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“The Ark: A Tale of Two Halves, Timey-Wimey Twists, and Space-Covid Chaos”

The Ark stands as an intriguing blend of science fiction concepts, socio-political allegory, and a dash of comedic charm. While uneven in its execution, the story's dual-structured narrative and unique setting offer a compelling (if not entirely satisfying) classic Doctor Who adventure.

The Premise: Humanity's Great Escape and an Unforeseen Twist

The TARDIS crew lands on an interstellar ark, humanity’s last hope as the remnants of Earth journey to a new planet. The early episodes establish the ark as a marvel of scale and ambition, with Earth’s human and Monoid inhabitants coexisting as masters and servants. A simple but effective twist occurs when Dodo inadvertently spreads a common cold—deadly to a population without immunity.

However, the most striking narrative shift comes in the second half, where the TARDIS returns to the ark centuries later. The Monoids, now oppressive rulers, have overthrown their human counterparts. This unexpected time jump cleverly examines the unintended consequences of the TARDIS crew’s earlier actions, showcasing the ripple effects of time travel—a theme rarely explored in early Doctor Who.

Strengths: Ambition, Atmosphere, and an Unforgettable Cliffhanger

The standout aspect of The Ark is its bold structure. The transition from a survival tale to a political allegory about oppression and rebellion elevates the narrative. The cliffhanger at the end of Part Two—revealing a Monoid statue where a human one once stood—is one of the Hartnell era’s most memorable moments, epitomising the story’s theme of change across time.

Director Michael Imison deserves praise for his innovative use of forced perspective and miniatures, creating an impressive sense of scale on a limited budget. The ark’s interiors feel expansive and lived-in, while the lush jungle-like opening sequence sets a compelling mood.

Peter Purves (Steven) delivers a solid performance, particularly during the trial scene in Part Two, where his character’s intelligence and resolve shine. Jackie Lane’s Dodo, while divisive, brings energy and confidence to the story—even if her overconfidence occasionally grates.

Weaknesses: Underdeveloped Ideas and Mediocre Execution

Despite its ambition, The Ark falters in its execution. Many of its sci-fi concepts—miniaturised humans, a deadly virus, invisible aliens—are tantalising but underexplored. The Refusians, for instance, are intriguing as invisible beings but ultimately feel more like a plot device than a fully realised element of the story.

The Monoids, while conceptually interesting, are hampered by unconvincing design and inconsistent characterisation. Their transformation from mute servants to verbose tyrants is compelling in theory but falls flat due to wooden dialogue and lacklustre performances. Monoid One, the story’s main antagonist, is one of the least memorable villains of the Hartnell era, relying on staccato acting and clichéd power-hungry motives.

The pacing, while brisk overall, stumbles in the final act. The bomb subplot, introduced as a ticking-clock dilemma, fails to generate the urgency it requires, leading to an anticlimactic conclusion.

Themes: Consequence and Coexistence

The Ark shines in its exploration of the consequences of time travel and the fragile dynamics of coexistence. The story’s moral—how the oppressed can become oppressors—is a timeless allegory that resonates beyond the confines of its era. However, these themes are often overshadowed by the story’s uneven tone and lack of depth in its secondary characters.

Performances and Production

William Hartnell is back to his familiar form, delivering a mix of charm, frustration, and occasional line flubs. His Doctor’s confusion over the TARDIS rematerialising in the same place—a rarity in the series—adds a touch of humour and showcases his resourcefulness when faced with a trial or scientific challenge.

Special credit goes to the production team for their ambitious design work. The ark’s sets and the decision to use a real elephant (even at the cost of the director’s job) lend the story a sense of grandeur.

📝Verdict: 68/100

The Ark is a bold experiment in storytelling, with its dual-structured narrative and thought-provoking themes setting it apart from other Hartnell-era tales. However, its underdeveloped ideas, lacklustre villains, and uneven pacing hold it back from greatness.

Random Observations:

• Well, I love that the Doctor finally admits that he can’t get his companions home even if he wanted to—it took him almost three whole seasons to realise this.
• A shout out to Michael Shear, who makes his Doctor Who debut as Rhos in this story. He would later return in a more prominent guest role as Scarman in Pyramids of Mars and as Lowe in The Invisible Enemy—and he’d also appear in the Big Finish audio The Stones of Venice alongside Paul McGann.

The pacing of the four episodes is perfect, there are a lot of ideas being played out here.

The Monoids also make their mark as the second ever genuinely interesting looking alien race in the show, it took over 100 episodes - but they did it!! I'm surprised these guys never came back in a serious way as their design is magnificent.

The eco-system on a spaceship its refreshingly sci-fi after the previous story. The Dystopian future in which the Earth is about to be burned up, and on top of this an 'ancient' illness will kill the remaining humans is such a daring and forward thinking concept, bringing to mind white plagues brought to indeginous populations. It is up to The Doctor to sort out a mess that he has brought to this culture.

The resolution to the cliffhanger in part 3 is a revelation. Everything seems to rap itself up, they resolve the situation then find themselves 700 years in the future in the same place. There is a giant statue of a Monoid instead of what should have been a human. Brilliant! The Monoids are scarier and more malevolent 700 years in the future and they have taken power.

After Steven's moral outrage at the end of the last story it would have been positive if they'd returned to that issue, as he has gone from "storming out forever" to never mentioning it again.

The alien force end up being their own undoing, turning on each other. Thankfully there is a moral cautionary ending, where the humans are made to understand that they too enslaved the alien race, giving motivation to the monoids to act in the way that they did.

It ends with another great cliffhanger with The Doctor suddenly fading - what's going on - who is attacking them?

I quite enjoy this classic story. It has some interesting ideas for its space ark and these themes are explored decently with some interesting moral ambiguity to all of it. Dodo, a relatively weaker companion by the show's standards, does shine a bit here, and Steven has some fun stuff to do. The Doctor doesn't have as much to do here but Hartnell is always entertaining.

This is an easy one to get through and most of all, it looks great. I think the design of the Monoids is fun, and the set itself really feels like this artificial environment on a spaceship given the limited effects of the era. I got a good sense of all these moving parts and how it comes together nicely from the experience, even if it kind of feels like they used up all the money near the end of the storyline and that even bled into the Celestial Toymaker's budget, apparently.

A story with some clever ideas and a strong identity, but that doesn’t make it an automatic masterpiece.

The Doctor, Steven and new companion Vicki land in a weird jungle landscape. They soon discover they are on a spaceship that has collected all of earth’s population and is on its way to a new home.  But it seems Dodo wasn’t the only new companion aboard the Tardis. There’s something living in her nose….

Structurally, this story is split right through the middle. We have one plot in the first two episodes and another in the last two. Between the two plots, the tardis has travelled 700 years into the future. I love this idea. It allows for great worldbuilding around a location, since we’ve seen it in different times. But from a practical point of view, it is also a great excuse to get more out of the used sets and locations. If used well, I can only see benefits. I wouldn’t mind it if Doctor Who tries this approach more often.

Anyway, after leaving the Jungle, the party discovers the crew of the spaceship. They have shrunk the entire population, except for themselves. Allowing them to easily move a large quantity of life to their new home.

The crew does not only consist of humans, however. With them are the Monoids, who basically serve as slaves. We’ll come back to them later.

Problems arise however, when we discover that Dodo is sick and has brought germs with her on the spaceship. Since the advanced human civilization has long wiped out the common cold, they have absolutely no resistance to it. Both human and monoids quickly fall ill, and the party is blamed for the sickness. After a bit of back and forth, the Doctor saves the day by killing the virus. Big party moment. Soon after, the party takes off again.

On its own, this story is fine. The threat of a viral infection is interesting and all the setup is done well  (Although I wish we could've had a small nod to Preslin from last time, since he discovered germs). The problem lies mostly in the back and forth that follows. You might’ve noticed that in my short summary, I jumped pretty quickly from problem to eventual solution. That’s because not much happens in between those moments. It’s the usual “can we trust them?” shenanigans you’ve definitely seen before. And that’s pretty boring.

There’s one moment in the bickering that doesn’t quite sit right with me, however. Eventually, the fate of the party is put to a vote. And the crew votes to throw them off the spaceship. I am heavily resisting an Among Us joke. But this vote is overruled when the sick leader comes on the speaker and announces that they should just let the Doctor solve the problem. All of them quickly accept this.

I can’t say that I really like the implications of that moment. That the ideas of one leader overrule the vote of the majority. There might be some elements of mob mentality in the vote, and I think that could be tackled, but I don’t think having one leader announce his opinion is the right way to go about it. I realize I’m probably thinking too deep about it, but it felt very off when I was watching it. Maybe if the leader had made a stronger case about the trusting nature of humans, or if he called for a revote after his plea, I wouldn’t feel so irked.

Other than that, the story is fine. An original threat and a cool location. The only real problem is the dawdling in the story and maybe the resolution.

So, with our party once again celebrated as heroes, we leave for the Tardis, only to end up in the same location again. But how much time have we covered? An answer is soon presented thanks to a giant statue the humans were building. It was supposed to be finished when they were nearing the new planet, and it is now done! So we should be close to the end. Except for one little oddity: The statue does not look like the original human design. It looks like a monoid.

So what happened in those 700 years? Well, apparently Dodo’s viral infection had some long term consequences, which allowed the monoids an opening to take over the ship and reverse the roles. The humans are now the slaves.

Like I mentioned previously, I like this way of storytelling. It builds up the location. And the information about the statue we got in the first part servers as a solid connector between the two parts. It is a fun setpiece.

But sadly, it although the concept is solid, I don’t love the execution. The second plot is very standard. Monoid are bad and push the party around while we land on the new planet. A planet inhabited by an incorporeal species that is very welcoming and has even build homes for the new inhabitants of their planet. But the incoporeals are worried that the new inhabitants will be violent. Which makes the Doctor and co immediately vouch for the human race.

And that doesn’t sit right with me. The monoids are currently in charge, yes. But in the past, they were enslaved by the humans. So why are the humans presented as a more peaceful option, when they have done the exact same thing as the monoids. On top of that, it was only in the previous episode that we almost saw them throw innocent people into space because of mob mentality. So why is it so easy to accept them as the initially superior survivors on the planet?

One of the reasons I’m so hung up on this, is that we’ve seen similar concepts before. Think back to “The Sensorites” where the doctor was a diplomatic mediator between the humans and the alien Sensorites. Looking to cover both sides and make the right arrangements for both to thrive. A similar solution is not found here. For 99% of the story it is “monoid bad, human good”. It is only at the end that the Doctor mentions that both should live in peace together. Which is way too late.

What I would’ve liked is a more similarity between the two species. In the first part of the story, the enslavement of the monoids is barely touched upon. It is accepted and not questioned. It is only when the roles are reversed, that it becomes a problem.

But let’s be real, we’ve seen these people in the past. They were dicks. They tried to throw innocent people into space. Several of them were clearly malicious during the trial as well. They were never perfect. So let’s make slavery a problem in both halves. Show that both sides aren’t perfect and make the similarities more obvious. Make them use the same weapons against each other. Make them degrade and look down on each other. Hell, make it so the humans can only speak using sign language, just like the monoids in the past. Make it completely equal.

Then, in the second part of the story, you can talk about how slavery is always bad. That revenge can be understandable, but that cruelty against cruelty is the wrong approach. I know that might sound ambitious for 60s Doctor Who, but I would not mention it if I didn’t think it would be realistic. Similar topics have been tackled. Again, look at the Sensorites, or the incredibly flawed Galaxy 4. Tackling topics like this has been part of the show since the start, even if it is sometimes flawed. I wish it had been done here, because now the story looks incredibly hypocritical.

It's not like there isn’t time to do this properly either. Like the first part of this story, it second part can also feel really padded in places. Just moping around on location without getting to the point. At times, it feels slower than “The massacre”, which currently can only be watched as a series of stills.

On the character side, things are a bit more interesting. The one-off cast isn’t that noteworthy, but we get some fun moments with our party. Mostly revolving around Dodo.

Both the Doctor and Steven get pushed into a more parental role. The Doctor because he wants to, Steven because he has to. Steven is now a worn traveller with loads of experience under his belt. Meanwhile Dodo is kind of oblivious. It’s an okay dynamic for now. But I do hope we get to a bit more fallout of the last few stories. This currently feels very temporary.

The Doctor, on the other hand, tries to be a grandfather again. But it isn’t as warm and loving as it was with Vicki. He’s a bit more hardened. A bit sterner. He’s clearly trying, but most of the time, it’s just complaining. Yet sometimes he gets it exactly right, which makes it feel like he’s not being mean, but unsure. Again, let’s see what the future brings.

As for Dodo herself, if I had to describe her in one word, it would be “Oblivious”. She doesn’t seem to care about what’s going on and isn’t easily impressed. Still very two dimensional. Like I said last time, that might be the point, but I need a bit more time to pin her down.

And that’s all “The Ark” has for us. A clever concept with a mediocre main story and some story points that just keep gnawing at you. It could’ve been more, but I don’t consider this one to be all that bad. It’s just not all that good either. For the characters, this feels like a midpoint. For the viewers, it mostly feels like a mediocre break from the darker elements.

I like this one! This one was quite the bold move and a slight departure from the much darker execution of the last two, despite this being equally a very dark Story in places.
It’s not as good as either of the previous two, but it’s really excellent. The first Part being all about a simple cold which is spreading rapidly is a fascinating dark Idea for Who to handle. Maybe not as interesting as it could be, but for the two parts where this is the Focus, I rather enjoyed myself. And of course having the second Episode have that Cliffhanger was brilliant really. The second Half of this Story is a bit lesser for me. I really like the Design of the Monoids, such a really splendid design. And of course the Production, as it is, is really well-made and feels rich, they even got an Elephant for this Serial!!
And maybe a Hot Take, but I really enjoy Lane’s Dodo here, she isn’t really a deep Character at all, but such a fun presence here, definitely one of her better Outings.