Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.X

A New Frontier: Making of The Ark in Space (2013)

30 minutes

People interviewed

• Philip Hinchcliffe, producer
• Roger Murray-Leach, designer
• Wendy Williams, Vira
• Kenton Moore, Noah

Topics discussed

• the history of the development of the story that became The Ark in Space
• the design of the Wirrn in their various forms
• the scene that was deleted from the story in which Noah asked Vira to kill him
• the reaction to the Ark in Space from viewers

Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.04

The Ark in Space - Part Four

The Doctor escapes from the Wirrn that used to be Noah thanks to Vira. Noah tells them that they should leave the Ark in the shuttle. They refuse because it would mean leaving all the cryogenically frozen humans.

The Doctor and the others make their way to a control room and come up with a plan. They will run a cable from the shuttle to the cryogenic sleep chamber. Sarah volunteers to lay the cable down even though it means crawling a hundred or so meters through narrow tunnel.

Sarah gets through the tunnel. The Doctor and the others use the cable and the power from the shuttle to electrify the door to the cryogenic chamber. Wirrn Noah tries talking the Doctor and the others into leaving the Ark in the shuttle, once again. They refuse, once again.

Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.03

The Ark in Space - Part Three

Noah reaches out to Vira from the control room. He instructs her to accelerate the revivification process. He struggles to maintain control as the alien part of his body starts to assert control. Vira is ready to follow the orders but the Doctor says, no. They won't have enough time to wake everybody up.

Harry takes over where Vira left off and wakes up the two remaining Med Techs, Rogin and Lycett. The Doctor and Harry dissect part of the dead alien that lurched out of the closet at Harry. The Doctor gets a piece of its brain and hooks it up to a video monitor. Nothing happens when they turn on the power.

The Doctor hooks himself up to the video monitor and the piece to alien brain. This time it shows them part of what happened to the dead alien, a Wirrn. A live Wirrn pupa starts to break in to the room where everyone, other than Noah, is located. Lycett is killed by the Wirrin that is still in pupa stage.

Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.02

The Ark in Space - Part Two

The creature that lurches forth from the closet is dead. The Doctor and Harry turn back to trying to revive Sarah. Vira, one the of sleepers, wakes up. She demands to know what the Doctor and his companions are doing on the space station.

The Doctor and Harry try to explain. They ask about reviving Sarah. The power starts to fail. The Doctor rushes to the power room to see what can be done. There he finds a larva like creature inside the solar stack. He rushes back to find the others.

Noah, the leader of the station's crew is the next sleeper to wake up. He is very suspicious of the Doctor and his companions. He goes to check on a couple things. He finds the Doctor in the station's control room and shoots him with a stun blast from his pistol.

Vira helps the Doctor and Harry to revive Sarah. Noah goes to check out the solar stack. The creature that the Doctor saw breaks out of the solar stack and infects Noah by touching him.

Vira wakes up Libri, another of the sleepers. He freaks out when he looks at Noah. It isn't clear why at the moment but later Noah shoots Libri. The episode ends with Noah pulling his hand out of his pocket. It has turned green and no longer looks like a human appendage.

Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.01

The Ark in Space - Part One

The Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan land in the TARDIS on a space station. The Doctor's original plan was to take them to the Moon but Harry messed with some of the equipment in the TARDIS and (according to the Doctor) that threw them off course. 

They start to explore the room in which the TARDIS materialized. Sarah goes through a door that opens up. The door closes behind her and gets trapped in a room without any oxygen. It takes a couple minutes for the Doctor and Harry to figure out what happened and get the door opened. The door closes trapping all three of them in the room.

The Doctor repairs something and gets the oxygen turned back on. They lay Sarah down on a couch. They go into the other room. Sarah dematerializes while they are gone. The Doctor and Harry and kept busy by a security system that tries to electrocute them. They go looking for Sarah once they have dealt with the security system.

They eventually find Sarah in a room filled with people cryogenically frozen. She too is frozen. Harry goes looking for something to help them unfreeze Sarah. He opens a door and a giant insect like creature lurches forth at him.