Doctor Who: The Space Pirates - Episodes 4,5 & 6

I have been dragging myself through The Space Pirates and 'dragging' really is the most appropriate word. No one with any foreknowledge of it has ever happily sat through the entirety of The Space Pirates. I am now quite certain of this. All I knew was that there were six episodes and a few episodes in this was enough to put me off. Eventually, feeling that my progress of one episode a month was procrastination taken too far, I decided to just get it over with and watch the final three episodes in one sitting.

We ended Episode 3 with me feeling optimistic about the rest of the serial but this optimism took a nosedive fairly soon into Episode 4. After the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe dive into a cave to escape the pirates they find themselves trapped in there along with another fellow. They spend most the episode trying to escape the cave. It feels like such a waste of the main cast.

Episodes 5 and 6 blurred together a bit for me as I struggled to concentrate. Whilst the action did slightly pick up again, the plot truly baffled me. I was sure the pirates must have some other plan aside from stealing argonite but if they did I never worked it out.

The bloke they met in the cave, Sorba, is shot soon afterwards by Caven, the leader of the pirates.

Not having long escaped the cave they trapped themselves in, the Doctor, Jamie, Zoe and Milo Clancey are imprisoned in a study/library type room. Wood and varnish must be retro style in the future. There is an old, bearded bloke in there. Between his muttering and Milo Clancey's accent, half the dialogue is complete gobbledygook.

In between it all we continue to have these utterly, awfully dull scenes on the Space Corps ship.

Towards the end, Caven realises the Space Corps are onto him and decides to start blowing stuff up so a series of bombs are set. The Doctor has to carefully diffuse them. This might actually have been quite tense to watch but in telesnap form, it's impossible to work out what is going on.

Whilst various bad guys get their comeuppance, sadly Milo Clancey is with us until the end, giving the regulars a lift back to the TARDIS. Though last time I remember us seeing the TARDIS it was floating off in space so I must have missed how they found it again.

A major problem throughout the whole story, The Space Pirates varies between dreary Space Corps dialogue and visually heavy scenes. They aren't necessarily always 'action' scenes but they are sequences with people doing rather than saying. With only one live action episode in existence, this makes the story a really difficult one to watch. Five mind-sapping episodes' worth of telesnaps is pretty tough. In fact, there aren't even enough in existence so praise be to Loose Canon, who put these episodes together, for some decent editing in order to give us a little more variety.

I would speculate that with more episodes discovered we might reappraise The Space Pirates completely. Perhaps some would but for me, the underuse of the series' regulars hurts the story a lot. They aren't particularly central to the plot and spend half their time trapped in various rooms. They aren't in most of the first couple of episodes. They get stuck on the broken up beacon, then on Clancey's ship whilst they travel to Ta, then in the cave and then in the study.

I think the only saving grace for this story is that Milo Clancey didn't become a companion.

Doctor Who: The Space Pirates - Episode 3

We're back in telesnap land for the duration now. Despite this and despite it being The Space Pirates I... actually enjoyed this episode. I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting the remaining four episodes to be a hard slog of space hell. But the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe became the focus of this episode, unlike the previous episodes in which they had seemed like the asides.

Milo Clancy is the fellow who shot Jamie at the end of Episode 2 but of course Jamie is only stunned. Milo gives them a hand as he is heading to a nearby planet. The Space Corps are keeping an eye on things and believe that the planet is the base for the space pirates.

They are right. When Clancy, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land, Clancy tells the other three to remain in the spaceship because they will get lost in the caves. But they talk and start to think that maybe Clancy is one of the pirates so head off. They get lost, then confronted by some pirates with a huge scary floodlight so they all jump down a hole.

With less emphasis on the Space Corps and fewer shots of spaceships just moving around in space, this episode became interesting. We haven't actually seen much of the pirates since the first episode but the conclusion of Episode 3 means this is likely to change hopefully. Separating Clancy from the TARDIS crew after a while was good because having the three of them compete for dialogue could have become problematic.

I am feeling more optimistic about the rest of this story now but daren't get too excited as it could all nosedive as quickly as it lifted up. My only gripe for this episode is Milo Clancy. The audio recording with my telesnaps is not immaculate and his strong accent is difficult to understand at times. It is also starting to grate somewhat.

Doctor Who: The Space Pirates - Episode 2

Episode 2 is the only episode of The Space Pirates to actually still exist. I was so bored by Episode 1 that it took a long time to convince myself to continue. A part of me wishes I hadn't. Whilst the previous episode took fifteen minutes before the TARDIS crew showed up, in Episode 2 it still takes over seven minutes. This doesn't sound like a lot but when the entire episode is only about 25 minutes long it feels like a long time.

The Space Corps catch up with a small ship and the old guy inside tells them he has had his argonite nicked several times. He's reported it but nothing has been done. He is clearly quite annoyed that the Space Corps have only come out now that their own property has been getting attacked. The Space Corps don't really trust this fellow and think he could well be one of the thieves himself. They let him go so they can follow him.

Meanwhile the TARDIS crew are stuck in a section of the satellite, Alpha 4, that got broken up. The Doctor tries to get them out or at least bring them together with another section of the satellite but the attempt goes to pot. A bloke breaks in at the end and shoots Jamie. We really should care a lot more about this but I was just so relieved to see the credits start rolling.

I found it hard to concentrate on this episode because so very little happened. A lot of it is people sitting or standing around talking along with yet more model shots in space. I have considered giving up on this story. Why am I watching it after all? Completion I think. And I like completion. I have made it through dull stories before; I watched all four telesnap reconstructed episodes of Galaxy Four (was livid when an episode was found only a few months later). So for now I will continue, in part because Troughton is my favourite Doctor and this is my final chance to 'watch' more of him.

Doctor Who: The Space Pirates - Episode 1

The Space Pirates is the penultimate story in season six of Doctor Who. It is also the penultimate story for the second Doctor, who happens to be my favourite Doctor. It is the only one of his stories I have never watched. Until now.

When Doctor Who returned to BBC1 in 2005 I consumed as much of it as I could. One such way was through the photonovels on the BBC's Doctor Who website. They are a sort of online book, made primarily from telesnaps and text depicting what is going on and what is being said. They were created for stories that have episodes missing. They either do not exist or only partly exist. I passed over the first Doctor's stories and instead worked my way through all the second Doctor ones. I came to adore this Doctor and Jamie before I had even seen a single episode of theirs. But The Space Pirates is the only one of the second Doctor's missing/partly missing stories that has no telesnaps and therefore has no photonovel.

Some years ago I began a 'Whoathon', watching all of Doctor Who's episodes from the start. This eventually took me through any second Doctor stories I had missed. I reached The Space Pirates... and skipped it to watch The War Games instead! I was dreading it and the knowledge that it was 5/6 telesnaps completely put me off. That knowledge is the only concrete information I actually have of the story. What I've heard is that it's terrible, not worth anyone's time and should be brushed under the carpet to be forgotten about.

It's time though. If I am to ever go on to reach the fun times of U.N.I.T., Bessie and Section Leader Shaw (not forgetting - colour!), I need to get my final telesnap story over with. One last time, let's run.


Episode 1

Pirates doing some pirating, but in space

It isn't terrible. I can say that at least. It is not a terrible episode. However the majority of it is rather dull. It takes fifteen minutes - FIFTEEN MINUTES - for the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to show up. These fifteen minutes stretch. The Space Pirates is a great title for a story. It sounds thrilling and exciting. You imagine the 26th century version of Captain Hook perhaps, mowing down Space Corps personnel with a blaster gun or swiping at them with a laser sword, his neon eye patch secretly scanning for valuable cargo. This is not what we are given. Instead it's a couple of blokes in dodgy headgear blowing up satellites in order to steal the 'argonite' they are built from. The reconstruction I watched has a lot of scenes with spaceships moving slowly in space and men in spacesuits floating as they mess with the satellites. There is also a lot of time at a Space Corps' ship's bridge where the crew watch blobs on screens and the captain makes the odd announcement over his PA system.

The future doesn't let women on the bridge to look at blobs on the screens

The arrival of the TARDIS crew is a welcome respite from all of this. They arrive on an unmanned satellite that has recently been manned and shortly afterwards gets attacked by pirates. The crew themselves get shot at but in the end find themselves trapped somewhere, ensuring they never have to exchange a single word of dialogue with any of this week's guest actors. I can't believe our three lead actors have been given so little to do in an episode as boring as this one. I'm very much hoping none of them need to go on holiday in this story as it's going to need all the help it can get to keep it going. Six episodes already feels far too long.

If only I could say that for this episode

There have been few sets so far as it has primarily been 'space' and 'the bridge'. The scenes on the satellite, Alpha 4, feel very claustrophobic though. The two pirates make reference to others with them but it's no surprise they aren't seen on screen as you couldn't have fit them in the room. As Alpha 4 looks to have been blown up at the end of the episode I'm hoping the action (although this definitely seems the wrong choice of word) moves to bigger or at least better sets.