Day 122 — May 2nd 2021
The Space Pirates Episodes Three and Four
The Space Pirates — Episode Three
It should come as no surprise that my favourite thing about this episode is once again Milo Clancy. Thank goodness he’s part of this story, because pretty much everything else about it is boring me rigid.
He’s remarkably quick to work out that the TARDIS can travel through time, which is perhaps surprising considering he was dismissive of the idea that Doctor Who and friends could have arrived inside the beacon rather than docking with it;
Milo: ‘How did you get here?’
Doctor Who: ‘Oh, we just arrived.’
Milo: ‘You mean you got some sort of ship you docked on the beacon?’
Doctor Who: ‘Not so much on it as…’
Zoe: ‘In it.’
Milo: ‘What, inside? Now how could you be doing that? Look, that is not possible.’
Jamie: ‘Anything’s possible in the Tardis, especially when he’s at the controls.’
I reckon I’ve got a good head canon excuse for this, though. Unless something in a later episode contradicts it, I’m going to assume that a younger Milo Clancy has had several adventures alongside Doctor Who (McCoy’s incarnation, probably, in full Season 24 mode) and he’s not dismissive of the idea that the TARDIS could have materialised inside the beacon, he’s simply surprised that this man could be the same one he used to know.
Hey, the line ‘Look, that is not possible…’ would still work with that, and you can’t tell me that the thought of Milo and the Seventh Doctor Who battling pirates doesn’t appeal.
One of the reasons Clancy works so well is that he gets all the best lines in this story, and I think you can tell he’s Robert Holmes’ favourite character to write for here. I think my absolute highlight is his exchange with Zoe;
Zoe: ‘Oh, well Milo. There’s one thing I don’t understand.’
Milo: ‘Well you’re very lucky, girl. There’s about a hundred thousand things I don’t understand, but I don’t stand around asking fool questions about them, I do something useful.’
I think we also get an example in this episode of something that fells very ‘Doctor Who’, and I realise that what I mean by that is very ‘Holmes’. It’s when Clancy has to make a sudden manoeuvre in his ship and the narration describes a china teapot falling out of a cupboard and smashing.
There’s something I really love about that, and it’s automatically become my favourite moment in the story so far. I can imagine that sort of thing happening in the ‘new’ series.
Something I’m less keen on is the way Doctor Who’s treating Zoe in this one. He’s obviously fallen out with both her and Jamie now, because he’s oddly dismissive of her expertise when she tries to help;
Doctor Who: ‘The trouble is, we can’t guess where their headquarters is.’
Zoe: ‘There’s no need to guess, Doctor. It’s easy enough to work out.’
Doctor Who: ‘What?’
Zoe: ‘Applied mathematics.’
Doctor Who: ‘Applied…? Oh, I see. You’ve been messing about again, have you?’
I don’t think it’s supposed to come across that way, though. I think it’s written to be played affectionately, with Doctor Who comically underplaying the importance of what his friend has just worked out. As it is, Troughton’s continuing to play this one with a slightly more morose tone than usual, so Doctor Who’s coming across as a bit of a dick.
Despite Clancy’s best efforts, I’m afraid I found myself zoning out for large swathes of this one, so it’s another 2/10.
The Space Pirates — Episode Four
I can’t tell if the reveal that Madeline Issigri is in league with the pirates is supposed to be a major surprise or not. It’s certainly played as such, with the script indicating that she whips out a gun at the appropriate moment. And it would be a really exciting reveal! The ultimate proof that Milo Clancy isn’t the mastermind behind the Argonte thefts — his mortal enemy is! In many ways it’s a brilliant cliffhanger, with the pirates bursting in and our heroes being cornered.
The problem is… it’s not any sort of revelation at all. I clocked that Madeline was the baddie an episode and a half ago. I think everyone did. There’s a point in Episode Three when Hermack expresses surprise that she has a model of the exact ship used by the pirates in her office. She explains it away with a rather lame ‘it couldn’t possibly be one and the same’, but from that moment on you know the score.
Thankfully, though, Doctor Who gets to explain some of the plot to her;
Milo: ‘You’re harbouring a nest of vipers down there in those mine workings, and they’re on their way up here at this very moment!’
Doctor Who: ‘He means that the argonite pirates are using the old mine workings as a secret hideout.’
I say ‘thankfully’ because I’ll confess that I’d lost track a little bit. I know that Doctor Who and his friends fled Clancy’s ship last episode and found themselves in a system of tunnels… but I’d not made the connection that the tunnels were supposed to be an abandoned mine. It seems obvious in retrospect, and I don’t know if it’s just that I wasn’t paying attention or if it wasn’t very clear in the first place.
Both the things I remembered about this story — the drawing pins and the tuning forks — turned up early on in this episode, so I’d hoped that this was going to be a more gripping instalment. Sadly it wasn’t to be. I was so keen to champion The Space Pirates and tell you all that you’re wrong for being so down on it, but it’s another 2/10 for this one, which isn’t looking good for the average score…
