The Art of... The Space Museum

The Space Museum was novelised by its writer, Glyn Jones. Unhappy with changes forced on his scripts by Dennis Spooner, he took the opportunity to reintroduce some of what was lost, without deviating too much from the broadcast episodes. 

The oddest thing is the relationship between the Doctor and Ian, which is nothing like that ever seen on screen. It's not just the way they spar with each other, but they just don't sound like their TV incarnations.

Published in June 1987, the cover is by David McAllister.

It can easily be accused of being misleading, featuring as it does a couple of Daleks. No Moroks, or even Xerons. Just Daleks.

We all know that a single Dalek features briefly - an empty shell - and that's it until the throw-forward at the end of fourth episode - a scene which doesn't even feature in the book! A casual browser in a bookshop might not have known this, and would have been fooled into thinking that this was a Dalek story.

We also see a re-entry capsule from a NASA craft, which never appears in the story.

The Hartnell image derives from a photograph from the closing moments of The Firemaker, as the Doctor and companions rush to the safety of the TARDIS.

The story was never given a VHS release of its own. It was issued in June 1999 alongside the two surviving episodes of The Crusade as a special release - and it was clear from the packaging which of the two stories was thought to be the main event. The cover was a photomontage, as was the custom towards the end of the VHS range.

Whilst The Space Museum was paired with the story screened before it on tape, it was paired with the following story when it came to the DVD release:

Released in March 2010, the two stories came in their own separate slipcases, in a cardboard sleeve which had only the artwork for The Chase on it. The US Region 1 set was released in July 2010.

The photomontage cover, by Clayton Hickman, depicts Lobos and Tor, with the frozen Doctor in the background. In the distance, on the left, is the exterior of the museum, with the spaceships lined up.

The story was part of The Collection - Season 2 Blu-ray box set, released in December 2022. The Doctor and his companions were seen in their display cases in the accompanying booklet - courtesy of Lee Binding, and the story disc had an image of Ian and the Doctor in the freezing room with Lobos and his technician. Part of this same photo had been used for the 1999 VHS release.

The Space Museum was one of the few stories complete in the archives to be given a soundtrack release. This was issued in May 2009, with linking narration from Maureen O'Brien. As with all these soundtrack releases, we have some quite gaudy colouring - including bright red hair for the Moroks.

An audiobook of the novelisation was released in February 2016 using a slightly adapted version of McAllister's original artwork. The bottom of the book cover has been cut off, but the planet in the bottom left corner has been moved up the image so that it can be included.