15: The Space Museum

Before Watching

Why is it that pretty much all of the Hartnell stories that I really wanted to watch when I was a kid have such terrible reputations? Possibly it might have something to do with the fact that they’re all sci/fi or alien worlds stories, as opposed to Historicals. The Beeb knew how to do the Historicals. Look at the Historicals we’ve had up to this point – Marco Polo – The Aztecs – The Reign of Terror – The Romans – The Crusade. Alright, I prefer some to others, but they’re all well made pieces of drama, with never less than solid performances from all involved, and in some cases excellent performances. Why couldn’t they always manage this with other stories?

And so to The Space Museum. Now, when I read the synopsis of this as a kid – the TARDIS crew come face to face with themselves stuck in cases in the eponymous museum – I thought it was a wonderful idea, and really wanted to watch the show. I still feel that it’s a great idea, and so I’m interested to look at how it’s done.

Another point of interest is that this is a story that dovetails into The Chase, the following story. even though, up to this point, the Hartnell stories tend to end with a cliffhanger leading directly to the next story, I think this is the first time that two of them are so closely linked. Other examples, if I recall correctly would be Frontier in Space – Planet of the Daleks , and Keeper of Traken into Logopolis.

After Watching

Well, that wasn’t as bad as I’d heard – but it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, either. I think that if I could just write about the first episode, then I would be applying some superlatives to this particular post. But I can’t, and so I can promise that superlatives are going to be rather thin on the ground.

I did enjoy the first episode, though. The TARDIS lands on a planet where the view is dominated by the building housing the Museum. The crew decide to investigate. As they walk towards the museum, they notice that they are not making any footprints. They are passed by several humanoids, who act as if they are not there. So they begin to explore the museum, eventually finding 4 glass cases, with their frozen bodies on display. As individual episodes go it is one of the best I’ve seen in the whole of the Hartnell era thus far. The only trouble is that the three episodes become concerned with the doings of the Moroks and Xerons. 

Right, the Moroks are the Bad Guys. Ok? They are all in white. The Xerons are the good guys. They are all in black. Clever, innit? Oh, and in case that’s too confusing for us we can identify that the Moroks are villains because they speak with South African accents (this was 1965, remember) are a little overweigh and have strange hairdos. The Xerons are nice blond boys and girls, and they have double eyebrows, so they’re alright. The actual backstory is quite interesting. The Moroks are a conquering warrior race, who have built the Space Museum on a conquered planet to display the spoils of conquest to the Universe, I suppose. Over time the Moroks have become decadent, lazy and complacent – and the Museum seems to have become run down and rather neglected. For one thing in four episodes it has no visitors other than the TARDIS crew. The Xerons are the oppressed race whose home planet the Museum has been built on. They long to overthrow the yoke of cruel oppression they are forced to wear by the Moroks, who make them sweep up the corridors, and presumably wheel the tea trolley around.

What “The Space Museum” does do, though, is to add another strand to the ‘you can’t change History’ debate. What it turns out has happened to the Travellers I that they have slipped their own time stream – well, something like that, and seen their own future. Now, once the time stream sorts itself out, the Frozen Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicky all disappear from their cages. They are forced to ask themselves the question – is this definitely going to happen, or can we change our own future? This does give the viewer a problem. We know that they’re not going to end up in the cases, because that would be the end of the show for good if they did. So, not able to exploit much tension from that source of plot, we get this rather tedious story about the Xerons’ attempts to overthrow the Moroks. Which might work a little bit better if we cared, but I found I didn’t. For one thing the Moroks aren’t mean enough for me to care that much whether they are overthrown or not. For that matter, the Xerons aren’t oppressed enough for me to care whether they succeed. This sub plot is tedious stuff that makes you glad that it isn’t a six parter.

The last episode does serve the purpose of introducing an important plot element that is necessary to kick start “The Chase”. In the museum the Doctor finds a Space Time Visualiser. He has always wanted one (presumably he just gets socks for Christmas and Birthdays like the rest of us). It’s kind of like a telly that can tune into any event, any time, any place anywhere. What does it tune into? Why, nothing less than the Daleks preparing their own time machine, with an assassination squad to seek and kill the Doctor.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought that this ending was a wee bit cynical. It’s kind of like the show is saying, ‘Yeah, we know the last three episodes have been a bit pants, but look – we’ve got the Daleks for you next week! You like them, don’t you?”It’s like the naughty man in the overcoat tempting you into his car with a bag of sweets and a promise that he’ll take you to see some puppies. Whether it will have such potentially sinister consequences we’ll find out when we watch it.

What have learned?

The future is changeable – without any room for argument now.

The Daleks’ technology has advanced at such an astonishing rate that they have been able to build their own time machine.