"Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species. It's only been 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 holocaust. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable... indomitable."The Doctor (Tom Baker), Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) and Sarah Jane Smith (Lis Sladen) arrive on the space station Nerva, in Earth orbit; which holds the last remnants of the human race in suspended animation.
The Doctor fixes some sabotaged circuits and the frozen people begin to defrost - unfortunately for our heroes they turn out to be a bunch of eugenically chosen space-nazis who immediately brand The Doctor and his chums as "regressives".
Unfortunately for everyone, not only have the frozen people missed their proper defrost date (it's now about the year 16,000 - according to Lance Parkin's Ahistory), but an alien insect race (the Wirrn) has gotten in to the 'ark' and is using the human bodies as hatcheries for its eggs - predating the plot of Alien by about four years!
Of course, it doesn't help that many of the special effects - such as a Wirrn slug creature and a man's increasingly possessed body - involve judicious use of 'poppy paper' painted green, but unlike Claws Of Axos the simple genius of Robert Holmes' script allows us to largely see past these limitations.
The Alien vibe is revisited when Sarah Jane crawls through the ark's claustrophobic duct system, as part of The Doctor's solution to the Wirrn problem, guided by allies elsewhere on the station.
The final scene of The Ark In Space segues nicely into the next story, The Sontaran Experiment, sending The Doctor and his two companions down to Earth to find out what's wrong with the transport system... and pave the way for the human recolonisation of the planet.
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I watched The Ark in Space a few months back on TV. As you say the effects are severely dated, but the plot is excellent. It is a shame that the Wirrn was so obviously a man in a suit with wire supported arm, as the tension built by the plot is fairly destroyed by the poor effects. I suppose it is a reflection of the size of the budget that the BBC was giving to Dr Who at the time!
With the '70s Doctor Whos in particular I find it's a delicate balancing act between clever stories and over-ambitious (ie. slightly wonky) special effects.
Usually the story wins out - but every so often the effects are sooo poor that it's almost impossible to get past them.
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