Rating: 
Summary: The Ark in Space is a great story!
Review: In order to not get to repetitive with everyone else's reviews, I am just going to tell you what I like or don't like about this review and the others that I do. "The Ark in Space" was a great story first of all. Tom Baker is excellent, and the supporting actors do a great job within this remarkable story. The DVD has some pretty cool extra features, with audio commentary from Tom Baker himself. Overall, this was one of the better 4-part episodes that Tom Baker performed in. A must for a Who fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Wouldn't earn a passing grade in film school...
Review: I've been a Doctor Who fan for about thirty years, and it's been nearly that long since I've seen this story. After reading the reviews, I ordered the tape and eagerly sat in front of the tube, ready for a great adventure. How disappointed I was! How painful to watch!
Come on, now -- spray-painted bubble wrap taking over a hammy actor playing Adam, the "Prime Unit"? Doggie squeak toys for alien voices? Giant Mister Potatohead insects? Heck, even an actor's head becomes visible when the "larvae", obviously actors crawling around in green laundry bags, attack the control center. Even Elizabeth Sladen seemed uncomfortable trying to look afraid of the "slugs". Seems like the series took a big step back for a while in TB's early days.
The only reasons I give it two stars are (1) Tom Baker's performance, and (2) a decent script and story idea.
I'm still a fan of the series, but I won't keep this tape in my collection.
Rating:
Summary: This is definitely a Tom Baker story
Review: Where the previous story, Robot, had all the characteristics of a Pertwee story (the Doctor teaming up with UNIT to fight an unhuman menace which is controlled by an outlaw organization bent on present-day world domination), The Ark in Space is all Tom Baker, set far in the future with a horrific monster, giving the story a gothic feel. This is the story in which Tom Baker takes over to become THE Doctor, completing the transition from third to fourth Doctor.
I wonder if anyone noticed the thinly veiled allusion to Nazi ideals. Noah would not hesitate to shoot the Doctor, Harry and Sarah so as not to risk contamination of the perfectly balance gene pool, thereby preserving the purity of the human race. Doesn't this parallel Hitler's plan to create a master race? The human race in the story has been neatly regimented, each individual performing his or her own task without concern for crossing the lines of his or her function. In the end, however, human individuality wins out, as it takes the nonconformist Rogin to sacrifice himself so the humans can survive. This, I believe, is the story's intended message, which unfortunately escaped most viewers.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't anybody have a can of Raid?
Review: "Ark" is ironically titled, as it begins an unusual "story-arc" of four episodes surrounding the Nerva space station. As is typical of this era of the show, all the episodes have strong horror themes and "Ark in Space" is no exception.
In it, the Doc & Company land on a space station orbiting an uninhabited earth and filled with cryogenically frozen humans. Seems some pesky solar flares made the earth uninhabitable, and these people, representing a genetically perfect "elite" were chosen to wait out the storm, and then re-populate the now empty globe. They have two problems. One: they didn't wake up when they were supposed to. Two, while they were sleeping, they picked up a hitchhiker. A large, bug-eyed, green, slimy space hitchiker, looking for a comfy spot to lay its eggs. And nothing makes a comfy place for your evil space larvae than a sleeping human body. It doesn't take a genuis to see what will happen next:
1) The Doc will helpfully awaken the crew.
2) Instead of being grateful, the crew will suspect he is to blame for everything that is going wrong, and spend a great deal of time poking guns in his ribs and threatening him.
3) Sarah will scream "Doctor!" a lot and open doors that have horrible monsters on the other side.
4) Harry will nearly get everyone killed with his bumbling and fight with Sarah constantly, which on this G-rated show replaces the sexual tension you would normally expect with a two-man, one-woman cast.
5) In the meantime, the space bugs will hatch, feed on the stupid, and generally make a mess of things until they are stopped....or stop themselves.
"Ark" is a little slower-paced than other Who eps. from this era, which is why I gave it three rather than four stars (in fairness, it's about a 3.5), and as is often the case in "Who" episodes, the people the Doc is fighting to save are not really worth saving: the "elite" of earth's gene pool prove arrogant, cold-blooded, callous, and not too terribly skilled when it comes to staying alive. I wouldn't have minded it if the bugs had won.
On the other hand, "Ark" has (by Who standards) some very impressive set designs to go along with the marvelously campy dialogue ("Take another step, Doctor, and I'll atomize you!") and the creepy, "Alein-esque" concept of self-important humans ending up as nothing more than incubators/Gerber's baby food for a race of nomadic space bugs. As always, Tom Baker, Liz Sladen, and the underrated Ian Marter work well together, with Baker in the unwanted role of "Dad" to their squabbling sibilings.
An enjoyable outing, but by no means the best of this particular trio.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: It's dark, it's creepy. It's classic Doctor Who and it can't be beat.
Rating:
Summary: "DOCTOR WHO" - "ALIEN" STYLE!
Review: "The Ark in Space," the second "Doctor Who" adventure starring Tom Baker, in an exciting tale of aliens using humans to live, an adventure preceding "Alien" by four years. It has all the humour, excitement and cheezy visual effects and costumes that make "Doctor Who" the cult classic that it is! The DVD offers very good special features, including an amusing commentary track with Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and producer Philip Hinchcliffe. Any fan of "Doctor Who" will want this adventure in their DVD collection! Prorgram/DVD Grade: A+
Rating:
Summary: beginning of an amazing era...
Review: After the Tom Baker intro story, "The Giant Robot", "The Ark in Space" really cemented Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor and was re-written by Robert Holmes who had become the script editor for the next three seasons under the command of Phillip Hinchcliffe. This was the beginning of the three most popular and well crafted seasons of Doctor Who for most fans and the gothic horror style of the next three seasons raise the show to a popularity never before seen in many many countries. This mystery in space lets us get to know Bakers Doctor and we get better acquainted with Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan as well. Look for the stirring, inspired speech the Doctor makes about mankind, just one of the many treats in this fun adventure.
Rating: 
Summary: Warm Romanticism vs. cold and logical Positivism
Review: "Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species. It's only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine, and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable." So says the Doctor when he notices the rows of humans in suspended animation aboard the title vehicle, an example of the normal Positivist stance sci-fi takes.The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry land on Space Station Nerva, which houses hundreds of humans in suspended animation. Apparently, solar flares caused millions of Earth people to hide underground while a percentage of them was sent to Nerva, wake up after a few thousand years after the Earth cooled off, and resettle it. Trouble is, the humans overslept by a couple thousand years, and during that time, they had a visitor, which Harry discovers--a green giant locust-like alien. The crucial members of the crew, Vira, first medtech, and Noah, the ark's Prime Unit, are awoken, and prepare to resucitate the others. Noah is then attacked by an alien, and before long, his body begins to metamorphose into that of a Wirrn. His transformation is mental as well as physical, yet he constantly struggles to maintain his humanity as he's gradually absorbed into the Wirrn hivemind. The concept of aliens using men for endoparasitism predates Alien by a good five years. And look at the title of the story and at Noah's name. The biblical connotations are obvious, as the mission is to repopulate an Earth destroyed by a catastrophe. The difference is, Biblical Noah will live in a world where man and beast live in harmony, but in this story, humans are in danger of "symbiotic atavism", of an Earth ruled by aliens. But the Wirrn and the humans on the Ark have a commonality. The Wirrn are a collective hivemind, while the Ark survivors have a humorless, strictly hierarchical, coldly scientific, compared to the more warmer and less technical Doctor, Harry, and Sarah. Indeed, when Vira coldly asks the Doctor and Harry if Sarah's of value, Harry incredulously says, "Of value? She's a human being like ourselves! What kind of question is that?" Vira then tells the Doctor that Harry's a Romantic, to which the Doctor says, "Perhaps we both are." This denotes the crossing out of the cerebral Positivism with a more warm-hearted Romanticism. As a cost-cutting measure, the sets for Nerva were reused in Revenge Of The Cybermen, which was the next story shot after this, but aired as the last story of the season. Trivia: the music played to Sarah in Episode 1 is taken from Georg Handel's Largo. And why Episode 2 was the highest charting story, #5 and netting 13.6 million viewers on first airing, is anybody's guess, as I've seen better episodes. As for the effects, the Ark model and interior are realized great, especially the cathedral-like cryogenics chamber, but the Wirrn larvae are wrapped in both sizes of bubble wrap sprayed green. This story clearly puts human beings in a good light, and sees great potential for them. As the message by the long-dead Earth Minister says, "You are the chosen survivors. You have been entrusted with a sacred duty, to see that human knowledge, human culture, human love and faith shall never perish from the universe. Guard what we have given you with all your strength."
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