The Ark in Space is the quintessential Tom Baker episode. The 4th Doctor's premiere episode, Robot, was a lovely kiss to the Jon Pertwee era and a finale to the UNIT era. The Ark in Space firmly establishes the 4th Doctor era with space stations, giant insects and grisly body horror. The new TARDIS team starts to congeal with the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry Sullivan. The Wirrn are a frightening new adversary unlike anything we've seen before. It's amazing for a 12 year old show, they producers were still coming up with new threats and horrors. Very much a base-under-siege story with a minimal cast, there is so much atmosphere in this story it stands as a classic of the era.
The rest of the season saw a parade of returning classic villains wit the last story being a UNIT story. The Ark in Space is the only one to introduce a new villain/location/situation, so it seems to shine a little differently against the like the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans. This story is one of the earliest ones I remember from my childhood and was burned into my memory. These early Tom Baker episodes are the reason I fell in love with Doctor Who for Tom Baker's Doctor and Elizabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane but for the stories and monsters of these seasons. While I've been enjoying going through the previous Doctor's episodes, I've finally caught up with my timeline and I'm loving reliving my youth again!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_in_Space
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