The Space Museum

The Space Museum (part 1)

The TARDIS console freezes then moves in slow motion as the regulars are frozen in place around it and the screen goes blank.

We see a bunch of dead spaceships and an old fort building.

The TARDIS lands against a rocky backdrop.

The Doctor is first to unfreeze and grabs his head as though it hurts. They've jumped from their crusade outfits to their normal clothes.

IAN: Doctor, we've got our clothes on.
DOCTOR: Well, I should hope so, dear boy. I should hope so.
BARBARA: No, Doctor. Our ordinary, everyday clothes.
DOCTOR: Well, upon my soul, yes. Yes. Now isn't that extraordinary? Yes, we were wearing those cloaks and things, weren't we? Well, I must say, it's going to save us a lot of bother changing.


Hahaha. The Doctor takes whatever happened in his stride but the companions are understandably a bit freaked out. Vicki goes to check if the clothes are hanging up and the Doctor asks her to go fetch him a glass of water.

"It's a time issue" says the Doctor, who then says there isn't time to explain. Hartnell is having fun with his dialogue.

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Vicki approaches the drinks machine, a useful thing to have in a TARDIS, and drops a glass of water, only for it to reverse in time and come back together in her hand.

The Doctor admires the dead spaceships. "It's like a graveyard," says Barbara.

Vicki tells the Doctor about the reverse time glass thing and the Doctor takes that in his stride but looks curious. Like someone set him an interesting sudoku puzzle.

The Doctor realises it must be a space museum, and fancies a wee jaunt to it. He also thinks the answer to the time issues are outside the TARDIS.

Outside is very quiet and still. The Doctor says its an extinct planet, but Ian says the atmosphere is unusually warm for that. See, Ian is picking up what he's learned on his travels.

The Doctor tells everyone not to wander off.

Ian points out that despite walking on thick dust, none of them are leaving any footprints. "Very curious," says the Doctor, who gives a worried look.

The entire planet seems unusually empty.

BARBARA: Have you noticed something? I mean something very peculiar.
IAN: Well, everything's peculiar.
DOCTOR: My dear Barbara, if you've seen something or somebody, there's no sense in talking in riddles, is there?
BARBARA: No Doctor, not seen. Its the silence. When we stop talking, there isn't a sound. Listen. It's the sort of silence you can almost hear.
IAN: More and more like a graveyard.
DOCTOR: Oh, that's quite enough. Now stop it. You'll have us all imagining things. There must be an explanation of this little...

Barbara starts freaking out the Doctor.

Then the doors of the building open and some guards appear. Vicki sneezes and they don't even notice.

"It's extremely doubtful they were both deaf!" said the Doctor, who is getting all the best lines.

Hartnell then struggles with the phrase "fluorescent lighting" but then, who doesn't?

BARBARA: Well, everything seems quite normal.
DOCTOR: Well why not? Why shouldn't it be? It's quite natural. After all, you have objects of historical interest on Earth, so why not a museum in space? I always thought I'd find one someday.

Behind them seems to stand an Ice Knight from Marinus as an exhibit?

They walk into another room and there stands a Dalek! Everyone jumps before they realise its a museum artefact, and then Vicki gets to play the nonplussed kid.

VICKI: So that's what a Dalek looks like.
DOCTOR: Don't touch, child.
BARBARA: What do you know about them, Vicki?
VICKI: Only what I've read in history books. That they invaded Earth about three hundred years ago, was it?
IAN: We were there, Vicki. That was one of the periods we visited.

The Doctor has a nervous tick about Daleks. Understandable already, tbh.

"Lets hope we never meet them again," says Ian "but that is VERY unlikely." Tempting fate. Then he adds "I hope" to make everyone laugh.

Some students in black clothes enter the room and notice nobody. They were talking but it was inaudible.

Ian suggests they talk on a high frequency, but the Doctor doubts it.

They investigate, and then Vicki's hand goes through a solid instrument. Ian does the same on front of the Doctor and the Doctor gets worried.

"There must be a logical explanation," says the Doctor.

More students look for something in the room, but walk right past the Doctor.

The TARDIS crew have got lost in the museum. All the corridors look alike and they "must have walked for miles"(Ian). Its a minotaur's lair of a museum.

They walk into another museum room and Barbara and the Doctor double take in shake as the camera shows us another museum artefact: the TARDIS!

Ian and Barbara want to leave, but the Doctor walks right through the empty TARDIS proof as an ephemeral.

"I'm afraid it's going to be a little difficult," he says.

The Doctor then points out the TARDIS crew in museum cases. Dead.

VICKI: Time, like space, although a dimension in itself also has dimensions of its own.
DOCTOR: So you know about it, child? We must have a little chat some time.
VICKI: Yes, you see, we really are in those cases, but we're also standing here looking at ourselves from this dimension.
BARBARA: Well, it's horrible. Those faces, our faces, just staring.
IAN: Well, at least it explains what's been happening to us.
DOCTOR: Yes, it does, my boy. And if we're not there, we can't leave footprints, and break glasses, or touch things.
IAN: And nobody can see us. I see.
DOCTOR: Oh yes, they can. Oh yes, they can see us where we really are. There.
BARBARA: Is there anyway of getting out of this, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Well, my dear, I suppose we got into it. There must be. You know, I don't mind admitting, I've always found it extremely difficult to solve the fourth dimension. And here we are. Face to face with the fourth dimension. You know, I think the Tardis jumped a time track and ended up here in this fourth dimension. It's extraordinary. It's inexplicable.

So the TARDIS crew are dead, but somehow the TARDIS has malfunctioned and sent them into the future so they arrive before the thing which lead to their death.... 

And now time is catching up to fix things - hence all the issues.

This is more complicated than your standard Moffat.

"I'm going to come up with an answer," says the delighted Doctor.

The Doctor thinks once time catches up and they arrive, they can then prevent this deadly future from happening.

Vicki thinks they should escape now, but the Doctor is worried doing exactly that is what will cause their deaths.

The Doctor notices the dead crew are wearing the same clothes they are wearing.

BARBARA: Well, how will we know when we have? Arrived, I mean.
DOCTOR: The cases will disappear and we shall all become visible.
IAN: And from that moment we'll be in great danger.
DOCTOR: Precisely. So you see we must succeed in stopping them making exhibits of us. Otherwise, well, there it is. That's how we're all going to end up.

And we've set up a dilemma unlike any they've ever faced on the show.

Time starts to revert back to normal. Still photos from earlier play, the TARDIS lands properly from the guards perspective, who now see footprints begin to form in the dust. The dead exhibits fade out of time, and a worried and clearly panicked Doctor tells his companions: "we've arrived!"

No matter what people think about The Space Museum (is it a comedy? is it not? is it good? it is naff? etc) there is surely no denying that Part 1 is a great bit of SF drama. And with its use of time itself as the saviour, villain and paradox creator, its clearly a very influential 25 minutes on modern Doctor Who.

The Space Museum (part 2)

The Doctor's team have officially arrived and are now in constant grave danger.

An underling brings equipment into a staff room, as another man looks through papers.

"I've fixed this," says the underling, "it'll be fine for 100 years!" He seems proud.

LOBOS: Like everything on this planet, including us. Well, I've got two more mimmians before I can go home. Yes, I say it often enough, but it's still two thousand Xeron days and it sounds more in days. Yeah, I know, I volunteered, you were ordered. If the truth were known, I was just as bored on Morok. Still it was home, and youth never appreciates what it has.

Ok, this is a large piece of exposition, but the bored (in reality - badly concussed!) tone Richard Shaw gives this speech really calls to the pathetically boring nature of his life. With every sentence, he seems to further question his own existence.

And yes, 2000 does sound more than 2. Irrefutable.

I like the idea he's been on this planet since he was a youth, as Lobos is clearly a middle aged man. Dulce et decorum est has long since faded into dull tedium.

A messenger arrives and doesn't even bother to knock on the door first. No one respects Lobos. Not even Lobos respects Lobo anymore.

He gets told aliens have landed on the planet and shows a flicker of interest. Golgafrinchan Ark B stuff. (Hmm, we know Adams was a fan, and he did borrow the cricket scene from Master Plan...)

LOBOS: Alien? Well, this will indeed be a red letter day for the Xeros calendar. Have the crew been detained?
MESSENGER: No, sir. They've left the ship. We've found footprints but no trace of them. We were unable to enter the craft but it appears to be uninhabited at the moment.

The messenger is also a hilariously bad actor who seems to be narrating his own role on TV.

The other guy, who Wiki tells me is a technician, points out the rebels are advancing in numbers.

"What?" said Lobos, "the little kids?" and I laughed.
"You do know they're teenagers now?" paraphrases the technician.
"If they do anything, we'll react," says a leader not holding his breath for any excitement.

Lobos immediately decides to add the TARDIS crew to the museum.

The student rebels talk about the possibility of revolution, but are more interested in debating the ethics. Is that a deliberate South African accent? Given the writer and the story, the subtext of what was going on there is obvious, but that adds an extra layer to it.

Tor, Daka and Sito. Apparently. One of them sounded a lot like Ben, so I looked them up and apparently one of them is the late Peter Craze, Michael Craze's brother! Tor, who can obviously act, is Jeremy Bullock, who became a far bigger star: Boba Fett for example.

Barbara wants to break the chain of events that leads to her dying.

BARBARA: We must do whatever is necessary to keep us out of those cases.
VICKI: I don't see that staying here would stop it.
BARBARA: We must break the chain of events that led up to it, and going out of here might be just what we're not supposed to do.
DOCTOR: Yes, I think Barbara's quite right, my dear. If we walk out of here, it could change the future. Perhaps if we wait until we're taken out, that might change the future. The point is, what are we going to do? Which is it to be?
VICKI: But Doctor, if we find the Tardis and leave here, then we won't have to worry about being turned into dummies at all.
IAN: That's a good point, Doctor.
DOCTOR: It isn't a good point at all, my dear boy. The fact is the future, our future, whether we leave here in the Tardis or not.

The Doctor says they might as spin a coin to work out how to deal with the consequences of their plight.

Vicki realises Ian has lost a button on his blazer.

"The least important things sometimes lead to the most important discoveries" says the Doctor.

DOCTOR: Yes, you know, losing a button could change the future. It's a pity, my dear boy, you didn't discover it was missing in the cases when we were standing there staring at each other.
IAN: Doctor, I'd just come face to face with myself. I wasn't counting the buttons on my jacket.
DOCTOR: Yes, I quite understand that.

The Doctor decides the best thing to do is to get the ¤¤¤¤ out of there back to the TARDIS and run away.

Only all the corridors look alike and everyone is hopelessly lost.

They walk around the corner and the Doctor pretends he knows where he is, with lots of giggles.

Meanwhile the guards are following their footsteps.

And the three revolutionary students are following the TARDIS crew and this leads to an unexpected line that had me in stitches:

DAKO: They had a ray gun. I saw it.
TOR: Well, that's no reason to sound downhearted. We were hoping they would.

Worst. Revolutionaries. Ever.

So, everyone else thinks the Doctor knows the answer to their problems, and the Doctors crew are completely befuddled and know nothing.

One of them stutters a lot.

The Doctor and crew remain lost.

The Doctor turns round a corner and the students knock him out. That was a bit unsporting.

Now the rest realise the Doctor has wandered off. Much like he told everyone not to do.

Vicki - I bet he got captured.

Ian and Barbara discuss the best way to move forward.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has KO'd a student and tied him up. Offscreen.

They run away, only to reveal the Doctor was hiding in the Dalek artefact and he can't resist doing a pretend Dalek voice and giggling! Classic moment.

More guards on patrol. The Doctor nearly walks into them.

And then successfully does.

He was too busy giggling at his own Dalek impression!

Barbara, Ian and Vicki are hopelessly lost.

IAN: The Minotaur.
VICKI: Where?

Ian uses Barbara's cardigan - after asking permission off a grumpy Barbara - to use as a trail so they wont lose their way.

The Doctor is in a prison cell and looking for the escape route.

The students follow the trail of cardigan (which you might recall the dead Barbara was wearing in Episode 1 - subtly time is already changing through the Doctor and friends existence and actions) because they're hoping someone will sort out their mess for them. Dako disagreeing with everything is very funny.

A wall opens up to reveal Lobos the Governor.

LOBOS: Very well. Mine is Lobos. I am the governor of this planet.
DOCTOR: Curator of a Museum is a better title.
LOBOS: Ah, so now you choose to speak. Good. Yes, Xeros is a museum. A lasting memorial to the achievements of the Morok civilisation.
DOCTOR: Really? Well, from my observation it seems to arouse very little interest.
LOBOS: People tire of their heritage. Three hundred mimmians ago, sightseers filled this planet, marvelling at what they saw. Today, the occasional spaceship from Morok calls.
DOCTOR: Perhaps if you reduced the price of admission?

Hahaha.

Richard Shaw nearly corpsed there. (It is worth point out that Shaw was a bloody good actor. You may have seen him in the original Quatermass and the Pit. Before filming The Space Museum he suffered a heavy blow to the face and this impacts greatly on his performance. He later shows up in Frontier in Space and shows his qualities in Doctor Who when he's not suffering a brain injury. And yet... even diminished, he gets the character. 

The Morok Empire is now at peace and this is just an administrative post now. Also, 300 mimmians is 300, 000 Xeron days going by the early ratio. So Jeremy Bullock is a near 900 year old teenager. No wonder Lobos is so suicidally bored.

The Doctor doesn't want to answer questions so Lobos brings out the telepathic mind reader.

LOBOS: A simple matter of thought selection. By asking a question, I plant an image in your mind. No matter what you say, as long as you're seated in that chair, I will see your mental pictures reflected. You see, it is quite useless for you to lie to me. Now shall we return to the questioning? How did you get here?

The Doctor immediately summons on the device a photo of a penny farthing bicycle and giggles!

Unfortunately for him, Lobos gets annoyed and orders the Doctor to be prepared - killed - for preparation as a museum exhibit. And the museum now has the TARDIS on display!

Whatever they did, it looks like the TARDIS crew have walked directly into their doomed future!

It's not as tense as Episode 1, but it is quietly amusing, and quite biting as a portrayal of bored corruption.

The Space Museum (episode 3)

The Doctor has been captured and is being prepared to become an exhibit. All that trying to avoid fate.

Students look at the TARDIS and guards tell them to go away. Openly mingling. Neither side cares about winning this insomniac civil war.

Barbara and Ian discuss the last two episodes.

The Commander shows up to see the TARDIS, and sighs.

COMMANDER: Is there no way in?
GUARD: No, Commander.
COMMANDER: That's all I need. You know what Lobos will say about that, soldier. He will blame me. Everything that goes wrong on this wretched planet is my fault.

Come on, mopey students, they really want you to hurry up and overthrow them. (Which is presumably where the South Africa subtext ends in a hurry.)

The guard who just got yelled at walks into the building right into Vicki, Ian and Barbara.

BARBARA: Don't! He'll fire that thing.
IAN: Well? Wouldn't that change the shape of things to come?
BARBARA: Well, it would for you. You'd be dead.
IAN: They can't kill us. We're going to end up in those cases.
BARBARA: Not necessarily. Oh, you can change the future so that we don't end up in those cases, but if we're all dead, what's the point?
IAN: But that means we can't fight against anybody. We don't know what we're doing.
VICKI: We've just lost the Doctor. Has that already changed the future?
BARBARA: We don't know Vicki. Maybe that's the way it happened. We've no reason to suppose that we all ended up in the cases at exactly the same time.
VICKI: So we could be doing exactly what we're supposed to do.

This exposition is ended by the guard who is right there saying "OK, enough talking" and I laughed.

Ian beats up another guard and they escape.

The Commander sends guards after the women where two Morok guards are no match for Terminator Chesterton.

Vicki and Barbara hide in a room, which the guards lock.

Its only about now, when the story is clearly killing time till Part 4 -and a week off for Billy Hartnell - that things start to drag. But then, isn't that the same in many stories, so why single out The Space Museum?

Vicki runs into the students. They instantly think a temperamental child is likely a better leader than anything they've got. They're right on that one.

Ian orders one of the guards he beat up to take him to the Doctor. The Doctor is being embalmed alive. Grim.

IAN: Take me there.
GUARD 2: Well, you'll be killed.
IAN: Take me!
GUARD 2: We'll both be killed!

Hah. 

The thing about The Space Museum is that it is a written comedy about bureaucracy and the nostalgia of empire and occupation, but the director Mervyn Pinfield hasn't twigged its meant to be dry comedy, and as a result none of the comedic lines are delivered in the intended way. But then Pinfield is very good at the technically difficult shots (just look at his exit out of the TARDIS in The Sensorites, which no other classic era director even attempted), invented the autocue in the UK, and died over 55 years ago, so you know, fair's fair.

Dako goes and finds Barbara.

Vicki basically bosses the other students into going to the armoury to start a revolution.

The Commander finds the Guard Ian got to take him to the Doctor, and immediately covers for him. He legit don't give a ¤¤¤¤ about his empire.

The students hide because they are a slave race. Hide by moping around in plain sight and talking to the guards.

Cue Vicki's greatest moment:

TOR: Well, the door hasn't opened.
VICKI: You've got to answer the questions yet.
TOR: Well then you've failed. The lock reacts only to the truth.
VICKI: And it still does, Tor. You'll see.
COMPUTER: What is your name?
VICKI: Vicki.
COMPUTER: For what purpose are the arms needed?
VICKI: Revolution.

10/10. Even the computer systems are waiting for the students to do something!

Ian enters Lobo's room and points a gun at him.

LOBOS: You'll be a fool if you kill me. You will achieve nothing.
IAN: Possibly, but it might be enjoyable.

The man is cold blooded!

Ian forces the Moroks to unhand the Doctor, and the last shot is Ian looking in horror at the Doctor offscreen. We went as far as we could without Hartnell, and crawled that far to get there. But even this weaker episode has the fantastic scene of Vicki at the armoury, and the "I don't give a ¤¤¤¤ anymore" Commander covering up ¤¤¤¤ ups rather than do his job.

The Space Museum (episode 4)

LOBOS: He has completed the second stage of preparation. He's as good as dead.
IAN: If you want to save yourself, you'd better bring him back to life.
LOBOS: Impossible.
IAN: But your only hope is to try.
LOBOS: No one has ever attempted to reverse the process.
IAN: There's a first time for everything, now get moving!

Can the Doctor survive embalming?

Yes.

Ian gets Lobos to reverse the process.

Meanwhile, Vicki teaches the students about revolutionary tactics.

TOR: I won't let you go.
VICKI: I won't let you stop me.
TOR: But if you're captured?
VICKI: The Moroks don't know of the revolt. I'm not likely to tell them.
TOR: Well you won't have to, The gun will give us away. They'll check the armoury.

If there was a dictionary definition for a race who'd be utterly fecked if not for the Doctor's team, you'd see a picture of the Xerons.

The Doctors temperature is slowly raised back to normal and he utters his first word since Episode 2 - "Aaaarrrh!"

Meanwhile Barbara is being gassed.

The Doctor complains of rheumatism due to the cold, but once the guard turns on Lobo, he perks back up again.

DOCTOR: My dear Governor, my dear Lobos, I don't think your soldiers have really got their heart in their job, have they? Thank you for getting me out of this little predicament. Although, I would have been better pleased had you done it more voluntary.
IAN: Yes, his conscience did need reminding.
DOCTOR: Yes. I know, I know.
IAN: What do you mean you know? Surely you were
DOCTOR: Dead? Not at all, my boy. Not at all. I was merely, let me say, frozen stiff?
IAN: You mean you knew everything that was happening?
DOCTOR: Exactly! My brain was working with the speed of a mechanical computer. I was asking myself questions and the answers were arriving with remarkable alacrity. Yes, yes. I must confess, I didn't enjoy the refrigeration, hence this attack of rheumatism. But thanks to you, my dear boy, I am now de-iced and I think I'm quite capable of facing up to the climate once more.
LOBOS: I wouldn't be too sure of that, Doctor. Of course, I have no proof, but your brain could very easily have been affected.
DOCTOR: The best thing for you, Governor Lobos, is to put you in there. Then you will have all the proof you needed. But you think yourself lucky. My conscience won't allow me to do that. It's a pity, isn't it? It's a pity!

Up shows the Doctor, and up perks the story. William Hartnell is just an absolute joy.

The Commander and two other guards overhear this and take Ian and the Doctor prisoner.

Barbara and Dako escape from the gassed room, and a guard sees them but another student shoots him.

And then we get the famously bad line:

COMMANDER: Soldier. Have their been any guerilla actions against us?
GUARD: None recently.
COMMANDER: Have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?
GUARD: No, sir, not that I know of.

Vicki and Barbara are captured and the entire TARDIS crew is now ready to be turned into exhibits. Also Sita got shot dead.

But not to worry, the very revolution that Vicki started shows up to save their life. So the answer to how to avoid the fatal history was to overthrow the bad guys. Who knew?

Lobos and the Commander are shot. I'm not sure they really cared. Life. Don't talk to them about life...

With the planet overthrown, and the future changed, the TARDIS crew take off. The Space Museum was a story of two halves, with the first grim half being far better, but well, how many Dr Who stories have a great start and then no one knows how to finish it properly? A lot! The Space Museum plays with the format of the entire series in a way never done so far in the series, and if it would have worked better with the comedy lines delivered as jokes, there's still a lot to enjoy in this story, if you can look beyond a lot of bad acting from the guest cast (not including the previously mentioned notable exceptions, or those with brain injuries during recording)...

This concludes an enjoyable four parter as the TARDIS crew leave and...


DALEKS! OH ¤¤¤¤!

Daleks monitoring the TARDIS! Oh ¤¤¤¤!

Daleks have conquered time travel! Oh ¤¤¤¤! They have a time machine, and a death warrant for the Doctor and his friends! Oh bloody hell! And ¤¤¤¤!

OH ¤¤¤¤! Next episode must be the most epic in Dr Who history!

(Ahem. But yeah, imagine seeing that cliffhanger as a 10 year old in 1964. You don't get hyped, you stay hyped...)