Last week I did a review of the Daleks! Genesis of Terror (Lost Stories), and today I’m looking at its companion piece The Ark. Both of these are early versions of stories from Doctor Who’s legendary 12th series.
I enjoyed aspects of the Dalek release but was left wondering at the end what the point was as it wasn’t the full story because the full script didn’t exist. This was as different kettle of fish.
The Ark is based on the now legendary Ark in Space episode, an episode that both Steven Moffatt and Russell T Davies have said is their favourite story from the original run (they are wrong it didn’t even make my top 10 😉 ). The original televised story introduced us to the Wirrn, who are interestingly absent in the first script, It should also be said this is the script put forward by John Lucarotti and is so different from the televised script that he isn’t even the named writer, Robert Holmes is. Some aspects are the same, the idea of a ship and cryogenically frozen crew, the crew being the last of humanity, and some of the names are the same, including calling the captain of the ship Noah.
The plot though, is different, though some of it obviously comes from the same source. Terry Molloy plays a dual role as the main big bad and the captain. There are some interesting things about this that hark back to the time when the script was written, before the casting of Tom Baker there was the thought to go back to an older Doctor, and not necessarily an “action Doctor”, and this was the reason that they cast Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan so he could do the running about and fighting. In this story it’s noticeable that Harry does a lot of the running about and Tom’s Doctor is more sedate.
It feels like Tom Baker is trying a slightly different performance to his Doctor to give us a look at what might have been. I’ve also felt it’s the best performances from Sadie Miller and Christopher Naylor so far.
Conclusion
A really interesting look into the Doctor Who that never was. Streets ahead of the Dalek one and recommended for fans of 70’s classic Who. If you can only buy one from this set, it should be this one!
Available from Big Finish.