Doctor Who: "The Space Museum"

[pmcray]

"The Space Museum" is arguably the first ordinary Doctor Who story: the first sf four-parter. Now you might say that "Planet of Giants" was originally supposed to be a four-parter and, indeed, will be again soon after a fashion. But "Planet of Giants" is technically a sideways story, whereas "The Space Museum" is a futuristic adventure of the kind

Comments

[strange_complex]

I must say I'm actually very fond of The Space Museum. I like its heady melange of thinkiness about looking at the past (as you inherently do in a museum), anticipating the future, and working through the relationship between them in the present, and don't mind at all that no very coherent answers are ever given to the questions it raises about those things. After all, there are no clear answers to give, and attempts to do so in fantasy stories normally come across as restrictive and reductive. Meanwhile, it's one of the first stories where Vicki really comes into her own as an active, independent figure with lots of ideas and initiative of her own, and Barbara and Ian are absolutely at the height of their squeesome double-act. With all that in place, I'm genuinely puzzled as to why more people don't like it.

[pmcray]

Thinking about it last night it did occur to me that there was actually quite a lot of stuff in it. It's definitely going to be high up my rewatch pile when I finally get to the end of my marathon (I have just finished "Mawdryn Undead", so I'm not that far off the end of the classic period now). I think for me the drippiness of the rebels is the thing that gets in the way. Lots of bad Who is not very good because there's a sense that no-one is taking being in a throwaway bit of children's fluff terribly seriously. I think must come down to the director not getting the actors to gel. Contrast, in season 2, with something like "The Romans" or "The Crusade" As with "Silence in the Library", for me, I always hope for more to be done with the Borgesian conceit the writer has come up with

[strange_complex]

Yes, the acting from the supporting cast could definitely have been improved. But I guess the rebels are meant to be fairly drippy before Vicki arrives to mobilise them into action. Maybe part of the problem is that none of the guest characters are very fully developed as individuals, which certainly does contrast quite strongly with the alternative examples you've named like The Romans and The Crusade.