Why I like the Moroks
I have written about "the Space Museum" before in this space, but I can't say I really did it justice. Who could? It's one of my very favorite episodes in the entire show. So let's talk about its villains: the Moroks.
The first thing I like about the Moroks is that they wear white - by contrast to the (heroic) Xerons, wh wear black. It's a small thing, but nice. The Xerons wear black , as far as I can tell, because they're dopey teenagers with far too much eyebrow. It's a color staggeringly ill-suited for blending in with the stark whiteness of the Space Museum. The Moroks, on the other hand, match their enviornment perfectly. The starkness and sterility of the Morok uniforms reflect the brightly lit corridors, but also their emptiness. It's the whiteness of void, and of crippling tedium. The Moroks are halfway between Army and Museum Security, and the one thing that unites them is that they don't want to be here.
The Moroks have always struck me as extremely Roman, most notably in their wonderful display of post-colonial fatigue and an empire in decline. They are almost literally resting on their laurels - guarding an empty museum to past glories on a planet no one visits, rather than going out and winning new ones. It twigs the same kind of Decline and Fall ethos we'll see again with Stubbs and Cotton in "the Mutants." The Moroks are tired. You can see it in everything they do. The guards work this out by trying to do as little actual work as possible and complaining loudly about their superiors. And of course passing the buck on responsibility as far as they can. And Governor Lobos works it out by exerting dictatorial control over his tiny realm and amusing himself by having museum passers-by stuffed and mounted as exhibits. So defunct is the Space Museum that the idea that Our Heroes could be guests never once occurs to anybody.
Thi all has a very (incongruously) humanizing effect on the Moroks. They're not implacable killers, they're not faceless mooks - they're just dudes, relegated to a thankless job out in the middle of nowhere. It also explains handily both the banal brutality of what they're doing and their conveniently low competence. Contrast Ian with the hapless guard he holds at gunpoint: the one lacks all conviction while the other is full of passionate intensity. Seriously, this may be the most desperate and reckless we've ever seen Ian, practically quivering with manic energy:
Ian: If I die, won't that change the future?
Barbara: For you, certainly
He's seriously considering this as an option! Like, the guard has Ian at gunpoint, but is too afraid to fire because Ian isn't remotely cowed by him - and is honestly more than a little terrifying. Ian gets the gun and the upper hand by sheer dint of desperation - and because the Guard's hear just isn't in it. Shooting down Xerons is fine, but he's not getting paid enough to risk his life against a madman. And Ian has nothing - or perhaps everything - to lose. He even voluntarily separates himself from Barbara - that by itself is pretty strong evidence of how seriously not okay he is. Poor Ian - and poor anybody else he hapens to come across in such a fey mood.
Lest the Moroks in their bureaucratic apathy become too sympathetic, we are constantly reminded of the program of genocide being waged against the Xerons. I like to jokingly call Xeros "planet of the dopey young blond men," but there's a very good reason the Xerons are like that, and that reason is Morok oppression. When the Moroks conquered their world, they slaughtered the adults, but apparently balked at exterminating the children alongside them. Once again, very Roman. But children grow up, faster than the endless tedium of museum routine suggests. Tor tells Vicki that when they reach a certain age they are shipped off to be slave workers in other parts of the empire. It's as horrific as it is methodical and...ordinary. The Xerons have never known anything else, raised by their captors, their compliance ensured by hostage-taking. And despite all the living Xerons running about, it is nevertheless a genocide. The children have survived so far, but it's not like there's going to be any more of them. These dopey blonds are the last generation of Xerons, and they have no more future than Our Heroes.
The foregrounded view of the Moroks as bored and tired workaday Joes, set against this verbackgrounded but very real genocide, combine to make a disturbingly realistic set of villains. These aren't Killer Robots or mad megalomaniacs, they're folks like you and me - who are nevertheless knowing participants in the most incredible evil. And to add insult to this gravest of injuries, they destroyed Xeros and her people and aren't even doing anything with it. An empty museum on a dead world. A crumbling monument to a history of conquest that not even the conquerors can be bothered to care about. And for this, genocide.
No discussion of the Space Museum would be complete without touching on its leader, Governor Lobos. Lobos is the only strong personality among the Moroks, and perhaps the only one with any kind of competence. He remains cool and more or less in control of the situation, even when held at gunpoint by a crazed and desperate science teacher. He's frustrated by his inferiors but not capricious or unduly cruel, and if he takes a little too much pleasure in the prospect of adding the Doctor et al. to his museum (and it is his museum) - well, you've gotta have hobbies. It's never the obsession of a madman, just an overworked bureaucrat getting his kicks where he can. And the Doctor admittedly has it coming.
The Moroks work in "the Space Museum" because they're just so ordinary. The premise is already Timey-Wimey enough; it's okay for the villains to be simple. Honestly, the real enemy is Time - the ticking clock, the inevitable clicking of the pieces into place, the weight of the Future bearing inexorably down on our Heroes. The question of Agency, of Choice, is front and center, so it's appropriate that the Moroks are just cogs, marking time and clicking unknowingly towards certain doom. And very nicely showcasing the banality of evil while they're at it. They're never going to stand out as the most complex or compelling villains of all time, but they're exactly what this story needs.
The first thing I like about the Moroks is that they wear white - by contrast to the (heroic) Xerons, wh wear black. It's a small thing, but nice. The Xerons wear black , as far as I can tell, because they're dopey teenagers with far too much eyebrow. It's a color staggeringly ill-suited for blending in with the stark whiteness of the Space Museum. The Moroks, on the other hand, match their enviornment perfectly. The starkness and sterility of the Morok uniforms reflect the brightly lit corridors, but also their emptiness. It's the whiteness of void, and of crippling tedium. The Moroks are halfway between Army and Museum Security, and the one thing that unites them is that they don't want to be here.
The Moroks have always struck me as extremely Roman, most notably in their wonderful display of post-colonial fatigue and an empire in decline. They are almost literally resting on their laurels - guarding an empty museum to past glories on a planet no one visits, rather than going out and winning new ones. It twigs the same kind of Decline and Fall ethos we'll see again with Stubbs and Cotton in "the Mutants." The Moroks are tired. You can see it in everything they do. The guards work this out by trying to do as little actual work as possible and complaining loudly about their superiors. And of course passing the buck on responsibility as far as they can. And Governor Lobos works it out by exerting dictatorial control over his tiny realm and amusing himself by having museum passers-by stuffed and mounted as exhibits. So defunct is the Space Museum that the idea that Our Heroes could be guests never once occurs to anybody.
Thi all has a very (incongruously) humanizing effect on the Moroks. They're not implacable killers, they're not faceless mooks - they're just dudes, relegated to a thankless job out in the middle of nowhere. It also explains handily both the banal brutality of what they're doing and their conveniently low competence. Contrast Ian with the hapless guard he holds at gunpoint: the one lacks all conviction while the other is full of passionate intensity. Seriously, this may be the most desperate and reckless we've ever seen Ian, practically quivering with manic energy:
Ian: If I die, won't that change the future?
Barbara: For you, certainly
He's seriously considering this as an option! Like, the guard has Ian at gunpoint, but is too afraid to fire because Ian isn't remotely cowed by him - and is honestly more than a little terrifying. Ian gets the gun and the upper hand by sheer dint of desperation - and because the Guard's hear just isn't in it. Shooting down Xerons is fine, but he's not getting paid enough to risk his life against a madman. And Ian has nothing - or perhaps everything - to lose. He even voluntarily separates himself from Barbara - that by itself is pretty strong evidence of how seriously not okay he is. Poor Ian - and poor anybody else he hapens to come across in such a fey mood.
Lest the Moroks in their bureaucratic apathy become too sympathetic, we are constantly reminded of the program of genocide being waged against the Xerons. I like to jokingly call Xeros "planet of the dopey young blond men," but there's a very good reason the Xerons are like that, and that reason is Morok oppression. When the Moroks conquered their world, they slaughtered the adults, but apparently balked at exterminating the children alongside them. Once again, very Roman. But children grow up, faster than the endless tedium of museum routine suggests. Tor tells Vicki that when they reach a certain age they are shipped off to be slave workers in other parts of the empire. It's as horrific as it is methodical and...ordinary. The Xerons have never known anything else, raised by their captors, their compliance ensured by hostage-taking. And despite all the living Xerons running about, it is nevertheless a genocide. The children have survived so far, but it's not like there's going to be any more of them. These dopey blonds are the last generation of Xerons, and they have no more future than Our Heroes.
The foregrounded view of the Moroks as bored and tired workaday Joes, set against this verbackgrounded but very real genocide, combine to make a disturbingly realistic set of villains. These aren't Killer Robots or mad megalomaniacs, they're folks like you and me - who are nevertheless knowing participants in the most incredible evil. And to add insult to this gravest of injuries, they destroyed Xeros and her people and aren't even doing anything with it. An empty museum on a dead world. A crumbling monument to a history of conquest that not even the conquerors can be bothered to care about. And for this, genocide.
No discussion of the Space Museum would be complete without touching on its leader, Governor Lobos. Lobos is the only strong personality among the Moroks, and perhaps the only one with any kind of competence. He remains cool and more or less in control of the situation, even when held at gunpoint by a crazed and desperate science teacher. He's frustrated by his inferiors but not capricious or unduly cruel, and if he takes a little too much pleasure in the prospect of adding the Doctor et al. to his museum (and it is his museum) - well, you've gotta have hobbies. It's never the obsession of a madman, just an overworked bureaucrat getting his kicks where he can. And the Doctor admittedly has it coming.
The Moroks work in "the Space Museum" because they're just so ordinary. The premise is already Timey-Wimey enough; it's okay for the villains to be simple. Honestly, the real enemy is Time - the ticking clock, the inevitable clicking of the pieces into place, the weight of the Future bearing inexorably down on our Heroes. The question of Agency, of Choice, is front and center, so it's appropriate that the Moroks are just cogs, marking time and clicking unknowingly towards certain doom. And very nicely showcasing the banality of evil while they're at it. They're never going to stand out as the most complex or compelling villains of all time, but they're exactly what this story needs.