Doctor Who: The Space Museum

The Doctor and his companions want to avoid their future.

The Doctor Who serial The Space Museum gets off to a strange, somewhat unnerving start. The Doctor (William Hartnell) and his travel companions - schoolteachers Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), who met the Doctor in 1960s London, and young orphan Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), who joined the Doctor in the 25th century, on a planet called Dido - find that their time and space-hopping vehicle the TARDIS has materialized in a new location sooner than expected... and during the journey, all four of the TARDIS's passengers have somehow undergone a wardrobe change. Even more troubling than an unexpected change of clothes is the fact that a broken glass dropped by Vicki reassembles and rises back into her hand, perfectly fine. Like time reversed itself.

Venturing out of the TARDIS, the travellers find that they're inside a space museum, just like the title of this serial promised us. Oddly, the place is completely silent. But it's not unoccupied; people walk past the travellers, but can't see them. Don't hear them. And the Doctor and his companions can't hear what these people are saying, even though they're clearly speaking to each other. It's sort of like what ghosts might experience. 

Thankfully, the Doctor is able to come up with an explanation that doesn't involve them being ghosts: the TARDIS has "jumped a time track", dropping them into the fourth dimension and giving them a glimpse into the future. They haven't actually arrived at this place yet, but they're going to soon. And when they do arrive, they'll have to make sure to avoid this future they're seeing, because in this future they have all been captured and put in glass display cases in the museum. The four travellers are treated to the nightmarish vision of themselves, their faces void of expression, standing in these cases like mannequins. Then the TARDIS really does arrive, the displayed versions of the characters vanish, and the travellers' physical forms catch up with them so they're no longer in the fourth dimension. They're in the space museum with knowledge of the future they need to avoid, and now the others in the museum will be able to see and hear them, and they'll be able to hear these people. It's pretty trippy stuff, one of the wackier concepts to be presented on this show so far.

That's all in the first episode of this four-episode serial, an episode that shares its name with the overall serial. The three remaining episodes - The Dimensions of Time, The Search, and The Final Phase - aren't quite on the same level as that first one. Once the travellers have caught up with themselves, the story turns very familiar: we find that they've landed on a planet ruled by an oppressive group of people, and they end up siding with the group of rebels who are planning to overthrow their oppressors. Like the Predator being drawn to heat and conflict, the TARDIS seems to be drawn to situations like this.

The space museum is on the planet Xeros, which was a place of peace and knowledge until the war-mongering Moroks from the planet Morok invaded, conquered, enslaved the natives, and turned the place into a record of their wars. That was so long ago, hardly any Moroks even care to visit the museum anymore, and the governor of the planet / museum curator Lobos (Richard Shaw) is bored, counting the days until he can return to Morok. The rebel Xerons are represented by a bunch of youths around Vicki's age, so of course she's the first to befriend them. Among them is future Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch.

Too much of this serial is spent on scenes of characters wandering around the museum, pondering their situation and hoping they won't get caught. Barbara doesn't get much to do, but Ian gets to play the hero and Vicki gets a nice moment where she displays impresisve technical skills. This is nearly the end of the Doctor, who seems to be getting increasingly playful as Hartnell's time in the role goes on. For me, the best thing about The Space Museum beyond that unique first episode is a scene where Lobos tries to question a restrained Doctor, but isn't able to get much out of him - not even when he's using a device that shows him the images that come to the Doctor's mind when the questions are asked. The Doctor toys with his captor, and once he knows this device is in use he has even more fun toying with governor.

The Doctor's playfulness is also on full display in a scene where he hides inside the armor of a Dalek that's in the space museum. That scene isn't the only Dalek action we get in this serial; the final episode ends with a teaser, the sort of scene that Marvel will stick in the end credits of a movie, that sets up the next serial. There's so little going on in three of the four Space Museum episodes, is sort of feels like this serial was just a bit of insubstantial filler to kill time as the season built up to the event the producers knew viewers would go crazy for. The return of the Daleks.