The Space Museum

I believe we have skipped a time track.

The Space Museum is a story I've heard mixed reviews over. Nearly everyone I've heard talks about Episode One and what an interesting concept the story set up is, but that it devolves into less than the sum of it's parts. I have no frame of reference here having never even seen a clip from this story. So I'm going into this one nearly completely untainted. I shall be very curious to see if the follow up episodes are the disappointment that others suggest they are.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and his companions materialize on an alien planet but appear to come out of a trance. They find that their 13th century clothes have been taken off and hung up and they are now wearing their regular clothes. While the Doctor looks at the scanner, Vicki goes to get him a glass of water. She accidentally drops it, breaking the glass. A second later, it reassembles itself and pops back into her hand, unbroken. She tells the Doctor what happened but he offers no solution. He instead speculates that they've landed outside some sort of space museum and suggests they go investigate.

As they approach the building, all are unnerved by the eerie quiet. Ian also notices that despite the ground being covered in dust and sand, they are leaving no footprints. The doors open and two men walk out. The time team ducks to the side where Vicki inadvertently sneezes, but the two men do not hear her.

They enter the building where they find space relics of the past, including a Dalek. Two other men enter the room and despite them having a conversation, the group cannot hear them. Walking into another part of the museum, another group has a conversation and even walks by them, but they do not register that they even exist. Vicki tries to touch one of the exhibits but her hand passes right through it.

They proceed onward and find the TARDIS in the museum. The Doctor steps up to it and passes right through. Across the room they see themselves, preserved in glass cases, dressed exactly as they are now. The Doctor theorizes they when they landed, the TARDIS skipped a time track, landing them out of phase with current time. Seeing the TARDIS and themselves preserved in the museum is a possible future outcome. The Doctor also theorizes that they will soon catch up with time and phase back into present time, which will cause the glass case versions of themselves and the preserved TARDIS to disappear.

This does happen as the two men who walked out of the museum initially discover the TARDIS. There is a frozen moment and the team comes to themselves again with the interior TARDIS and the glass cases having vanished. The Doctor and his companions sit indecisively at first, unsure of how to avoid a future in the cases but the Doctor proposes that they act and try to make their way back to the TARDIS. They set off down the corridors, unsure exactly how to get back.

The two guards report back to the planetary governor of their find and he orders one squad to watch the TARDIS while another looks for the visitors. They are Moroks, a race who conquered the planet and use it as a museum now. The other group the time team saw was a group of natives, the Xerons, who are attempting to rebel against Morok rule. The Xerons, observing the Doctor and his companions, decide to try and get them on their side, believing they can get weapons from them.

The Xerons capture the Doctor when he lags behind to look at an exhibit. He pretends to faint but overpowers his guard when left alone with him and hides. Unfortunately, he is almost immediately captured by a Morok patrol when he emerges from his hiding spot. He is taken to the governor, who learns of the Doctor's companions via a machine that produces an image based on the Doctor's thoughts. Seeing this, the Doctor manipulates the image to prevent the governor from learning any more. Frustrated, the governor orders the Doctor to be processed for display.

Realizing they have lost the Doctor, Ian decides that it would be better to find the TARDIS first before going to look for him. He unravels Barbara's sweater to use as a thread to ensure they don't get lost. They successfully find the entrance to the museum but find the TARDIS guarded. The Xerons also find the thread and follow the group to the entrance.

While trying to decide what to do, a Morok discovers the companions and the alarm is raised. Vicki and Barbara dash back into the museum. Ian manages to fight off two Moroks who grabbed him and hides near the TARDIS. Barbara ducks into a storage closet to hide. Her pursuers miss her but she ends up locked in.

Vicki is grabbed by the Xerons who take her back to their hideout. They fill her in on their history, including their attempt to capture the Doctor. One of their number is sent to find Barbara while Vicki convinces the other two to help her break into the armory and steal guns for the Xerons.

Following the failure to recapture the companions, the governor orders his men to evacuate the museum. They will then flood the museum with gas to knock out and paralyze those hiding inside.

The Xenon Dako, discovers Barbara in her hiding space and convinces her to come with him. As they leave, the discover the museum filling with gas. They attempt to cover their faces and fight their way through it. Dako is eventually overcome and passes out. Barbara, attempting to pull Dako through also succumbs to the gas.

Vicki and her two guides, Tor and Sita, enter the armory and examine the computer lock. The lock is designed to stay shut unless the questioner answers the questions both truthfully and correctly. After learning the questions, Vicki rewires the computer so that it will accept answers as long as they are truthful. She opens the vault and Tor and Sita grab as many guns as they can to give to their people.

Ian manages to disarm a lone guard and forces him to take him back to the governor's office. Pretending to have captured him, they are admitted but Ian pulls the gun on the governor. The governor informs him that the Doctor was capture and is being processed. He takes Ian to the room where the Doctor is being held. Seeing the Doctor in the middle of a procedure to lower his body temperature, Ian orders the governor to reverse the process. He does so and the Doctor begins to recover, although he states that only his body was chilled but his mind was fully functional. Ian prepares to leave with the Doctor, but a squad of guard arrive and knock Ian out. The governor locks Ian and the Doctor back into the room, electing to wait until the others have been captured before restarting the procedure.

Vicki tells Tor that she is heading back the museum to find Barbara and Dako. Tor tries to dissuade her but failing there, he has Sita go with her.

Barbara manages to rouse herself once more and helps Dako out of the gas. They emerge from the museum where they are captured by the guard in front of the TARDIS. However, Sita and Vicki arrive and shoot the guards down. Sita tells Dako of the revolution while Vicki and Barbara suggest they head to the governor's office to look for Ian and the Doctor. Other guard arrive though and shoot down Sita and Dako. Vicki and Barbara are taken to the governor's office where they are locked up with Ian and the Doctor.

The governor learns from the guards and Vicki of the revolution. He is unable to raise the barracks on the radio and when another guard heads to the armory, he confirms that the weapons cache has been raided before he too is shot down.

Tor and his men storm the museum, overrunning the guards and learning from a wounded Sita that Vicki and Barbara were taken to the governor's office. The governor and the guard commander prepare to escape in a private ship but the governor decides to kill the Doctor and his companions first. Before they can shoot them though, Tor enters and kills both men.

With the Moroks defeated, Tor wishes the Doctor and his companions goodbye. The Doctor also points out to Ian a faulty switch which was responsible for pushing the companions forward in time before properly arriving. Tor allows the Doctor to take something from the museum, a time-space visualizer, to which the Doctor believes he can repair. As they leave, the scene fades to the planet Skaro where a Dalek speaks of perfecting their own time-space machine.

Analysis

I can understand why a number of fans don't like this story. It is a very simple, even thin, story that's only three episodes long. However, to get it to four episodes, they added an interesting teaser concept of trying to avoid a possible future that results in your death. Episode One draws you in with a meta concept but it is more or less abandoned in the rest of the story except to spur a bit of dialogue or give the heroes a moment's hesitation before choosing what action to take.

All that being said, I kind of liked this story. It is a little slow and the competence level of everyone, including the production staff, is sub-par, but both the Doctor and his companions are engaging enough to buoy this story fairly well. If it had been any longer, I think the sag might have killed it badly, but as is, it's okay.

There are two primary flaws and I think they are closely related. The first is that I believe this story was written with the intent of being a more farcical comedy but that no one really realized that. Outside of the Doctor, everyone plays their lines pretty straight and the direction attempts to give an atmosphere that is more serious that intended. That creates a disconnect that you aren't necessarily aware of but just tickles the back of your brain.

The second flaw is closely tied to the first in the form of Episode One. I believe that the production staff was thrown off because of the nature of Episode One. It is a meta concept and foreknowledge of your possible death lends itself to a much more serious tone than might have been originally intended. I think the production staff read through Episode One, decided that this was a high concept action story and worked with that rather than taking the more comedic bent. So as much as we might praise Episode One for that concept, the faults of the other three episodes are somewhat rooted there.

I think the only person who understood that this story was intended as more of a comedy was William Hartnell. He is unquestionably the best thing about this story. He is serious with some good dialogue in Episode One but funny to a point of playfulness in the rest of the story. The clip of him hiding in the Dalek from Episode Two is fairly well known and typically appalls hard-core fans. I found it very funny. The Doctor does play much up for comic relief, laughing at the governor during his interrogation. Interestingly, although he played up the comedy, the lack of seriousness the Doctor has during the interrogation also has the ability to make the Doctor seem that much more powerful. He gives a sense of almost toying with the governor and it is one of the best in the whole story.

The companions weren't bad, although I think Ian and Barbara were a bit lost in this story. Vicki got a well defined role and she played it with a good level of spunk. Her forthrightness and energy played well when shaming Tor and his band of pathetics into action. Ian is the typical man of action, but I think the director confused him on how to play. There are a couple of scenes where his dialogue is playful and you can sense that they are meant for laughs, but he is playing more for tension and the whole thing doesn't really work. Barbara unfortunately isn't given much to do so her scenes are more or less forgettable.

The guest actors in this story were okay for the most part. I didn't think any of them did a bad job, although I'm not sure of the actor who played the Morok commander. He was a bit stunted in his delivery, sounding like a stuffy, British William Shatner. I did not care for the design of the Xerons. The Moroks were fine but the Xeron's odd unibrow just looked dumb. It wasn't substantial enough to make them look alien. Worse, it didn't even look real. The wigs the Moroks wore at least were believable and gave them a slightly different appearance. A drawn unibrow still looks like a drawing and took you out of the story because it looked too fake to be believable.

The direction in this story is not particularly good. There are random zooms and tight shots when a larger group shot would be better, resulting in a lot of panning of the camera. There are a number of scenes where the switch from one camera to another is just a half second late and an entrance of a character into a scene looks a bit wrong. The final battle between the Xerons and the Moroks is very weirdly shot and paced and is far closer to what you might see on a stage. Even then, I think stage play fighting might come across as more realistic. It just doesn't look that good.

One thing I did like was the music. It was more of the stock type that gets reused in several stories, but it was underplayed and had a general eerie quality that I enjoyed. I never got a sense of the music overpowering any of the scenes and they provided a reasonable ambiance to the scenes. I also didn't mind the sets. They weren't expansive and you can tell about the backdrop, but it never looked particularly shoddy and I could give that a certain suspension of disbelief.

One last point is realizing just how thin this story is overall. As interesting a concept as Episode One presents, it is essentially a filler episode as the plot barely starts. The other episodes progress, including one (Episode Three) where the Doctor is absent but the story ends with a good five minutes left in Episode Four. This leads to the long goodbye, the explanation for the time skip and the teaser for The Chase. It's almost shocking when you realize how tightly this story is compressed. I think the modern series could grab this story and remake it in one 42-minute episode with no problems.

Overall, I would say that this story is slightly below average. Episode One is an interesting set up but it doesn't really substantively go anywhere after that. I think the rest of the story is enjoyable, but it is easy to see where it could have been improved with a touch more skill and dedication. At four episodes, it's a quick watch and something you can pull down any time, but it's definitely not going to be on the immediate rewatch list.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5