Day 123 — May 3rd 2021
The Space Pirates Episodes Five and Six
The Space Pirates — Episode Five
I’m really struggling to keep up with everything that’s going on now. There’s a certain irony in the fact that a story which started off so slowly and seemingly lacking the plot to fill six episodes has suddenly become the most complex thing in the world.
My confusion largely stems from trying to remember who’s in league with who and what their motivations are. I’ve got the general gist, but it’s a challenge to remember it all. So;
We’ve got General Hermack and his crew of space police who are on the hunt for the space pirates led by the villainous Caven. Hermack believes the ring leader of the pirates to be Milo Clancy, an old space prospector who now bums around the universe in a clapped out space ship. 30 years ago Clancy made his money working alongside Dom Issigri on a big mining operation. Issigri’s daughter, Madeline, is the real mastermind behind the pirates, who have been holding her father hostage for decades just in case they need to blackmail her. She didn’t know anything about this.
It’s like trying to keep up with the plot of an EastEnders storyline.
I think my big issue is that lots of these ideas seem to be thrown in only moments before there’s a twist. So I feel like we don’t hear an awful lot about Dom Issigri until we’re about to discover that he’s still alive. It means that none of the revelations really land, and all the new ideas being thrown in only serve to confuse me a bit.
It also doesn’t help that I’m still really not all that interested in anything that’s happening, and I genuinely find myself tuning out every time General Hermack rocks up and starts talking. Or, actually, it might be when Cavan starts talking. They both do a lot of ordering around of their subordinates, and I’m past trying to remember who’s who.
I think it’s also causing me a problem that this is probably the worst audio quality that we’ve had for any of these Narrated Soundtracks. They’re pulled together from a range of sources, but as the decade wears on the choices become slimmer. Sadly lots of the dialogue for this one is a bit muffled despite the best efforts of the restoration team, and it has the effect of making it all seem far more distant than many of the other missing episodes.
I always try to choose something to praise in every episode, although I’ll admit that this one was slim pickings. I do particularly like the brief exchange between Cavan and one of his men, though, which feels like a typically Robert Holmes thing;
Caven: ‘Ah, Dervish, we’re discussing a space accident.’
Dervish: ‘Oh, where?’
Caven: ‘I haven’t quite decided where it’ll take place yet.’
I’m afraid — for only the second time in this marathon — I’m resorting to a 1/10 for this one.
The Space Pirates — Episode Six
There’s a moment in this episode which I think sums up my issue with the story pretty well;
Hermack: ‘Miss Issigri, we are coming to your assistance. We are going to launch a full scale attack in approximately… ’
Penn: ‘Fifty five minutes, sir.’
Hermack: ‘Fifty five minutes.’
It’s that distinct lack of urgency. I get that they’re trying to make it seem more like real space travel, where things do take time and waiting is part of the process, but it doesn’t make for particularly exciting television.
Indeed, I think the most interesting thing about The Space Pirates is the fact that it’s missing. That’s not me having a dig, it’s something I genuinely feel.
Because the fact that it’s missing leaves us with so many questions. There’s mysteries about some of the earlier missing stories — what did William Hartnell look like when playing the Abbot of Amboise? The alignment of the closing credits changes in Marco Polo, but because there’s no tele-snaps for Episode Four we don’t know if it changed in that episode or the next one — but due to its placement as the last collection of missing episodes, and the only episodes missing from 1969, The Space Pirates has lots of mysteries to solve.
There’s no tele-snaps for any of these episodes, John Cura having stopped them in late 1968. There’s on-set photography but only from the pre-filming of the model work and the recording of Episode One. As such these later episodes of the story are almost total blanks. Design department photographs of the sets exist for many missing stories, but none have ever come to light for this one.
We don’t know what the cave systems on TA look like, for example. Nor Dom Issigri’s office. For that matter, we don’t know what Dom Issigri himself looked like. There’s no photographs of Esmond Knight in the role, and he’s the last character for which we’ve zero visual record. A few years ago Richard Bignell tracked down costume designer Nicholas Bullen for the third issue of Nothing at the End of the Lane, and published for the first time the original costume design for the character. It meant for the first time that we’ve got some idea of the character… but the same issue also published a load of unused costume designs for Madeline Issigri, so there’s no guarantee that the design seen there ever made it to the screen.
It makes me realise how lucky we are to have Episode Two of this story, because without it we’d have no images of Madeline either or — to my horror — of Milo Clancy! Of all the missing episodes and all the unanswered questions from the 1960s, I think the ones posed by The Space Pirates are the most interesting.
All that said, I don’t think this is a story which would benefit from being recovered. It seems unlikely that we’d see an Enemy of the World style reappraisal of the tale. And without these mysteries to ponder on, I think the story would risk falling even flatter than it does now. I’ll say here that this episode is another 1/10 for me — there wasn’t much here to hold my interest — and that gives the story an average score of 1.83/10, making it my lowest-rated of this marathon so far.
A couple of other interesting facts to throw in before I wash my hand of The Space Pirates and move on. The first episode of this story was the last time Doctor Who was made in Lime Grove studios — home to the series on and off from the very beginning with the pilot episode. It’s fitting that the studios association should exist almost to the very end of the 1960s. They continued to be used right up until the early 1990s (though largely not for drama), and one of the last things ever recorded there before demolition were the links for The Troughton Years.
This final episode is also a rare example of the series being shot out of order — our three regulars weren’t actually in studio for this one at all. They were off recording The War Games location work the week this episode went before the cameras, so they pre-recorded their scenes weeks in advance as part of the pre-filming for the story. I think this is the only example of this happening in the 1960s — and possibly in the classic era as a whole — although there’s obviously occasions where a single regular would pre-record in order to go on holiday.
There’s something fitting about this story being the bridge between the old way of doing things and the new; saying goodbye to Lime Grove and shaking up the strict production system that had been in place since the beginning. Once Barry Letts takes over in a few stories’ time we’ll see more examples of the production pattern being altered, but I’m sure we’ll discuss those when we get there.
Overall, I’m really disappointed to have been so down on this one. I’d remembered it as not being as bad as people say and was hoping to be a champion for an undiscovered gem. As it is, though, I’ll not be in a hurry to see this again.
