Production Code: Q
First Transmitted
The Space Museum - 24/04/1965 17:40
The Dimensions of Time - 01/05/1965 17:50
The Search - 08/05/1965 18:00
The Final Phase - 15/05/1965 17:40
Plot
The TARDIS jumps a time track and the travellers arrive on the planet Xeros. There they discover their own future selves displayed as exhibits in a museum established as a monument to the galactic conquests of the warlike Morok invaders who now rule the planet. When time shifts back to normal, they realise that they must do everything they can to try to avert this potential future.
Vicki helps the native Xerons to obtain arms and thereby to revolt against the Moroks. The revolution succeeds and the travellers go on their way, confident that the future has been changed.
Episode Endings
The Doctor and his friends have found themselves displayed in the Morok museum. As they watch, time shifts back onto the correct track. The exhibits vanish; the Moroks find the TARDIS and the travellers' footprints in the sand; and the Doctor portentously announces that he and his companions have arrived.
Having failed to obtain any useful information from interrogating the Doctor, the Morok governor Lobos has him taken away to the preparation room to be converted into a museum exhibit.
Ian uses a stolen gun to force a guard to take him to Lobos, who tells him that the Doctor is in the second stage of preparation and nothing now can help him. Ian insists on being taken to the Doctor and, when Lobos complies, Ian is astounded by what he sees.
On an apparently barren planet, somewhere in space, a Dalek reports that the TARDIS has left Xeros. A Dalek voice emanating from a communications panel states that the Daleks' own time machine will shortly be in pursuit and that the Doctor will soon be exterminated.
Roots
J.B. Priestley's time plays.
The complexities of time lines, as presented in The Twilight Zone.
The theory of relativity.
The chair that traps a sitting person was a common Renaissance subterfuge (now best known in John Ford's tragedy The Broken Heart).
Dialogue Triumphs
Vicki : "We must have changed the future... we must have done!"
Barbara Wright : "Must we, Vicki? Or were all the things that happened planned out for us?"
Dialogue Disasters
Morok : [One of the great stupid lines in Doctor Who.] "Have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?"
Continuity
The TARDIS has a 'lights' control on the console. The Moroks used a paralytic called Zaphra gas during the creation of their Empire. After this collapsed their Space Museum remained on Xeros (three light years from the Morok planet.) The museum includes a Dalek. Vicki knows of the Daleks from history books stating that they invaded Earth '300 years ago' [from her point of view: she's about 40 years out. See The Rescue, The Dalek Invasion of Earth].
Ian uses Barbara's cardigan (and the Minotaur legend) in an attempt to find a way out of the museum (see The Chase for more fun with cardigans and The Mind Robber, The Time Monster, The Creature from the Pit and The Horns of Nimon for more Minotaurs).
In the museum, the Doctor finds (and is given) the Time Space Visualiser.
Location
The Space Museum, Xeros, [post 2493: Vicki says that scientists from Earth were working on the TSV when she left in 2493].
Untelevised
The Doctor claims he was with James Watt when he discovered steam power.
Trivia
In a nice piece of continuity, William Russell starts gently banging his fists together as he leaves the TARDIS interior set and carries this through to the next scene, following a recording break, as he emerges from the police box onto the Xeros surface set; this gives the effect of a continuous piece of action, and helps maintain the illusion that the TARDIS interior really is inside the police box shell.
Some of the tables from the Sensorite city (in The Sensorites) turn up in the Moroks' museum.
Jeremy Bulloch, now better known for his role as Boba Fett in the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, plays Tor. He would later appear in the season eleven story The Time Warrior.
The Doctor's only appearance in the third episode is in the opening reprise from the second, as William Hartnell was on holiday during the week in which it was recorded.
There is an amusing scene in which the Doctor hides inside a Dalek casing - an exhibit in the Moroks' museum.
During the sequence in which Lobos tries to interrogate the Doctor using a machine that displays his prisoner's thoughts on a screen, the Doctor feeds the device a series of amusing false images, including a photograph of himself wearing a Victorian bathing costume.
The incidental music used came from stock recordings rather than being specially composed.
Myth
The Space Museum was a low-budget story - hence the rather drab look of some of the sets. (The story had a similar budget, and cost much the same to make, as other four-parters at this point in the series' history.)
Technobabble
Time, like space, although a dimension of itself, also has dimensions of its own,' says Vicki. The Moroks are armed with 'ray guns'.
Goofs
In episode one, Ian says they are wearing thirteenth century clothes, the previous story being set in the twelfth century.
When they leave the TARDIS, their shadows are cast over the distant mountains.
How does the Doctor get the Time Space Visualiser into the TARDIS?
William Hartnell, explaining where the light in the museum comes from, has three attempts at "flourescent".
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - William Hartnell
Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill
Ian Chesterton - William Russell
Vicki - Maureen O'Brien
Dako - Peter Craze
Dalek Machine Operator - Murphy Grumbar
Dalek Voice - Peter Hawkins
Lobos - Richard Shaw
Morok Commander - Ivor Salter
Morok Guard - Lawrence Dean
Morok Guard - Ken Norris
Morok Guard - Salvin Stewart
Morok Guard - Peter Diamond
Morok Guard - Billy Cornelius
Morok Messenger - Salvin Stewart
Morok Technician - Peter Diamond
Sita - Peter Sanders
Third Xeron - Bill Starkey
Tor - Jeremy Bulloch
Xeron - Michael Gordon
Xeron - Edward Granville
Xeron - David Wolliscroft
Xeron - Bill Starkey
Crew
Director - Mervyn Pinfield
The Space Museum