The Space Museum

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015 – The Space Museum
Doctor Who serial

Amused, the Doctor emerges from his hiding place - inside the shell of a Dalek from the planet Skaro exhibited in the titular "space museum".
Cast
Doctor William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Companions Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright)
William Russell (Ian Chesterton)
Maureen O'Brien (Vicki)
Production
Writer Glyn Jones
Director Mervyn Pinfield
Script editor Dennis Spooner
Producer Verity Lambert
Executive producer(s) None
Production code Q
Series Season 2
Length 4 episodes, 25 mins each
Originally broadcast April 24–May 15, 1965
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
The Crusade The Chase
IMDb profile

The Space Museum is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from April 24 to May 15, 1965. The story is set on the planet Xeros, a subjugated planet in the Morok Empire, now home to a vast museum and a young, rebellious population.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

The Doctor and his companions experience something strange after they land on the planet Xeros. Shattered glass mends itself, footprints fail to materialize in the sand, and everything is silent. And then, inside a gigantic museum, they find something even more alarming: themselves.

[edit] 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 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 as shown in the picture, 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 then 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.

Meanwhile, Vicki has made contact with the Xerons and, hearing of their enslavement, aids them in their plans to stage a revolution. 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.

Ian has meanwhile freed the Doctor from Lobos, who had begun the process of freezing him and turning him into an exhibit. Ian and the Doctor are quickly recaptured by the Morok guards, and Barbara and Vicki are captured shortly thereafter. With all four held prisoner in the Museum, 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….

[edit] Cast

[edit] Continuity

  • Hiding from pursuers in an empty Dalek casing, The Doctor emerges from it saying, "I fooled them all. I am The Master!".
  • Ian mentions the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur, which would later feature in a Second Doctor story.
  • The Doctor seems to refer to the idea he finds cold - not just subzero temperatures - problematic. This would ease for him in later regenerations (The Infinite Quest).

[edit] Cast notes

  • William Hartnell was on holiday during the recording of episode 3. His only appearance is in the reprise of episode 2.
  • This story features a guest appearance by Jeremy Bulloch - see also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.
  • 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.
  • Peter Craze is the younger brother of Michael Craze, who played the First and Second Doctor's companion Ben Jackson from 1966 to 1967.

[edit] Production

  • Episode 1 begins with a brief reprise of The Crusade episode 4, which is currently the only surviving film footage of that episode.
  • The four episodes of the serial had individual titles. They were, respectively, "The Space Museum", "The Dimensions of Time", "The Search", "The Final Phase".
  • This is one of the few William Hartnell stories that uses the overall title story to name one of the episodes, others include: An Unearthly Child, The Edge of Destruction and The Keys of Marinus.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
Book cover
The Space Museum
Series Target novelisations
Release number 117
Writer Glyn Jones
Publisher Target Books
Cover artist David McAllister
ISBN 0 426 20253 8
Release date January 1987 (Hardback)

18th June 1987 (Paperback)
Preceded by The Faceless Ones
Followed by The Sensorites

Writer Glyn Jones appears as Krans in The Sontaran Experiment (1975) starring Tom Baker. A novelisation of this serial, written by Jones, was published by Target Books in January 1987.

[edit] Broadcast and VHS release

  • This story was released alongside the surviving episodes of The Crusade on VHS in 1999.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation

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