Transmat:Doctor Who

The Ark in Space

File:Sarah stuck in the conduit - Doctor Who - The Ark in Space - BBC

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. Steven Moffat considered it the best Fourth Doctor story, while Barnaby Edwards confessed to being "petrified of the Wirrn" as a child. Tom Baker himself has also stated that, of all the stories he'd filmed, The Ark in Space was his favourite.

Jane Tranter was an important advocate for the return of Doctor Who to BBC One in the early 2000s.

Donald Baverstock was the BBC executive who set the the wheels in motion that eventually led to the creation of Doctor Who. Essentially the original commissioner of the programme, he hired Sydney Newman and later imposed a sense of financial responsibility upon producer Verity Lambert.

The Quantel Paintbox was a graphics workstation that allowed Doctor Who to have a primitive form of colour grading in the 1980s.

John Cleese appeared in Doctor Who's highest rated televised story, City of Death, around the time of series 2 of Fawlty Towers.

The careers of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors are significantly longer in audio than on television.

Officially, only The Lodger has been explicitly adapted from a comic strip — also called The Lodger.

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However, several stories have clearly taken material from comic strips — often those in Doctor Who Magazine. The Shakespeare Code contains a good amount of material from A Groatsworth of Wit, and the notion of the Doctor absorbing the time vortex in order to spare a companion was explored in both The Parting of the Ways and The Flood.

Today in production history

• 1964 - "Flashpoint" was recorded at Riverside Studios 1, bringing Carole Ann Ford's tenure on Doctor Who to a close. (INFO: The Daleks Invasion of Earth)
• 1969 - Location filming for Spearhead from Space took place. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Third Doctor)
• 1970 - Studio filming for Terror of the Autons took place at BBC Television Centre 8. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Third Doctor)
• 1984 - Location filming for The Mark of the Rani took place. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Sixth Doctor)
• 1999 - The Big Finish audio story The Marian Conspiracy was recorded.
• 2008 - Big Finish's two-part audio story The Eight Truths / Worldwide Web was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2009 - The Big Finish audio story Echoes of Grey was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2012 - The second series of Big Finish's Doctor Who spin-off Counter-Measures was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2014 - Big Finish's audio anthology The Third Doctor Adventures was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2017 - Big Finish announced the Short Trips audio story Landbound.
• 2018
  • The Big Finish audio story The Monsters of Gokroth was recorded at the Moat Studios.
  • Big Finish's Rose Tyler audio drama anthology The Dimension Cannon was recorded.
• 2023 - Series 15 began filming.

Today's releases

• 1965
  • "Small Prophet, Quick Return" premiered on BBC1.
  • Part one of the TV Century 21 comic story The Menace of the Monstrons was published.
• 1971 - Part four of Backtime was published in Countdown.
• 1976
  • Part four of The Hand of Fear premiered on BBC1.
  • Part six of the TV Comic story The Mutant Strain was published.
• 1997 - DWM 258 was published by Marvel Comics.
• 2006 - Jack's Back and Bad Day at the Office premiered on BBC Three.
• 2008 - DWA 87 was published by BBC Magazines.
• 2009 - Part two of The Mad Woman in the Attic premiered on CBBC.
• 2012 - UNIT Dominion was released by Big Finish.
• 2013
  • The Light at the End was released by Big Finish Productions.
  • The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage was published by Puffin Books.
  • DWA 332 was published by Immediate Media Company London Limited.
• 2014
  • 12 Doctors, 12 Stories was published by Puffin Books, including the short story Lights Out, which was also digitally published independently of the anthology.
  • DWFC 31 was published by Eaglemoss Collections.
• 2015
  • 12 Doctors, 12 Stories was published by Penguin Group.
  • Toby Hadoke's Who's Round 143 was released online.
• 2018 - Torchwood: God Among Us 1 was released by Big Finish.
• 2019 - Smashed was released by Big Finish.
• 2022 - The Power of the Doctor premiered on BBC One.

Today's births and deaths

• 1925 - Actor Glyn Houston was born.
• 1928 - Actor Jerome Willis was born.
• 1955 - Actor Annie Hulley was born.
• 1969 - Writer Trudi Canavan was born.
• 1998 - Actor Christopher Gable died.
• 2010 - Actor Lewis Alexander died.