Day 388: The Ark in Space Part 3

The new script editor is Robert Holmes, a man who has written several times for the series before. This story is one which he has written himself, and thus we can get a feeling for what he is like off the leash, writing Doctor Who as he sees it. There are two major things that come across: horror and world building. We'll deal with the horror element tomorrow, but for now let's take a look at the world building that is in place here. The world of The Ark in Space is well constructed, with various details hidden away through technobabble and audio addresses from a lead politician thanking the crewmembers of the space station, but it's mainly through the dialogue between characters that we get a sense of a world that is inhabited. Take for instance the two technicians (Lycett and Rogin) who have been woken up from their 10,000 year slumber. They bicker about how they could have stayed on Earth (thus avoiding their current problem by being dead for several millenia), as well as express their fears about the risks that they undertook when they first went on this mission. They don't appear for very much lf the episode, but they become memorable characters and help to create the world that the Ark in Space inhabits.