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| Space pirates plant charges on a navigation beacon. |
6 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 144 minutes. Written by: Robert Holmes. Directed by: Michael Hart. Produced by: Peter Bryant.
THE PLOT:
In the distant future, the mineral argonite has become essential for space travel, and argonite mining is big business... and with it, argonite piracy. A group of criminals, led by the ruthless Caven (Dudley Foster), have moved on from attacking and plundering mining ships to blowing up Earth's space navigation beacons, which are made entirely of the substance.
The destruction of government property draws the attention of Gen. Hermack (Jack May). But he quickly fixates on the wrong target: independent prospector Milo Clancey (Gordon Gostelow), who has lost several argonite shipments to the pirates and has tracked the criminals to this sector to deal with them himself.
The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe find themselves in the middle of this when they materialize on one of the beacons... just in time for the pirates to attack. When the beacon is blown into its component sections, they are trapped. Clancey rescues them. But the Doctor soon finds himself questioning whether he and his friends can trust Clancey, particularly when he flies them directly to Ta, home to the Issigri Mining Company - and also the pirates' secret base!
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe: Reduced to being guest stars in their own series. Across the first three episodes, the only thing they do related to the plot is to unwittingly distract some Space Security forces to make it easier for Caven's pirates to kill them. Jamie gets a few amusing asides in response to some of the Doctor's antics, particularly in the second half, but Zoe seems bizarrely out of character. For example, when they are trapped in a locked cavern, the Doctor discovers a hidden door. Zoe and Jamie complain that he's wasting his time first looking for the door, then trying to unlock it... even though there is literally nothing else useful for any of them to do, making the Doctor's actions the only reasonable ones to take!
Milo Clancey: Writer Robert Holmes seems to have modeled Clancy after the wildcat miners in old westerns (think Lee Marvin in space). Unfortunately, director Michael Hart and actor Gordon Gostelow take this inspiration too literally. He is dressed like he stepped out of an old "B" western, speaks with a cod cowboy accent, and drops more "tarnations" per minute than Yosemite Sam. The pity is, this character actually might have worked. On the page, Clancey is both smart and resourceful; he has traced the pirates to Ta, he effortlessly evades an attempt by one of Hermack's men to apprehend him, and he quickly picks up on and voices his disdain for the government's concern over its beacons vs. its lack of concern for actual citizens robbed by the pirates. But the decision to personify him as a walking cowboy pastiche dooms the character to seeming like a bad comedy creation, even though the actual writing isn't half-bad.
Gen. Hermack: The writing for Hermack, however, is atrocious. He's presented as a decisive man of action. The only problem is that almost all of his decisions are wrong, and he wins no points by snapping at crew members when his orders prove either deficient or impossible. Actor Jack May performs in this era's preferred style for dutiful authority figures... Which is to say, one gets the impression that this man seriously needs more fiber in his diet.
Caven: The villain of the piece isn't particularly better than the other guest characters. Caven is just plain evil, nothing more. This is fine for a Doctor Who villain, and writer Robert Holmes would go on to create some truly memorable "just plain evil" baddies... But Caven doesn't even seem to be having fun with his own evil. He snarls and snaps his way through every scene in a way that quickly grows tedious, and with no particularly memorable dialogue along the way.
THOUGHTS:
The Space Pirates was the second Doctor Who story by Robert Holmes. On the basis of this and The Krotons, it's remarkable that he got the chance to submit a third script!
In its defense, the story is competently structured. All of the plot elements introduced in the first three episodes pay off in the final three, and all the threads converge effectively at the end. Sure, the guest characters are bland and one-note, and the portrayal of the most prominent guest character is misjudged... But the same can be said of Who serials with far better reputations than this one. The story also features miniature work that is far, far better than Doctor Who's norm, much of which thankfully survived the episode junkings thanks to being pre-filmed inserts.
There's really only one serious problem with the story. Unfortunately, it's a doozy: The Space Pirates is boring.
Holmes later revealed that he originally envisioned the serial as a four-parter, and it probably would have worked better at that length. However, there simply isn't enough story to sustain six parts. As a result, basic exposition is stated and re-stated simply to fill air time (a good half of Hermack's scenes consist of this). The regulars spend the entirety of Episode Two sealed inside a beacon section, something Patrick Troughton was apparently much annoyed by: ""This is Episode Two, and we're still trapped in that bloody awful spaceship set... People will just turn off!"
The pace does pick up a bit in the second half. Episode Four features an action piece in which the Doctor rigs a booby trap to fend off the pirates during an escape, and Episode Six even builds a hint of tension when Caven rigs a bomb to blow the heroes up. The first half is a genuine endurance test, though - and it likely doesn't help the story's poor reputation that its sole surviving episode is almost certainly its worst one.
Also not helping is how little involved the regulars are in the narrative. Part of this was to accommodate filming for Troughton's final story, the ten-part The War Games; the regulars appear in Episode Six only through the magic of pre-filmed inserts. Part of this may also have been in response to Troughton's (entirely legitimate) complaints about the show's workload; Season Six would be the last "full year" season, with the episode count slashed significantly the following year.
Regardless, the result is a story in which the TARDIS crew is left feeling like an afterthought. The story plays for all the world as if Robert Holmes had grafted the regulars onto a western-inspired sci-fi script that hadn't originally featured them... Which probably isn't the case, but it often feels like it, with even the Doctor's contributions to the plot's resolution being ones that easily have been diverted to other characters.
In the end, The Space Pirates probably isn't Troughton's worst story. It's competently plotted, at least, which puts it above the likes of The Underwater Menace. It is dull, however, made more so by being stretched out to fill six episodes. I'd be happy with any lost Doctor Who being returned. However, episodes of The Space Pirates would easily rank near the bottom of my wish list.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
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