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DVD: Dr. Who - Ark In Space
BBC - 1975, 90 minutes plus many extras.
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
Tom Baker became the fourth doctor in the wildly popular yet insanely under budgeted BBC television series, Dr. Who, with a 1974 series entitled Robot. In that series his shoulder was broken. Trooper that he was, he jumped right back in and filmed the next adventure, Ark In Space, before the public ever even saw the first episode of Robot. To watch Baker move, dive, run, and carry himself in the way that would become his trademark, you'd never know his shoulder was broken, and that's an injury that causes a great deal of pain. Remarkable.
Almost as remarkable as Ark In Space itself. The production is wonderful, a triumph of imagination over budget with corners being cut in clever ways we never would have known about had it not been for the added features of the commentary tracks and the interview with set designer Roger Murray-Leach. The story finds the Doctor and his companions, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) materializing aboard a space station after Harry fiddled with some controls. Harry is something of a fiddler. Instead of a simple trip to the moon, the three find themselves far in the future, long after the destruction of the human race, floating around in space on what amounts to an ark filled with the people chosen to repopulate the earth once it was safe to return. Sounds simple enough, but nothing ever is. It seems someone or something has been messing with their alarm clocks, and, as it turns out, that's the least sinister of the goings on. As the leader and his med tech awaken and begin to ask questions, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry are hard pressed to provide adequate answers. Meanwhile, it begins to dawn on all concerned that the earlier visitors may not have left the ark after committing their atrocities. Can the Doctor put this puzzle together in time to save the last 200 humans and keep Sarah, Charlie and himself from being "dealt with" by the suspicious people they're trying to help? Mmmm...Betcha.
Everything about this DVD sparkles. The picture and the sound are superb, and judging by other BBC video footage from the era, I'm betting the legendary Dr. Who Restoration Team did their restorative magic on this one. It's absolutely vibrant. As usual, the extras section is loaded, with commentary track featuring Baker, Sladen and producer Philip Hinchcliffe; brand new CGI footage of the ark that is impressive (though I didn't catch the reason it exists); an interesting CGI blueprint of the ark; a BBC trailer; close-captioning, which I highly recommend using when listening to the commentary track, as it displays the script, not the commentary you're hearing, thereby allowing you to keep tabs on the plot; text information, which runs much like close-captioning during the show, giving you a great deal of facts from the most important things to know to the kind of trivia people at Dr. Who conventions live for.
My favorite special feature, which is included on most of the Dr. Who DVDs, is Who's Who. It's a series of photographs of the main characters from the series you've just watched. Selecting a photograph brings up text information on that actor, including a biography and a tv/filmography. I had no inkling that I'd seen Ian Marter (Harry) before. Reading Who's Who, I learned that I had. In fact, I just reviewed a Dr. Who series featuring Marter last month. He played an officer on the SS Bernice in Carnival of Monsters. Never would have guessed.
One of the great things about Dr. Who is that each Doctor has been allowed to develop his own character without regard to past Doctors, and as a result we viewers all have our favorite Doctors. I enjoy the work of several, but Tom Baker's my favorite because of the humor he injected and the joy with which he seemed to play just about every scene. My hat's off to anyone who can make that feeling come across even in a series filmed while nursing a broken shoulder.
© 2003 - DJ Johnson