The Space Museum (TV story)

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The Space Museum was the seventh story of Season 2 of Doctor Who. It was the first story to deal with the dimensions of time as well as space.

Synopsis

The TARDIS jumps a time track and the travellers arrive on the planet Xeros. There they discover their own future selves displayed as exhibits in a museum established as a monument to the galactic conquests of the warlike Morok invaders who now rule the planet. When time shifts back to normal, they realise that they must do everything they can to try to avert this potential future.

Vicki helps the native Xerons to obtain arms and thereby to revolt against the Moroks. The revolution succeeds and the travellers go on their way, confident that the future has been changed.

Plot

The Space Museum (1)

The Doctor examines the TARDIS exhibit.

The TARDIS arrives near a vast Space Museum on the planet Xeros, but has jumped a time-track. The First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki have a series of bizarre experiences for the time travellers as they venture outside and into the Museum – not least that they see but cannot be seen by the militaristic Moroks who run the museum, or the servile indigenous Xerons who work for them. The museum contains fascinating exhibits, including a Dalek shell, but the most worrying is the four travellers themselves encased and on display. Quite soon afterward the time track slips back and, though the exhibits of the TARDIS and the four travellers vanish, they still find themselves inside the Museum.

The Dimensions Of Time (2)

The Doctor emerges from hiding.

The head of the Moroks, Lobos, is a bored and desperate museum administrator and colony governor, who reflects sourly that the glories of the Morok empire are past. Like Rome, the Empire became decadent and declined. The Moroks have found the TARDIS and now start tracking down the occupants who have, as usual, become separated. The Doctor is the first to be found, but evades their interrogation tactics; thinking of images that are not relevant. Lobos decrees that he shall become an exhibit and the Doctor is taken for preparation.

The Search (3)

Ian confronts a Morok.

Vicki has meanwhile made contact with the Xerons and, hearing of their enslavement, aids them in their plans to stage a revolution. The Moroks step up their resistance, but it seems luck and cunning are on the side of the Xerons. 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. The Moroks try to use deadly zaphra gas to poison the rebels and seize control of the situation, but this too is a failure.

The Final Phase (4)

Ian has meanwhile freed the Doctor from Lobos, who had begun the process of freezing him and turning him into an exhibit. They find Barbara and Vicki in the Museum’s endless corridors, but are soon all captured together. It looks like the time track prediction of their future as museum exhibits will soon be realised after all.

Help comes from the Xeron revolutionaries, who kill Lobos and the other Morok captors. The Xerons then go about destroying the hated Museum as the TARDIS crew slips away. They take with them a time/space visualiser as a souvenir. On the planet Skaro, their departure is noted by the Daleks.

Cast

Crew

References

  • The Doctor claims he was with James Watt when he discovered steam power.
  • The Moroks used a paralytic called Zaphra gas during the creation of their Empire.
  • The museum has a Dalek in it. The sign claims it comes from Skaro, which would mean the Moroks had successfully landed there and taken trophies.
  • In the museum, the Doctor finds (and is given) the Time-Space Visualiser.
  • "Time, like space, although a dimension in itself, also has dimensions of its own." says Vicki.
  • The Doctor calls up an image of a Penny-farthing and African Buffalo.

Story notes

  • All episodes exist in 16mm telerecordings
  • Episode 3 was held in the BBC Film & TV Library when it was audited in 1978
  • Negative Film Prints of all 4 episodes have been found
  • A clearer print of episode 1 was returned to the BBC in 1981
  • The episodes of this story went by different titles during the production stage. Episode 1 was originally known as The Four Dimensions of Time and Episode 4 was originally known as Zone Seven.
  • William Hartnell does not appear in Episode 3.
  • Of all the William Hartnell stories with individual episode titles, this is the only one for which only one overall story title has ever been used. See also Disputed story titles.
  • Episode 1 begins with a brief reprise of The Crusade episode 4, which is currently the only surviving film footage of that episode
  • Features a guest appearance by Jeremy Bulloch who is better known for his appearance as Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi
  • Richard Shaw, who spoke with a Cockney accent, was cast as Governor Lobos, but was asked to deliver his lines with a BBC accent. His accent slips only once, when he bellows at an underling use "maximum securi'ee!" He later appeared as Cross in Frontier in Space with his own accent
  • The incidental music was all from stock recordings rather than being specially composed for the story
  • In a nice piece of internal continuity, William Russell starts gently banging his fists together as he leaves the TARDIS interior set and carries this through to the next scene, following a recording break, as he emerges from the police box onto the Xeros surface set; this gives the effect of a continuous piece of action, and helps maintain the illusion that the TARDIS interior really is inside the police box shell.
  • This was one of the stories selected to be shown as part of BSB's Doctor Who Weekend in September 1990.
  • In episode two a character refers to the Doctor's friends as his companions. This is one of the earliest, and possibly the very first time, that the Doctor's associates are referred to on screen as companions.
  • Episode 1 features a rare use (for the 1960s) of a filmed insert of an interior location, specifically a room in the TARDIS, due to the need to show a special effect (Vicki dropping a glass and the glass repairing itself) that at the time could not be rendered on videotape. The switch from video to film was rendered unnoticeable in the filmed recordings of the serial that were circulated after its UK broadcast and when the story was recovered in the 1980s, but is once again quite noticeable following the serial's vidFIRE remastering for DVD release in 2010.
  • The four episodes were produced at the same time the Dr. Who and the Daleks film was in production.

Ratings

  • The Space Museum - 10.5 million viewers
  • The Dimensions of Time - 9.2 million viewers
  • The Search - 8.5 million viewers
  • The Final Phase - 8.5 million viewers

Myths

  • This was a low budget due to the high cost of some of the other stories this season (The story had a similar budget and cost about the same to make as the other 4 part stories at the time)

Filming locations

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • When they exit the TARDIS, the main characters cast shadows across the mountains in the distance.
  • The Doctor states that their clothes are the same in the exhibit, therefore their arrival is soon. It could be at any point in time.

Continuity

Timeline

Home video and audio releases

DVD releases

  • This story was first released on DVD in the UK on 1st March 2010 as part of a boxset with The Chase. The one disc set includes a restored version of the story, as well as the following special features:
  • Commentary by William Russell (Ian), Maureen O’Brien (Vicki), Glyn Jones (Writer) and Peter Purves (Moderator).
  • Defending The Museum
  • My Grandfather, The Doctor
  • A Holiday For The Doctor
  • Coming Soon Trailer
  • Radio Times Billings
  • Production Subtitles
  • Photo Gallery
  • UK DVD 2010 Cover

    UK DVD 2010 Cover

  • UK DVD 2010 Boxset

    UK DVD 2010 Boxset

VHS releases

The Space Museum was released on VHS together with the surviving episodes of DW: The Crusade.

UK Release: July 1999 / US Release: January 2000
PAL - BBC Video BBCV6805
NTSC - CBS/FOX Video 2000020
NTSC - Warner Video E1399

Novelisation and its audiobook

Space Museum novel.jpg
Main article: The Space Museum (novelisation)

See also

External links

Template:Season 2

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Dalek television stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Dalek story" is one in which one living, authentic Dalek plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story. For this reason, stories such as The Space Museum are not counted due to the Daleks' appearance being defined by their importance to following stories, while stories such as The Wheel in Space and The Waters of Mars are absent due to the Daleks' only contribution being references to past Dalek stories. Stories like The Wedding of River Song, Hell Bent, Once, Upon Time and The Vanquishers are also not included due to the Daleks' appearance being restricted to a single scene of no consequence to the plot of the story, while the TV movie is also absent due to the Daleks only being heard from off-screen.
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Because of the ubiquity of this race, no attempt will be made here to list every appearance in every medium. Instead, we focus on televised appearances here, and invite you to explore a complete list of appearances elsewhere.

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