The Space Museum (TV story)

Summary
The TARDIS arrives near a vast Space Museum on the planet Xeros, but has jumped a time-track. The First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki have a series of bizarre experiences for the time travellers as the venture outside and into the Museum – not least that they see but cannot be seen by the militaristic Moroks who run the museum, or the servile indigenous Xerons who work for them. The museum contains fascinating exhibits, including a Dalek shell, but the most worrying is the four travellers themselves encased and on display. Quite soon afterward the time track slips back and, though the exhibits of the TARDIS and the four travellers vanish, they still find themselves inside the Museum.

The head of the Moroks, Lobos, is a bored and desperate museum administrator and colony governor, who reflects sourly that the glories of the Morok empire are past. Like Rome, the Empire became decadent and declined. The Moroks have found the TARDIS and now start tracking down the occupants who have, as usual, become separated. The Doctor is the first to be found, but evades their interrogation tactics.

Vicki has meanwhile made contact with the Xerons and, hearing of their enslavement, aids them in their plans to stage a revolution. The Moroks step up their resistance, but it seems luck and cunning are on the side of the Xerons. They attack the Morok armoury and Vicki outwits its controlling computer. With their new weapons the Xerons are able to begin a revolution which slowly takes hold. The Moroks try to use deadly zaphra gas to poison the rebels and seize control of the situation, but this too is a failure.

Ian has meanwhile freed the Doctor from Lobos, who had begun the process of freezing him and turning him into an exhibit. They find Barbara and Vicki in the Museum’s endless corridors, but are soon all captured together. It looks like the time track prediction of their future as museum exhibits will soon be realised after all.

Help comes from the Xeron revolutionaries, who kill Lobos and the other Morok captors. The Xerons then go about destroying the hated Museum as the TARDIS crew slips away. They take with them a time/space visualiser as a souvenir. On the planet Skaro, their departure is noted by the Daleks….

Ratings

 * The Space Museum - 10.5m viewers
 * The Dimensions of Time - 9.2m viewers
 * The Search - 8.5m viewers
 * The Final Phase - 8.5m viewers

Continuity

 * The Doctor manages to fix the Time/Space Visualiser in The Chase and uses it again in The One Doctor
 * The Faction Paradox use a similar device in The Ancestor Cell to show Fitz his future.
 * A device like the Time/Space Visualiser is seen in Ghost Ship
 * The TARDIS jumps its own time track again in Festival of Death
 * In No Future it is revealed that the Monk was once an adviser to the Moroks

More Info

 * Story Synopsis
 * Story Transcript
 * Story Novelization
 * Story Statistics
 * Story in the Media
 * Story Reconstruction

Public Releases

 * DVD Release This story has not yet been released on DVD


 * Video Release Released as Doctor Who: The Crusade/The Space Museum


 * UK Release: July 1999 / US Release: January 2000
 * PAL - BBC video BBCV6805
 * NTSC - CBS/FOX Video 2000020
 * NTSC - Warner Video E1399