By Jessica Holmes

Spring has sprung, and rather than going outside to look at the flowers, I’ve been on my settee watching science fiction serials. All is as it should be. So, what do we have this month? Let’s take a look at The Ark, written by Paul Erickson and Lesley Scott. Going by my records, we've never had a woman writer credited on Doctor Who before. Hopefully Lesley Scott will be the first of many!

I will admit it's clever to get the actors to hold their 'eyes' in their mouths.

THE STEEL SKY

We open in a lively forest, various critters scampering about. There’s a lizard, a toucan, a weird cyclops-thing in a bad wig… the usual rainforest menagerie, basically.

There’s even a Dodo.

The new addition to the crew of the good ship TARDIS is the first out the door, taking her sudden change of surroundings entirely in stride. After all, they’re only a little way outside London.

London, well known for its population of Indian elephants. Dodo presumes they’re in a zoo enclosure. That would make sense if not for the ugly chap with the table tennis ball in his mouth.

I think they might have just gone through the entire production budget for the series. It's not often we see real live creatures on Doctor Who, much less actual elephants. Perhaps they went to the zoo and snuck a camera in the picnic hamper?

The Doctor notices that this jungle seems to be missing something vital: the sky. Add that to the trembling ground and the unusual buildings in the distance, and the full picture becomes clear. They’re not at the zoo. They’re not even on Earth. They’re on a spaceship!

I’d say that’s nothing to sneeze at, but Dodo can’t seem to stop. The Doctor immediately gets to do some surrogate grandfathering and scolds her for not using a handkerchief, then proceeds to ask just what in the world she’s wearing.

I think the doublet and mismatched stockings ensemble looks quite good on her, in an odd way. It’s like a medieval spin on the Mod look. Very Twiggy.

Their presence hasn’t gone unnoticed though, and one of the creatures (‘Monoids’ being the correct nomenclature) informs their human bosses of the intruders. Baffled, the humans decide to bring the travellers in for questioning.

Back in the forest, the Doctor has moved on from critiquing Dodo’s fashion sense to nagging her about her improper English. Well I’m sorry Doc, but we can’t all talk in perfect RP. Snob.

The Monoids round up the wayward group, and bring them to the humans. The Doctor doesn’t criticize their fashion sense, though he should. They look like they’re wearing party streamers. Also, they aren't around for long so I didn't bother writing down their names. It's really not important.

I take an immediate dislike to the leader of the humans, who explains that they’re in a spaceship carrying the Earth’s population to a new world, as the old Earth is soon to be engulfed by the dying Sun. As for the Monoids, they came as refugees to Earth from a similar situation, offering their service in exchange for their survival. The humans took them up on the offer, which strikes me as exploitative, and the leader's smarmy attitude makes me wonder if this service is at all voluntary.

It's hard to capture smarminess in a still image, but I think this epitomises it.

Unfortunately for both the humans and the Monoids, the Doctor and company have brought more than just well-wishes. You see, other than having to flee the Earth, life for the future humans is pretty good, annoyances like the common cold having long since gone the way of the dodo…

And now the Dodo's back.

She keeps sneezing away as the leader of the humans has a nice chat with the Doctor. This is a generation ship, its journey expected to last seven hundred years. Why so long? They’re picky.

The new planet, Refusis II (catchy) is the only one they can find which has a climate just like Earth’s. I hope it’s mostly like the Mediterranean. I wouldn’t fancy living on the Planet Of The English Drizzle.

They’ve loaded the whole of Earth’s population onto this ship, down to the last ant. What with all the peoples of the world on this ship, it’s funny that every single human they’ve encountered is white (and going by accent and language, English). Funny, that.

It’s a touch more complicated than that, though. Obviously it’s impractical to have billions of people running about a spaceship, so most of the population have been shrunken to microscopic size and stored in trays, while a small group remains full sized, guiding the ship to its destination. Ah, so the reason that the ship seems to have nobody but white Brits (and aliens) onboard is that they’re in charge and everyone else is… luggage.

I see.

It’s not all fun and games and dubious implications, however! The Guardians have even found time for a bit of art. They’re working on a colossal statue of homo sapiens, begun on Earth and expected to be completed around the end of the voyage. The projected design is really…something.

Something like a giant half-naked Beatle holding a grapefruit, that is.

The idea’s nice at least.

All’s not well aboard the Ark, alas. It seems a strange disease is spreading among the crew of the ship, all the way to the very top of the chain of command. When a Monoid dies and the commander of the ship is taken ill, the Doctor and company are arrested.

Dodo really should have brought her hankie.

THE PLAGUE

Fearing that they’re all doomed, the Guardians imprison the Doctor and his companions. The Doctor reassures an upset Dodo that if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his, as she had no way of knowing about the danger. Steven wonders aloud if this is the first time this has happened, spreading a disease to a vulnerable population. Could it be that the Doctor is a time-travelling Typhoid Mary?

The Doctor’s verdict is to try and not think about that too much. See, this is why you should always get your jabs before travelling, and quarantine where necessary. Time travel responsibly, chums.

The virus rages through the ship, afflicting the Monoids worst of all. The Guardians’ microbiologists are at a loss, as all data on the common cold was lost in a war long ago.

At death’s door, the commander tells his daughter to make sure the voyage goes ahead. Even on the brink of death he seems smarmy. Perhaps he’s just an over-actor.

Following the funeral of the first Monoid to die of the disease, the Guardians commence with the trial, calling Steven to give evidence.

They accuse him of coming to spread the disease on purpose, suspecting the travellers of being natives of Refusis II, come to sabotage their mission.

Oh, so Refusis II is inhabited, is it? What exactly is the plan when the Guardians arrive? Are they going to ask nicely for a place to stay, or will we just have colonialism in space?

Steven starts to look rather sweaty under the interrogation, but methinks that’s nothing to do with the grilling they’re giving him.

The Guardians almost come around to believing Steven when he says it was an accident, but then disaster strikes. A Guardian has died of the fever. With one of their own dead, the Guardians readily find Steven and his friends guilty, not even allowing his advocate, the commander’s daughter, a word in edgeways. Just once it’d be nice if the Doctor and company ended up somewhere with a decent judicial system.

The Guardians rule that the group shall be ejected from the ship, and Steven picks the perfect moment to faint. It would seem that he too has come down with the fever.

The Doctor begs to be allowed to try and save Steven and all the other afflicted, and the Guardians initially refuse his offer, until the commander, who has been watching all this unfold from his sickbed, orders them to let the Doctor go and give him everything he needs.

To be on the safe side, they make the Doctor use Steven as his guinea pig. Well, better him than hurting a real guinea pig, I say.

The Doctor comes up with a plan to recreate the old vaccine (as unlikely as a vaccine for the common cold sounds), for which he’ll need some ‘animal membranes’. The Monoids collect what he needs, and help the Doctor as he perfects the formula. As he mildly condescendingly puts it, they’re more knowledgeable than most people realise.

I’m not sure being smart makes their indentured servitude (or worse) any less wrong.

The Doctor tests his cure out on Steven, and rather than waiting to see if it cures or kills him, he immediately goes and starts treating other patients. He’s just asking for a malpractice lawsuit.

It takes an hour, but eventually the medicine kicks in and Steven, the commander and everyone else who got sick are on the mend.

With the commander back on his feet, the journey can continue, and the Doctor prepares to depart. It looks like everything is going to be okay.

Or is it?

The TARDIS dematerialises, only to rematerialise in what appears to be the same spot. However, upon leaving the ship to investigate, the group find the ship deserted. One look at the now-completed statue tells them how long they’ve been gone: seven hundred years.

It seems they’ve missed a lot in the interim.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that massive statue wasn’t meant to have a Monoid’s head.

THE RETURN

After some searching, the group finally find what’s become of the passengers of the Ark. The Monoids are now on top, the humans having become their slaves.

Oh, and the Monoids can talk now. That’s handy, though I had rather enjoyed an alien race who communicated through signing.

They soon run into a Monoid, who takes them to the leader of the Monoids, One. Finally, some names I can actually remember.

From One, they learn that although they did cure the initial outbreak of the fever, a mutated form developed, which ended up weakening the Guardians enough for the Monoids to overthrow and subjugate them.

Rumour soon spreads among the enslaved Guardians that there are time travellers onboard, but not everyone believes it. However, it’s soon proven true when the Monoids bring the time travellers to the, uh, ‘security kitchen’.

Well, could be worse. They could have been dumped in the lavatory jail.

With their guests having been shown to their accommodations, the Monoids discuss their plans for when they land on Refusis II. One is planning to destroy the Guardians when they land. Not really sure why. Probably spite.

In the kitchen, Dodo asks why the humans haven’t fought back. Wow, gosh, I bet they never thought of that (!)

One’s second in command, the creatively-named Two enters the kitchen, and the Guardians try to snatch his heat gun away. However, Three comes in moments later and shoots one of the Guardians, foiling the attempt. Two orders the Doctor and Dodo to come with him. They’ll be part of the landing party, and Steven will remain here, to ensure that the others behave themselves.

They head down in a pod with Two and another Guardian, and find a world both verdant and completely empty…or so it would appear.

Unseen to both the audience and the characters, something enters the ship, sits down, and fiddles with the controls before leaving again. The only sign that they’re there is a slight depression in the cushion of the seat, and some moving levers.

On reflection, it might have been a mistake to try and show you something invisible.

Unable to find any signs of habitation, the Doctor declares that the colonisation can go ahead. Two, subtle as a brick, laughs and says it might not take as long as the Doctor expects.

He might as well have thrown back his head and done a dramatic cackle.

Moving a little further afield, the Doctor spots a castle in the distance, and wonders why none of the inhabitants have shown up. The group investigate the castle, finding it to be in excellent condition, but deserted. Two is convinced the Refusians are hiding, and like the monster he is he knocks over a vase of flowers. What did the flowers ever do to him?!

The Doctor tells him to behave himself, and an unseen voice concurs, before an invisible force sets the flowers back in their proper places.

Back on the ship, One and Three discuss their plans to deal with the humans, and find the most roundabout way possible of saying they’re going to blow up the ship with an atom bomb. And guess where it is? It’s in the statue.

They go on loudly discussing it, not realising that one of their human servants is watching everything on the ship’s surveillance cameras. He rushes to the kitchens to report what he saw, though the rest of his species aren’t best pleased to see him. It would seem he’s a collaborator. However, Steven advises that they should hear him out, and he tells them all about the bomb, but alas he couldn’t see from his viewpoint where it was hidden. They’ll have to find the bomb themselves.

Down on the planet, the Doctor’s having a nice chat with his new invisible friend. The people of Refusis II have known about the coming of the Ark for a while, and built facilities for the humans to use. A solar flare rendered the inhabitants of Refusis II invisible and incorporeal, and they’re lonely, unable to interact with one another. Essentially, it’s a planet of ghosts.

That seems a bit convenient. It’s basically just sidestepping any discussion of the ethics of settler colonialism, which would be very interesting to cover in a science fiction setting.

Two goes to report back to the Ark, and realising the Monoids’ plans for humanity, his human servant attacks him, trying to stop him from warning the others about the native inhabitants. However, he loses the fight, dying what appears to be an agonising death.

Two starts to make his report using the pod’s communications equipment, and then something goes a little bit wrong.

The pod blows up.

THE BOMB

Rather than sending another scouting party to find out what happened to Two, One decides to go ahead with the landing. However, some of the other Monoids have reservations about this whole plan for colonisation.

The Doctor and Dodo meet back up with their invisible friend. The Refusians blew up the pod because they’re a peaceful bunch. Mostly. They don’t much fancy handing their planet over to the Monoids, given that they made such a bad first impression.

The Refusians are still open to the humans living on their planet, as long as the humans manage to regain control of the Ark.

They’ll need to get out of the kitchen first. Luckily, they have a plan for that. When the Monoid collaborator returns one of the Monoids’ eating trays to the kitchen, one of the Guardians sneaks out the door behind him. Once he’s gone, the Guardian on the outside opens the door for the rest of the group.

Well, that was simple. I’m surprised they didn’t try that sooner. You’d think there’d be guards.

The Monoids prepare to head off, setting their bomb to detonate in twelve hours– more than enough time for some escaped humans to find it. I wonder why they left such a long timer. Did they leave themselves a little extra time in case they get down to the planet and realise they forgot to bring their toothbrushes?

The Monoids find the remains of Two’s pod on Refusis II, and the Doctor and Dodo observe from a distance as Four discusses his plans to confront One and return to the Ark. After they go, the Doctor and Dodo steal aboard the pod and use its communication equipment to talk to Steven. The Doctor promises to send the landing pods back to the ship so that the humans can escape, and he’ll also find out where the bomb is hidden. How? Well, his invisible friends can help with the former, and for the latter, the Doctor does what he does best: he has a little chat.

One starts to interrogate the Doctor, but Four throws a spanner in the works as he picks his moment to confront One. Four fears that One has led them to certain doom, and wants to return to the ship. However, One taunts him that he’ll have a hard time getting the bomb out of the statue, so it’s not as if he has any choice. Undeterred, Four heads off with a few of his own allies, and One takes his forces to pursue the errant subordinate, leaving the Doctor and Dodo behind.

One of the pods makes it back to the Ark, and Steven comes up with a plan. They can’t all fit in the pod, so half the Guardians will go down to Refusis II to help the Doctor, and the others will look for the bomb. Practically daring fate to hand him an ironic death, the collaborator says he’s not going to risk his life searching the ship, so the others agree he can go down to Refusis II.

Down on the planet, One and his allies confront the defectors, engaging in a firefight that leaves a number of them dead. The Guardian pod lands in the middle of the skirmish, and the collaborator is the first one out.

…And the first one gunned down.

The Monoids continue to fight, and the other Guardians sneak out of the ship and have the good sense not to go running up to the nearest Monoid, so they manage to find the Doctor and Dodo and distract their guard.

Four is the last Monoid standing by the time they make it back to the pod. He doesn’t even bother to stop them. He looks exhausted, which is quite impressive acting given that he’s mostly made of rubber. Casting his weapon aside, he allows them to pass.

The group race back to the Ark, the Doctor sending Steven a message on the way there. But how are they going to get the bomb out of the statue?

Well, apparently the Refusians are immensely strong space ghosts. Our invisible friend picks the statue up as if if were made of polystyrene, and launches it out of the ship, there to safely detonate.

So, all’s well that ends well. The Refusians insist that the humans and Monoids must live together in peace, and the Doctor beats us over the head with the aesop of the story: don’t make a whole group of people second-class citizens, or they might rise up and return the favour.

It’d be a bit stronger if the narrative treated the Monoids as equal to the humans, but I don’t think it does. We don’t really get any Monoids to sympathise with. They don’t even have real names, only numbers. We don’t really get an explanation from the Monoids themselves about what made them rise up (other than ‘because they could’). What’s more, their leadership is shown to be worse than the human leadership, and the humans end up back on top in the end anyway. The Doctor’s little speech at the end gives the illusion of balance to a script which, when you step back and look at the whole thing, is quite solidly on the Guardians’ side.

And the speech does feel a little patronising too, like the Monoids were a bunch of children the Guardians were meant to be looking after.

You can tell it's an important speech because he's doing the thing with his lapels again.

Little speech given and lessons learned all around, the Doctor and company depart, leaving the Guardians to start building their new world, and from the way they’re talking about the Doctor, they might be about to start a cult.

Aboard the TARDIS, Dodo changes into some more normal apparel, and then something quite odd happens.

The Doctor fades away with a sneeze, before vanishing entirely. He’s still around– at least, his voice is. But the man himself is nowhere to be seen! It would seem that the time travellers are in mortal peril.

…Again.

Final Thoughts

I'm not sure there's much else to say on The Ark that I haven't already covered (she said, then continued for another few hundred words). The production value is quite impressive, with large sets and the procurement of live animals, but the costuming doesn't match up.

The politics of the story would appear to have a colonialist bent, what with the humans heading for an inhabited world and just assuming they can move straight in. Then there's the matter of the human-Monoid relationship, which I already mentioned, but it ties back into the colonialist sentiments, the sense of paternalism even promoted by the Doctor himself. With the sun setting on the British Empire, perhaps we ought to turn a more critical eye to these imperialist attitudes and narratives.

I don't feel qualified to speak further on the matter, so I'll leave it to you to discuss.

We've not seen enough of Dodo for me to make any real judgements on her. She doesn't have much to do in the story, besides setting the whole chain of events in motion. Still, that's not even by any deliberate action of hers. It's a simple matter of biology. That's not what I'd call an active contribution to the plot. I also didn't much like how  critical the Doctor was of her. I know he's pretty much desperate for another Replacement Susan, but they've only just met and he's already scolding her on her dress and diction. Steven seemed to warm up to her a bit by the end of the serial, but he wasn't exactly welcoming at first.

A thought did occur to me as I was typing up this conclusion. I was pondering how the argument between Steven and the Doctor seems to have been dropped. I realised that it hasn't. This serial is a direct response to the last. Steven pointed out the Doctor's lack of regard for the people left behind at the end of their adventures, and this serial reinforces his point. It's effectively two stories in one. There's the story of the plague, and then the consequences that the Doctor isn't normally around to see.

Other than that, the story is just… decent? The Doctor would scold me for saying so, but that's the most apt word for it. It's not boring, but it's not really anything extraordinary. Well, they can't all be winners.

3 out of 5 stars