leave the sleeping crew for the Wirrn, but the crew declines. Noah leads the entire swarm in an assault on the transport ship. Vira and the rest of the crew escape the transport ship after setting the autopilot. The transport blasts off carrying the entire swarm away from the station. The Doctor wonders whether this was Noah's plan all along, to save Nerva, and that there was some spark of humanity left in him. Noah transmits one final good-bye to Vira before the transport explodes with the entire Wirrn swarm on board. In the closing sequence, the TARDIS party teleport down to Earth to repair the receiver terminal and allow the ark colonists to repopulate the Earth. Production The script, written by Robert Holmes, is from a story by John Lucarotti, which was rewritten because it was considered unusable. Holmes rewrote The Ark in Space as a four-part serial as a lead-in to the two part The Sontaran Experiment. Lucarotti does not receive any on-screen credit. Barry Letts had planned the story, originally called Space Station, before Philip Hinchcliffe took over as producer. Letts had also planned to produce the four-part serial alongside the two-part Sontaran Experiment, so it was treated as a single six-part story to save money; The Ark in Space was filmed entirely in-studio, while The Sontaran Experiment was filmed entirely on location. The Ark in Space is the first broadcast story from Hinchcliffe as producer. Hinchcliffe believed that in order to expand the show's core audience, it was necessary to broaden the show's appeal to adults, and Ark in Space demonstrates this with its use of horror, particularly the inexorable transformation of Noah into an alien creature. A scene in which the half-transformed Noah begs Vira to kill him was deemed too scary for children and had to be cut. The title sequence for Part One was tinted green as an experiment, but was not repeated for subsequent episodes. The title sequence would stay constant for the next six years. The Ark in Space was recorded in-studio in October and November 1974. The sets for this story were re-used for Revenge of the Cybermen, partially set on Space Station Nerva at an earlier time. Broadcast and reception Part Two of this story charted at number five for the most-watched television programmes across the week on all channels. This was the highest chart placing ever attained by