016, p. 45.
- ^ a b c d Ainsworth 2016, p. 48.
- ^ a b Ainsworth 2016, p. 49.
- ^ a b c Ainsworth 2016, p. 50.
- ^ a b c d e Ainsworth 2016, p. 54.
- ^ a b c d Ainsworth 2016, p. 51.
- ^ Ainsworth 2016, pp. 46–48.
- ^ Ainsworth 2016, p. 46.
- ^ a b Ainsworth 2016, p. 57.
- ^ a b c Ainsworth 2016, p. 56.
- ^ a b Braxton, Mark (7 January 2009). "The Space Museum". Radio Times. BBC Magazines. Archived from the original on 23 February 2021. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ^ Muir 1999, pp. 107–108.
- Titan Magazines. Archived from the originalon 23 December 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ^ Setchfield, Nick (3 March 2010). "DVD Review Doctor Who: "The Space Museum"/"The Chase"". SFX. Future plc. Archived from the original on 17 March 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ^ Kibble-White 2010.
- ^ Chapman, Cliff (24 February 2010). "Doctor Who: The Space Museum/The Chase DVD review". Den of Geek. Dennis Publishing. Archived from the original on 6 December 2021. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
- ^ Sinnott, John (6 July 2010). "Doctor Who: The Space Museum/The Chase". DVD Talk. Internet Brands. Archived from the original on 23 August 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ^ Mills 2021, p. 170.
- ^ a b Ainsworth 2016, p. 58.
- ^ Jeffery, Morgan (16 August 2022). "Doctor Who's Maureen O'Brien reprises Vicki role after almost 60 years". Radio Times. Immediate Media Company. Archived from the original on 16 August 2022. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
- ^ "The Collection: Season 2". The TARDIS Library. Archived from the original on 14 November 2022. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
- ^ Ainsworth 2016, p. 52.
Bibliography
- Ainsworth, John, ed. (2016). "The Crusade, The Space Museum, The Chase and The Time Meddler". Doctor Who: The Complete History. 5 (11). London: ISSN 2057-6048.
- ISBN 978-1-845-83156-1.
- Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Panini Comics.
- Mills, Catriona (2021). "The Victorians Sleeping in Our Minds". In Harmes, Marcus K.; Orthia, Lindy (eds.). Doctor Who and Science: Essays on Ideas, Identities and Ideologies in the Series. Jefferson, North Carolina: ISBN 978-1-476-68112-2.
- ISBN 978-0-786-40442-1.