N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
After a run of serials that are predominantly missing from the archive, and for the first time in many weeks, I was able to watch Doctor Who simply by popping the next DVD in the machine and pressing ‘Play’.
“Luxury”, I hear a nostalgic Yorkshireman cry: “We used t’ dream o’ watching telly programmes again; we had t’ mek do wi’ original transmission …” (I’ll stop: this is getting silly.)
There are some neat ideas going on in The Ark (check out DVD extra All’s Wells that Ends Wells to see where some of them were cribbed from): the common cold being a deadly danger to future humans, the disembodied/invisible Refusians and, in these days where we’re accustomed to the Doctor having reasonably accurate control of his ship, the notion of the TARDIS crew leaving a place and immediately landing back in the same spot hundreds of years later. First time around I thought The Plague‘s cliffhanger was one of the best in the show’s history. It’s still pretty good on repeat viewing – certainly the best bit in the story for me.
“You must travel with understanding as well as hope.”
The Doctor, The Plague
Either side of that standout moment, I have to admit I found it all fairly uninvolving (apart perhaps from the impressively staged jungle scenes early in the serial), with one group of bland humans in the first half being replaced by another set in the second half. It had me briefly wondering if the Doctor and his companions had arrived on Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.
Even the mop-tops cyclopes that are the Monoids aren’t as interesting as I’d hoped they’d be. I was amused to see Monoid Two have the same flipper-trouble that afflicted one of the Voord back in The Keys of Marinus. But if they’re not falling over the scenery, by the end the Monoids are falling over themselves trying to seize power from each other. (Needless to say, a treatise on the Monoids as a spent and fractured revolutionary force is beyond the scope of this blog post.)
And I’ve no idea what’s going on with Dodo’s accent – it fluctuates wildly from one scene to the next! Whatever is going on, the Doctor seems to disapprove, threatening to teach his new companion to speak English properly once the current crisis is all over.
Still, she and Steven do end the serial wearing some rather fab gear!
