The Ark is the 23rd serial and it's from the 3rd series. It was first broadcast March 5 - 26 1965. William Hartnell is still the First Doctor. Peter Purves plays Steven Taylor and he was making 30 quid a week back then. Jackie Lane plays Dodo. She would stop working in front of the camera and become an agent. The previous serial introduced Dodo Chaplet to the crew when she entered the Tardis and was whisked off 1966 Earth. Dodo would prove to be a fairly unpopular character with the 1960's audience and the BBC wanted her gone. She would be abuptly written out of the series in The War Machines. I sure don't care for her much.
The Tardis arrives in a spaceship from Earth about the year 10,000,000. The Ark is on a 700 year journey to another planet. The Earth is going to be bathed with solar radiation and made uninhabitable. The Ark is filled with escaping humans and their animals. The sets are pretty good this time, filled with plants and props. The space scenes of outside of the space ark aren't very good. Along the voyage the humans rescue the Monoids from their dying planet. The Monoids have pretty crappy costumes with face covering long hair and a ping pong ball, with an eye painted on it, stuck in the actor's mouth. At first they don't talk, using their hands for signing. The human costumes are kind of silly, panties and ribbons of cloth dripping off of fancy collars. And that's just the men.
The humans are in charge but later the Monoids revolt and take over. Soon after the arrival of the Tardis the humans and aliens start getting sick. They're all getting Dodo's cold. Yet another reason to dislike the Tardis crew, huh. Sure the Doctor can cure them but that's just cleaning up his own mess. Too bad Dodo didn't stay in the Tardis. Thinking their work is done the gang boards the Tardis and takes off. They materialize 700 years into the future still on the Ark. The Monoids have taken over and enslaved the humans. Now it become one of those revolting rebel stories. There's even a ticking time bomb on board the ship to add some tension. I liked a bit of it but not a winner in my book. I don't find Dodo or Steven to be engaging companions, the scripts still have the characters do some goofy things, and it's dull at times.
There's are the usual handfull of extras. I haven't listened to all the audio commentaries yet. DW Fan and comedian Toby Haddoke, actor Peter Purves and serial director Michael Imison chat during the 4 episodes. I might finish listening to them before I return the disc to the library. I did go through the featurettes. One is about HG Wells and his ideas as they apply to Doctor Who. I not buying all of it and I got bored before the short ended. There's a short about creatures who only appear in one serial. The Monoids haven't come back yet. There's a good reason. They sucked, big time. The featurette on Riverside Studios with Peter Purves and Michael Imison was pretty entertaining. That was the second studio the show was shot in. It was bigger than the Lime Grove studio and much better equiped. They couldn't get a full size police box in the Lime Grove elevator so it had to be smaller than the real thing. They would move back to Lime Grove after a while. Once again, the BBC does the dumb thing.
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