Doctor Who, season 2 continued …

After Ian rescues the Doctor, what follows is an episode of everyone sitting around waiting for the plot to unfurl around them.  A rather muted end to a rather muted story.

The Doctor comes up with some gadget doohicky reason for the “time track” problem that caused the first episode, which sounds vaguely plausible until you remember to ask – so just what did happen to their clothes?  Who changed their clothes?  Who washed the old ones?  Who hung the old ones up in the closet?  Then, suddenly, the explanation doesn’t work at all.

At least the audience is rewarded with the Dalek cliffhanger.  The ending is fairly lengthy, with the Doctor talking about the machine he’s taken from the museum, the explanation for the time track problem, Vicki asking about the technology, and the fairly length cliffhanger scene.  The episode itself only lasted 22 minutes, including all of that, yet it still felt slow and padded.

In short, The Space Museum could probably have been a two-parter and not lost anything at all.  After a fairly exceptional The Crusade that I would recommend to first time viewer, if only it didn’t only half exist in the archives, we get a story that I wouldn’t recommend to those viewers, even though it all exists in the archives.  A cruel twist of fate.

Next time … The Executioners