This episode brings The Space Museum to a less than thrilling climax. The first thing which stands out is the fact that Barbara and Dako have spent almost a whole episode (from the middle of episode three to the middle of episode four) coughing, spluttering and attempting to escape from the museum. This helps to give the impression that the museum covers a great deal of ground, but also that Jones had run out of anything remotely interesting to do with Barbara.

Once he’s unfrozen, the Doctor delights in asserting his superiority over Lobos. But as in episode two, his glee doesn’t last for long as he’s soon captured again. When Barbara and Vicki are also rounded up, the four time-travellers are together again once more. They debate whether they’ve done enough to change the future – or have all their actions just been moving them closer and closer to the exhibit cases? Ian attempts to smash the Morok’s freezing equipment (in a very ineffectual way, it has to be said) but the Doctor murmurs that he doubts it’s the only one they have.

The classic line “have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?” never fails to raise a smile. It surely must be intentional, surely nobody could write something that silly with a straight face? Maybe that’s The Space Museum‘s greatest failing – had it been made in the late 1970’s it would have been obvious that the Moroks and Xerons were faintly ridiculous stock characters and so more humour could have been developed from their interactions. Easy to imagine Tom having a ball with the script ….

We eventually get an explanation as to why the TARDIS jumped a time track. It’s tempting to wonder if this was a relic of David Whitaker’s work on the script (he commissioned it and later passed it to Dennis Spooner) as it has a definite echo of the gammy spring story from The Edge of Destruction. The Doctor waves a small object about and explains:

DOCTOR: You know, it’s a funny thing how it happened. It got stuck. I don’t know whether you’ve gone into a room and switched on the light and had to wait for a second or two before the thing lit itself up.
BARBARA: Yes, I have. I think most people have.
DOCTOR: Well, this is the same kind of problem, you see. We landed on a separate time track, wandered around a bit, and until this little thing clicked itself into place, we hadn’t actually arrived.
IAN: Ah. Well, thanks very much for explaining it.

Yes, that makes everything quite clear. Umm, maybe.

By far the most interesting part of The Final Test is the cliffhanger which teases us with the return of the Daleks. Although it’s fair to say that The Chase will turn out to be something of a bumpy ride …..

It’s possible to feel the goodwill of the opening episode ebbing away during the first scene of part two. Lobos (Richard Shaw) is the Morok commander responsible for administering the Space Museum (on what we quickly learn is the planet Xeros). He’s given a remarkable opening speech.

I’ve got two more millums before I can go home. Yes, I say it often enough, but it’s still two thousand Xeron days and it sounds more in days. Yeah, I know, I volunteered, you were ordered. If the truth were known, I was just as bored on Morok. Still it was home and youth never appreciates what it has. Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Still, let’s get on with it, shall we? I have to make these reports. I don’t know.

Are the Xerons one of the most boring alien races we’ve seen so far, or are they just one of the most bored? There’s a train of thought which suggests they’re deliberately written in a tongue-in-cheek manner, and in some ways Lobos’ first speech does support this view.

The mighty Morok empire seems to be not quite as mighty as it once was and he’s clearly chafing at being stuck on the backwater of Xeros, running a museum that nobody ever visits. Of course, one of the reasons why the museum doesn’t seem to be very popular could be down to Lobos’ apparent desire to turn any newcomers into exhibits – that’s the sort of thing which would discourage passing trade!

Richard Shaw was a very decent actor (his turn as Sladden in Quatermass and the Pit is an excellent one) but he rather struggles here. He’s hardly alone in that though as the dialogue doesn’t do any of the guest cast any favours.

If the Moroks, with their funny hairdos, look a little strange, then the earnest young Xerons are even stranger. With a very limited budget how do you show that they’re aliens? Give them pronounced eyebrows of course! But this does become rather distracting, as your eye does tend to be drawn to their eyebrows all the time.

Tor (Jeremy Bulloch), Sita (Peter Sanders) and Dako (Peter Craze) are three Xerons with a burning desire to overthrow their Morok overlords. All of them are so impossibly wet that once again it’s possible to wonder if they’ve been deliberately written this way. Or am I being too generous and the end result is simply a combination of ineffectual scripting and acting?

One of the highlights of the episode is the meeting between the Doctor and Lobos. The Doctor is characteristically superior and isn’t keen to submit to Lobos’ interrogation. When he’s asked where he comes from, the Doctor projects an image of some walruses onto Lobos’ screen. He then displays an image of himself in a bathing costume. I’d like to think that this wasn’t just a primitive example of photoshopping and Hartnell really did dress up.

The other highlight is the moment when the Doctor decides to climb inside the Dalek exhibit. Naturally he can’t resist doing the voice as well! (“I fooled them all! I am the master!”) It’s a lovely moment and helps to make up for some of the less successful scenes elsewhere in the episode.

The common consensus about this story is that it has an intriguing first episode but this early promise is then squandered as the remaining three installments consist of little more than a lot of tedious running about. Some, like Rob Shearman, have mounted vaillant defences on its behalf – but I think its reputation as an also-run is fairly safe.

Although saying that, it’s not a total disaster and it’s true that the opening episode does show plenty of promise. What’s unusual about this one is that it does attempt to show some of the consequences and paradoxes of time travel – an area which the series rarely tackled during its original run (Day of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars and Mawdryn Undead are three fairly rare examples off the top of my head).

We open with a mystery – in the first few seconds the four time-travellers are still dressed in their garb from The Crusade, but seconds later they’ve changed into more familiar clothes. But since they don’t remember doing it, how has it happened?

The Doctor at first doesn’t quite get Ian’s drift when he tells him that they’re wearing their clothes (“well, I should hope so, dear boy. I should hope so”) but then airily dismisses their concerns. “You know, it’s so simple. It’s time and relativity, my dear boy. Time and relativity.” When asked to explain further, the Doctor claims he doesn’t have the time, but it’s obvious that he doesn’t have a clue!

Other strange instances – time runs backward after Vicki breaks a glass – are further puzzles, although these are harder to explain. If the Doctor’s later conjecture that they’ve jumped a time track is correct then that could explain the clothes issue – somehow the TARDIS has pushed them into their own future, so it would be reasonable they weren’t wearing their crusading costumes – but the glass/water mystery is more inexplicable.

Of course it could be that our old friend the TARDIS was attempting to raise the alarm that something was wrong (as it did during The Edge of Destruction). If that’s the case then it was with just as much success (i.e. not very much).

There’s an eerie feel to their initial investigation of the Space Museum. Although the four time-travellers seem corporeal and solid, it’s later revealed that they’re little more than insubstantial phantoms – unable to leave footprints in the dust, touch objects or speak to the inhabitants. When they find themselves displayed as immobile exhibits in the museum it’s a striking moment. In this version of the future the Doctor and his friends were captured and turned into exhibits, but that’s only a possibility – it doesn’t have to come to pass.

So they have the chance to change the future and ensure that this grisly occurrence doesn’t come to pass, but how to proceed? Should they go straight back to the TARDIS and leave? Or would that lead directly to the cases?

This part of the story is undoubtedly the highlight as it helps to raise the stakes of the adventure a little more (if they fail then they already know their fate). It’s also fair to say that had this started as just a normal adventure, without this timey-wimey subplot, then The Space Museum would be even less of interest than it currently is.

And we get to see a Dalek! Albeit as an immobile museum exhibit like everything else. It’s a nice foreshadowing of their imminent reappearance (you have to love Ian’s comment that it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever meet them again – I doubt many in the audience were convinced). What’s slightly odd is Vicki’s comment that she’s never seen an image of a Dalek, although she’s read about them in her history books. It’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be some visual evidence or photographs of them available during Vicki’s time.

The stock music is at times rather overpoweringly dramatic, although some of the tracks are successful in creating the required odd atmosphere. With the four regulars the only actors with speaking parts (at least speech that we can hear) it’s an excellent vehicle for all of them. For example, Vicki gets some dialogue which shows that whilst she (like Susan) may be sometimes written as a mid twentieth century girl, she’s most evidently not. “Time, like space, although a dimension in itself also has dimensions of its own.”

A more than decent opener, but what will happen when we meet the Moroks and Xerons?