The Space Museum (TV story)

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 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 the 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 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.

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.

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.
In the museum, the Doctor finds (and is given) the Time-Space Visualiser.
"Time, like space, although a dimension of itself, also has dimensions of its own." says Vicki.

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.

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

Ealing Television Film Studios

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

When they exit the TARDIS, the main characters cast shadows across the mountains in the distance.

Continuity

The Doctor manages to fix the Time/Space Visualiser in The Chase and uses it again in BFA: The One Doctor.
The Faction Paradox use a similar device in EDA: The Ancestor Cell to show Fitz his future.
A device like the Time/Space Visualiser is seen in TN: Ghost Ship.
The TARDIS jumps its own time track again in PDA: Festival of Death.
In NA: No Future it is revealed that the Monk was once an adviser to the Moroks.

DVD, Video and Other Releases

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

UK Release: July 1999 / US Release: January 2000

PAL - BBC Video BBCV6805

NTSC - CBS/FOX Video 2000020

NTSC - Warner Video E1399

Novelisation

Main article: The Space Museum (novelisation)

Novelised as The Space Museum by Glyn Jones in 1987.

External Links

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