Serial Q, in four parts:
- The Space Museum - 4/24/65, 10.5m viewers
- The Dimensions of Time - 5/1/65, 9.3m
- The Search - 5/8/65, 8.5m
- The Final Phase - 5/15/65, 8.5m
Sound Bytes:
"Apart from the stunning first episode, this is a complete load of rubbish." - Mark Campbell, The Pocket Essential Doctor Who (Pocket Essentials, 2000)
"The only real character to speak of is the Morok Governor Lobos, whose principal trait is his boredom with life on Xeros -- a sentiment with which the viewer can only sympathize." - review from The Handbook: The First Doctor by Howe, Stammers and Walker (Virgin: 1994)
Comments:
I find myself struggling to write about The Space Museum. It's generally regarded as one of Doctor Who's all-time turkeys, but I can't summon sufficient bile to bomb it. Nor can I heap heretical praise upon it. This review will probably fall flat due to my sheer ambivalence toward this weird little adventure, but I'll soldier on nonetheless.
Just about every review of The Space Museum mentions that it starts strong, and I won't dispute that here. The first episode ends on a shocking note, as the Doctor and his companions are allowed to glimpse a possible future wherein they become embalmed museum exhibits. Their task is to avoid this grim fate, but they're not exactly sure how it can be prevented. As a result of their ignorance and confusion, our heroes start second-guessing every action they take, always uncertain whether they are leading themselves closer to a gruesome death.
This scenario is creepy, Twilight Zone material indeed. Unfortunately, the script doesn't stick with it. Writer Glyn Jones shoots himself in the foot (so to speak) by introducing a gang of tedious student rebels who are opposed to the museum's curators. "Rebel" characters almost never work on Doctor Who; they tend to be so boring and sincere, and are defined solely by their causes. They stink up the joint not only in The Space Museum, but also in many future stories like Planet of the Spiders, The Horns of Nimon and State of Decay. Young rebels are particularly bad, since most teenagers can't act.
But how's this for a fun nugget of trivia -- one of the rebels in this story, Tor, is played by Jeremy Bulloch, who went on to become Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back. Fans of Star Wars love Boba Fett because he's such a bad-ass, so I imagine they'd be traumatized to see the same actor here in Doctor Who, playing a young twit with huge fake eyebrows and a flashlight ray gun...
Anyway, even though the rebels don't work, I'm reluctant to agree with the critical consensus that The Space Museum disintegrates after its first episode. There are interesting scenes later on. At one point, Ian becomes convinced that he can't die by violent means, because he's apparently destined to become a museum exhibit. Pumped up by this illusion of invincibility, he attacks an armed guard and beats the hell out of him. The scene is suspenseful because most viewers will probably realize that Ian's reasoning is wrong -- he can still be shot and killed because he has an infinite number of possible fates.
In another good scene, the bad guys attempt to read the Doctor's mind using a special interrogation machine that creates "pictures" of his thoughts. The wily old man confounds them by projecting ludicrous images into the machine, including a unicycle and some amusing stock footage of walruses (or are they manatees?) This is one of Hartnell's best comedy bits, and it ends on a wonderfully menacing note; the villains quickly lose patience with his antics, and send him to die in the embalming chamber.
There's one other thing to praise about The Space Museum. Vicki, who is usually a borderline useless companion, makes herself valuable by breaking into an armory and giving the rebels access to weapons. I always like it when the companions manage to do good work.
Weighed against these positive elements, there's the drag involving the rebels, plus another big negative -- Hartnell disappears during part three, because he was on vacation while it was being recorded. His absence hurts the story. Another sore point is that the ending feels rushed, and the villains don't really get the comeuppance they deserve.
So there you have it: The Space Museum is half good, half garbage. It's a puzzler, all right; I've just realized that the museum is utterly unimportant to the plot, which makes the story seem all the more slapdash and strange. I fully understand why most fans loathe this, but at least it tries, which is more than I can say for the following story.
Grade: B-