It's easy to forget that pre-promotion of Doctor Who stories just didn't happen in the 1960s. People tuning in for "The Smugglers", for instance, won't have read in the tabs that the lead actor's packing it in ASAP, so the ending of "The Tenth Planet" would have been a surprise. Only people who kept old copies of the Radio Times would ever have much idea how long a story was going to be (think about it, "The Daleks' Master Plan" was on air for nearly as long as Christopher Eccleston's Doctor...). It's in this sort of context that the story structure of "The Ark" works, with the episodes following two by two (I put that in so no-one would email me trying to be funny, alright?), the big twist being that at the midway point the TARDIS moves 700 years forward in time, but remains stationary in space. This loses a little when it's been given away in numerous magazine articles and books. That said, there should probably be more to a story than a simple narrative twist. It might have been made to be watched once and then burnt so the BBC could keep the rent down, but that's not the context we watch it in now, so no dice Erickson.

There is more to "The Ark" than the twist, just not a lot more. It's a very old-fashioned story, even moreso than Whittaker's material could be, with a very "gosh wow the future" feel to all the dialogue. The plot that carries (well, drags...) the first couplet is that Dodo gives her cold to the future survivors of the human race, who evolved past fevers and the like millennia ago and thus aren't equipped to deal with it. It's all a bit comic book to be honest, a victim of the technology that's been developed in the forty years in-between - it's hard to believe that somewhere there wouldn't be a super-computer crammed with information, even covering extinct diseases, and that something like the Ark wouldn't be packed with all manner of quarantine and decontamination systems. The storyline's rather hokey, and it's not helped by the lax script. Most of the first two episodes seem to be devoted to the TARDIS crew standing around noting how things have changed in several million years, and the old padding standby of "These strangers are trying to kill us!". None of the Guardians are remotely interesting characters, with an average cast unable to do much with their generic archetypes (wise old commander, impetuous number 2, trusting girl, etc.).

The first half also introduces the Guardians' slave race, the Monoids. I say introduce, they're more just sort of there. The species is given next to no background - did they get conquered? Did they just turn up and offer their services? Were they planning to take over from the start, or did they just wake up one morning and think 'All the Guardians are dying of flu, let's take over after generations of being fairly content as labourers'? They look pretty stupid as well. Some effort's gone into the texture of the skin, but it looks too much like a bloke in a baggy rubber suit, and the obviously fake eye and dodgy pudding-bowl haircuts just make them look comical. Their switch to villains later in the piece doesn't help, as they're shown to be a bunch of total idiots. For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I also find the idea that they just number themselves as laughable, and the attempt to set up some tension between the dynamic, well-fleshed out characters 1 and 4 falls flat when it turns out absolutely no-one cares.

The pace does get less leaden in the second half, but any attempt at imagination is junked in favour of a standard 'human rebels vs. alien bastards' storyline. For some reason it all feels very Star Trek. The second alien race introduced, the Refusians, are cheap in every possible way. The explanation given for their state of being is rushed at best, and the species being invisible doesn't mean there's suddenly loads of space on the planet - they still take up space! It's cheap get-out-of-jail-free card for our heroes, too. And why exactly do they have to spend hundreds of years flying to Refusia? Because it has exactly the same conditions as Earth - why not save a bit of effort and go somewhere closer to the homeworld that, I don't know, has a slightly higher annual rainfall, or a 26-hour day? It's all very contrived and very trite, as if the writer had the basic idea in his head, and instead of working out the finer points, decided to press on regardless and hope no-one noticed the gaping flaws in common sense that run through the scripts.

Even the regulars aren't brilliant. The Doctor really doesn't seem interested in many of the events of the story, and while Hartnell seems a little disinterested, a lot of this is down to the back seat the script has him take, and the oddly distant dialogue. I've said elsewhere that I was warming to Jackie Lane, and that I enjoyed her in this story. Well, I did first time round, but for the 'review' viewing she set my teeth on edge, just generally being a superfluous little girl. Only the splendid Peter Purves comes out with credit, and he's criminally under-used, especially later on when he spends his time locked in a room with the enslaved Guardians in something of a plot dead-end. It just doesn't seem the regulars actually do too much, and yet unlike some stories this accusation an be levelled at (e.g. "Revelation of the Daleks") it isn't in favour of supporting characters with depth.

While there are some good ideas buried in there, and some interesting visuals (the statue is a good way of showing the shift of power, for example), there's just too much crass stupidity going on for it to be enjoyable. The story lacks both urgency and conviction. A lifeless filler.

Review written: 18/07/2006