'The Ark in Space'

By rights, the second DVD release of 2002 should be a William Hartnell story, in keeping with BBC Video's desire to see one story from each Doctor in the inital release cycle. However, BBC Video were reluctant to release a second black and white story immediately after 'The Tomb of the Cyberman', so the decision was taken to release 'The Ark in Space', the popular second story from Tom Baker's first season.

'The Ark in Space' still exists on its original 2" Quad videotape transmission masters. These masters are now with the National Film and Television Archive for safekeeping, with the BBC retaining D3 digital tape copies of them. The D3's were used as the source tapes in the remastering of the story, which required noise-reduction via DVNR-1000 and then manual repair of a large number of videotape dropouts throughout all four episodes. This work was carried out by Jonathan Wood, with the kind assistance of James 'Eagle Eyes' Insell on dropout spotting duty!

The sound was also lifted off onto DAT to allow Mark Ayres to remove some of the hiss and repair audio dropouts and static clicks. Here, Mark describes the work he had to do...

"I removed numerous static clicks from a number of scenes throughout the first two episodes especially. All of the worst affected scenes were set in the control room in which the TARDIS lands, so I suspect a problem with a mic during the studio recording on that set. There were many obvious dialogue dropins (ep.1 especially), these have been smoothed out where possible. Some distortion on the very opening music cue has been repaired,
as has a drop in level during the cue (probably an error in the original dub) and I have also repaired the very start of the cue which was slightly clipped. Numerous small dropouts were also repaired. About 6bB of broadband noise reduction was applied to the whole recording to reduce the hiss. Some scenes are very hissy still, however (the scenes of the Doctor and Harry exploring the Ark in pt 1, for example - the consequence of the music and effects tracks being brought up to try to disguise dialogue edits in the original dub). I spent around 22 hours in total doing this - including layoffs and laybacks.

I have prepared a track (15.47 total - fade to fit) of Space Sound to cover the effects shots. This is in stereo, and was remixed from the original mono masters of sounds from the episodes "The Wheel in Space", "The Dominators" and "The Ambassadors of Death" (all by Brian Hodgson)."

Extras for this release include:-

a commentary track featuring Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Philip Hinchcliffe.

An unused title sequence, based on the season 11 sequence but with Tom Baker replacing Jon Pertwee and including a 'TARDIS tunnel' effect.

An original BBC1 trail for episode one.

New CGI Model shots. Mike Tucker and Nick Sainton-Clark at BBC Visual Effects were very keen to contribute to the project and suggested modelling the space station in CGI and providing a 3D technical schematic 'walkthru' as an extra. As a consequence of this modelling, the possibility arose of allowing the viewer to watch an alternate version of the story, in which all the original model shots are replaced by new CGI versions. The Ark and its shuttle were modelled and animated by Mike and Nick using Lightwave , then composited by Ian Simpson at BBC Resources 3D & Digital Effects using Illusion. This feature will be available as an option implemented by branching on the DVD. It will not be the default version, merely an alternate feature. The 'clean' CGI sequences will also be included as a separate item.

Original 16mm model shots. Very late in the day, a private collector came forward with the original 400ft roll of 16mm camera negative of all the filmed effects shots, including various versions of the rocket take-off (with and without a rocket engine), the rocket flying through space and exploding, and the Wirrn crawling over the outside of the space station. It also includes shots which were never seen in the final programme. Most of the filmed shots are seen in the finished programme via on-set video monitors, so this is a unique opportunity to see them in very high quality for the first time.

Design Feature. In a newly-shot interview, Roger Murray-Leach, the story's designer, talks about how he approached the design of the Ark.

News Item. An interview with Tom Baker, recorded on the location at Wookey Hole for 'Revenge of the Cybermen' prior to him actually being seen as the Doctor on television.

TARDIS-cam. Fictionlab at BBC Online have been extremely kind in granting us access to footage from their new 'TARDIS-cam' feature. Mike Tucker was commissioned to create six new video sequences showing the TARDIS in various new settings throughout the universe. Four were shot as physical model sets and two will be created via CGI. Mike used dual filming techniques to allow a super-16 film camera to record the shots as well as the DV camera required by BBC Online. The film shots have been transferred on the Spirit and one will appear on the disc in 16:9 anamorphic format for optimum quality. We hope that the five discs which follow 'The Ark in Space' will each include a different TARDIS-cam shot. We are indebted to BBC Online's Doctor Who Website for allowing us to use this unique material. Please help support them by visiting their site and following their own presentation of TARDIS-cam.

Production Subtitles. As on most of our previous discs, Richard Molesworth will be providing a running subtitle text commentary, highlighting background and production information.

Photo Gallery. Ralph Montagu is currently scouring the collections of both the BBC and private collectors for design and publicity photographs from the story, some previously unpublished.

Easter Eggs. A few little 'hidden extras' will undoubtedly find their way onto the disc to keep Easter Egg hunters happy!