The Ark in Space - Episode 3

When Noah hears the voice, I thought that it was just his madness taking hold. There is a sign that the wirrn haven’t taken complete control of Noah when he bashes his bubble wrap hand on the control unit. I like how after a brief moment of fighting it, he starts to become less Noah. It’s a great start to the episode and its good that it isn’t the Doctor, Harry or Sarah that take centre stage but Kenton Moore. Noah’s gradual development is quite impressive. The stage that Noah is at when Vira and the Doctor encounter him looks good even though its bubble wrap. Speaking of bubble wrap, there is one shot where a vent cover is filled with large bubble wrap and it just doesn’t have quite the dramatic weight that perhaps they were hoping for.

There is a lot more movement in terms of story development and Vira becomes the one who takes charge and she seems to have warmed up a lot in just the last episode and a bit. More and more of the ‘residents’ start to pop up but there are still a small number of characters and normally I wouldn’t care too much about them but due to Robert Holmes, I find myself not being 100% caring about them but I still want them to make it to the end of the story. I like how two of them basically regret going on the ark and not taking their chances on earth. They work out that they would be better off on earth and would be dead by now. It’s a particularly dark moment in what is still a family show.

There is a nice bit where we learn how the wirrn got on board the ark and what has caused all of this. It at least it gives us a bit of backstory which is what the story needed at this point having had nothing substantial in the previous episodes. It’s a shame that the there are two aspects of the wirrn that have mixed results because as I have mentioned the bubble wrap side is an issue but the actual full sized wirrn is quite impressive and even though there is just the one that we see it’s the better part of the wirrn and the thing that makes the whole story work.

There is a moment which seems terribly clichéd and it comes when they are trying to transport people from one part of the ark to the other and it happens just before Sarah is due to go. I just think that this seemed a bit silly and it was the one thing that slightly let the episode down as far as I was concerned. Apart from that I thought the performances were very good and the action moves along at a good pace and I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and the new era of Tom Baker continues to pick up.