For most 1960s Doctor Who, time travel was a simple narrative device, existing to take the TARDIS crew into either the past, or the future. Historicals occasionally had a mention of changing history, but the future stories rarely had any discussion regarding this sort of thing. "The Space Museum" is a bit of an exception, with the plot broadly concerned with the travelers trying to avoid their fate as exhibits in the titular |museum|. The concept is a novel one for the Hartnell era. However, it grates a little on the back of the lecture on changing history in "The Aztecs" - surely, this is still changing the time stream, regardless of the perspective of the travelers (or the audience)? This part is rather crass, to be honest, though it is an interesting change.

The opening episode is a strong one, with the museum a fantastic setting, and there are some nice visuals and a suitably sinister atmosphere. There are all sorts of weird exhibits, as well as a nice touches like the Dalek (the show already showing some rudimentary knowledge of the weight of its' fictional mythos), leading up to a bizarre cliffhanger as the travelers see themselves on display, and the time tracks slip back into place.

Sadly, after this, aside the TARDIS crew trying to avoid ending up in such a position, this plotline fades into the background, and we are left with two rather uninteresting alien races. The Moroks run the museum and control the planet Xeros, while the native Xerons are trying to overthrow them, and the whole thing disintegrates into a standard 'help the rebels against the oppressors' story, with lots of creeping around corridors, regulars getting split up and/or captured, and so on. It is all rather uninvolving. Both races are poorly realized - the Moroks have daft hair, while the Xerons are probably the series' all-time low - generic, cheapo costumes and a token attempt at "alien-esque" weird eyebrows. Neither race feels like anything other than a much of humans in way-out clobber. None of the actors brings anything to the sketchily written parts, and the story gets worse as it plods along. The third episode is probably a low, consisting of little more than a protracted search for The Doctor (William Hartnell was on holiday for a week). I appreciate that the old boy needed a week off, but it would be nice if something better than simply having the plot tread water for an episode had been provided.

Only the regulars bring anything extra to proceedings, with Hartnell having one of his better days. The Doctor is shown to be smart, working out what has happened with the time tracks quickly (one of the retrospective oddities of the whole Hartnell era is the surprising lack of knowledge shown by the character. It was a necessary audience device I suppose, but often it takes a committee meeting of The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan/Vicki to piece together what's going on, especially in the futuristic stories), and Hartnell is amiable throughout. Even the scene where The Doctor hides in a Dalek casing is sweet, rather than farcical. Ian Russell is, as per usual, fantastic as Ian, by now fully into his 'man of action' role, and one of the few companions genuinely able to carry whole plot threads without The Doctor. Jacqueline Hill, however, is sidelined, acting largely as a foil for Ian. Unlike Chesterton, poor Barbara was never really developed beyond being a maternal, sensible woman, and she is left with little to do here. Genuinely occupying four regulars was clearly becoming too much by this stage. Vicki gets a bit more to do, getting an unconvincing love sub-plot with the Morok Tor. After all the early hints about her being an intelligent child of the future and an intellectual match for The Doctor, now the character is becoming stupider by the episode, and very little is conveyed to suggest she isn't just a contemporary teenage girl. Maureen O'Brien, not for the first or last time, is utterly unable to rise above the limitations of the material.

It all adds up to a disappointing mess. The first episode has some interesting ideas, but these are junked very soon afterwards for a generic storyline. It looks cheap, even for the era, and there is next to nothing to suggest this is anything but a filler story. While it is just about adequate enough, it's hardly essential viewing, lacking for the large part imagination and drama. In a word, inessential.

Review written: 14/07/2006
"The Crusade"/"The Space Museum" Boxed Set VHS @ Amazon.co.uk