The Ark in Space

The TARDIS materializes in what seems to be a deserted space station hanging dead in space. One the Doctor manages to bring the systems back online, though, Sarah is caught up in an automated process which puts her into a cryogenic chamber along with the survivors of the human race. Earth has been devastated by a solar holocaust and the station - Space Beacon Nerva - as been used as a sleep chamber for a chosen group of humans to wait out the solar flares and return to Earth. But sometime during their long sleep the humans were visited by the wasp-like Wirrn, and the station is now a breeding ground for the monsters with the sleeping humans a ready made source of food. With only a few revived humans to help him, the Doctor has to find a way to stop the Wirrn before they overrun the station and move on to claim Earth.

The Ark in Space starts off as a tremendously claustrophobic story with the TARDIS crew emerging into an airless confined space within Nerva; with the power cut by the Wirrn to keep the humans from being revived the station is in darkness with some creepy shadows, but when light does come back it is glaring and harsh. The story later has one of the show's  most iconic visuals ever with a sweeping view of space along the ark's corridors and the towering height of the cyrogenic chambers seeming to stretch far into the vertical distance. And it was all gleaming space age clean sterile white, along with the sharp uniforms worn by the crew (and Sarah after she was processed). The future was always bright and shiny in the 70s.

 The episode was set well over 10,000 years into the future, the TARDIS accidentally flung for into the future by Harry touching part of the console, and it parallels the William Hartnell episode The Ark in its theme of the human race surviving Earth's destruction, although here the story is taking place far too early in time and the Earth is not being consumed by the fireball of the sun, just slightly toasted by the flares. This would be a loose start to the future history stories of Doctor Who with the humans fleeing Earth and striking out across the stars, although the series had already touched on the colonization era of humanity with stories such as Colony in Space, The Mutants, Frontier in Space and Death to the Daleks, although on the time scale indicated here these events would be long past by the time of the solar flares.

Series continuity where the future was concerned wasn't really on anyone's mind back then it seems, and in a way it didn't really matter as the future history episodes were spread out and often interspersed between historical and contemporary time episodes. To cling to it too much might have limited some of the creative flow of the scripts, although I will forever be trying to sort them into some kind of an order. The new series when it returned in 2005 made a much better go of keeping things in line, although some of those episodes would suggest stories like The Ark in Space would take place even further in the future to allow room for the new series stories.

Character continuity, though, is observed well and although it's only his second full story, Tom Baker is the Doctor through and through. His manner remains that of a fool at times, although it is obvious he is not. His impatience with the humans he is trying to protect comes through often, mostly with Harry, but his determination to stop the Wirrn from consuming the whole species doesn't waver.

The Wirrn are a fantastic monster; like some wasp species they lay eggs in their prey so there is food ready when they emerge, which is the plan for the sleepers on Nerva. The Wirrn have the capability to absorb knowledge from the creatures they consume, and now having happened upon the sleeping humans they are poised to overnight become a technologically advanced race without having to do any of the heavy lifting. Unfortunately they are not seen again in the series as an enemy but do get a return treatment a few times in future Big Finish episodes.

But with the surviving humans either asleep in a space station or so far out in space they have forgotten they came from Earth, what has happened to the planet below?

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