‘The Space Museum was aired in 1965 as part of the second
season of Doctor Who featuring William Hartnell as the cranky by lovable Time
Lord. This episode, which aired as 4 25 minute long parts, centred on the story
of a planet named Xeros which had been taken under the tyrannous rule of a race
known as the Moroks who used the planet as a venue to house a museum which paid
tribute to the battles they had fought and won as the reached out to conquer
the stars.
There is a really sinister back story to the Moroks and
their rule, you learn that they attacked the peaceful Xerons using weapons that
were far superior to those of the planets occupants then, once they had Xeros
secured, they then organised a mass genocide of all Xerons except for the
children. The Children were then drafted into slavery, forced to work to
maintain the museum until such time as they came of age. Once the children were
considered grown up they would be shipped off to other planets in the Morok
empire to undergo other kinds of work, ensuring that there could not be an
uprising on Xeros.
The Doctor and his companions (Vicki, Barbara Wright and Ian
Chesterton) arrive on Xeros and find that nothing seems quite right, their
clothes have changed, their feet leave no footprints in the dust on the earth,
they cannot touch any of the exhibits in the museum nor can they be seen by the
staff and then to top it all off they come across display cabinets which appear
to house exact clones of themselves in some kind of state of preservation. The
Doctor surmises that the Tardis had a bit of trouble on landing and has accidentally
jumped a time track resulting in a few minutes where their timelines became
misaligned. It is upon the Doctor making this discovery that the time track
slips back into place and our heroes find themselves exposed and vulnerable to
capture. 