The Ark in Space Salmon of "SFX" rated the serial four and a half out of five stars, calling it "brimming with confidence". Salmon wrote that the concept of the Wirrn were so terrifying that the poor effects did not matter. In an analysis of apocalyptic themes in "Doctor Who", academic Andrew Crome highlighted the explicit religious influences on the writing of "The Ark in Space". He considered the eponymous Ark to be an analogue of the Biblical story of Noah's Ark, the ancient flood myth related in the Book of Genesis, and that the naming of the Nerva Beacon commander as Noah was
The Log of the Ark the animals eat porridge with a dollop of treacle.) This sinister development is described alongside a good deal of slapstick humour. For example the nautically naive Noah initially constructs the ark with all the large animals quartered together for social reasons, only discovering the consequences for its stability when the flood waters surround it. Like many later fictionalisations of the Noah story, from Gary Larson to Julian Barnes, it introduces mythical beasts such as the unicorn into the Ark's passenger list, a device with obvious dramatic potential: we assume that such creatures are unlikely to survive the voyage. Here, as