4 out of 5

Directed by: Michael Imison

Well, howdy – a full-on science fiction serial with no reconstructed bits?  It’s like Christmas.  And it’s a good serial to have fully intact: each ep is pretty worthwhile, if the whole thing is a tad understated, with a baddie (The Monoids) with some inventive costume design that’s worth a good jump the first time you see it.

So Steven and Dodo and the Doc land in a forest, which Dodo easily identifies as being a preserve of some type near London.  She’s wrong of course – still stuck on seeing the whole thing as some type of game  – but she’s accurately noted that they seem to be surrounded by plants and animals that are collected from around the world.  Then Doc has the bright idea to look up and sees that the sky… is metal.  They’re on a ship, run by humans and their mute (essentially) slave class The Monoids, traveling to find a new home (some millions of years into the DW crew’s future) as the Earth has all gone kablooey.  So in tow there’s a collection of the planet’s living remnants, hence ‘The Ark.’  Unfortunately, Dodo has brought along a treasure from the past, the common cold, which was obliterated years in the past and thus against which the current humans have no antibodies.  So, rather hilariously, they die screaming.  But its a good classic sci-fi riff, and of course our trio end up being imprisoned, blamed for bringing the illness in purposefully.  Spoiler: Doc saves the day.  So at the end of episode 2, when all is well and we get into the TARDIS, what’s going to happen for the remaining two episodes?

Instead of completely jumping to a different plot (which previous serials had no problem doing), there’s a great bit where the TARDIS woop-woops, then reappears in the exact same spot.  As the crew gets out to figure out what’s what, some key details make it clear that they’ve simply jumped time, not space, and it’s at least 700 years since their last visit.  Things, of course, have changed.  Now the humans are the slaves to the Monoid meanies, and after being captured by the Monoids, it comes down to Steve, Dodo and Hartnell to set things right.

Though her introduction at the end of the previous serial was ridiculously random, Dodo is a strong female addition, bringing back some of Susan’s naivety but without the sniveling, and Vicki’s smarts but without the… well… Vicki was actually awesome.  She’s a bit flighty, but it sets up a good dynamic with the Doctor, who has to remember how to act more like a father figure, prompting some nice acting from Hartnell.  Steven has grown stronger from serial to serial, becoming more defined as a leader on his terms (standing up to the Doc, leading the humans) while also being able to stand up for his time and space guide when needed.  And our writers have gotten better at making the episode structures a bit more organic: ‘The Ark’ logically slinks from exploration to crisis and back and forth without it seeming like a forced maneuver.  The one thing lacking here is a bit of urgency.  The first two episodes are a good setup, but the Monoids are just a bit too lumbering and stupid to feel like legitimate threats for the second portion.  It’s still well written and paced, it just needed a dash more sense of urgency.  Thus it was nice that they kept things at 4 parts.

The third season of DW had yet to find its way: some okay historical eps, the overlong Dalek serial.  The Ark was the first really strong episode of the season, but is also a prime quality example of both the genre and the show.