The Space Pirates

Jamie, sometimes I think you don't appreciate all I do for you.

I'm not sure I understand why this story is reviled. It is a bit slow at the start and Milo Clancy's accent is a bit of a stretch to understand, but I didn't think it was that bad.

Plot Summary

The story opens with a band of pirates attacking a series of space beacons. The beacons are made of a precious mineral and the pirates are blowing them up to collect the mineral. The Doctor and his friends land on one of these beacons that has also been landed on by a military team. The military thinks the Doctor and his party are the pirates but the real pirates arrive and slaughter the military team save one. They then blow the beacon with the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe trapped in one section that is running out of air. The Doctor attempts to drive the section back towards the others so they can get back to the TARDIS but only launch it further into space. They are boarded and rescued by a space prospector named Milo Clancy.

Clancy is suspected of being the leader of the pirates by the military and his ship is attacked by a fighter ship. He evades the fighter and then lands on the principle mineral mining planet, run by the daughter of his old partner. Clancy repairs his ship while the Doctor and his companions wander off thinking Clancy might be part of the pirates. They run into the real pirates and fall into a holding cell where the captured army officer is being held. Clancy finds them and they flee through the tunnels away from the pirates who discovered them. They run into Clancy's partner's daughter (Madeline) who turns them over to the pirates. She began the gang as a salvage operation but the pirate leader (Caven) has expanded his control and is now blackmailing her.

They are put into the old study where Clancy's partner (Dom) has been held for years. Caven plans to put them aboard Clancy's old ship and kill them in an apparent "accident" just as the military arrives. That will allow the pirates some time to lie low before resuming their activities. The Doctor's group manages to escape the study and heads for Clancy's ship. The pirates launch Clancy's ship remotely with only Clancy and Dom aboard. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe realize what has happened and return to the control room. They knock out the guard and Madeline signals the military as to what is happening. The Doctor returns oxygen to Clancy's ship and walks Clancy through how to regain control. Caven, realizing what has happened, rigs the power plant to explode via remote detonation as they fly away. Clancy manages to land his ship back on the planet and frees the Doctor and his friends. The Doctor races to the power plant and disables the remote detonator. The military attacks the pirates and when the pirates attempt to detonate the bomb, nothing happens. The pirate ship is destroyed and Clancy gives the Doctor and his companions a lift back to the section of the beacon that has the TARDIS.

Analysis

I liked this story a lot better than I thought I might based on it's reputation. I think the fan gripes about it are the result of three issues. The first is the fact that it is a recon and an action-y recon at that. This story reminds me not so much of pirate tales but of tales of the cattle barons and outlaws. Good stories but very action oriented and when you can't see that action, things begin to bog down in the mind. It is well written but there is less dialogue than might be expected in a Robert Holmes script and given that this is the only Holmes story missing the video, it is interesting to see how the witty word play is hamstrung by the lack of visuals.

The second gripe I imagine many fans have is Milo Clancy's accent. It's like a bad imitation of Dana Carvey doing Jimmy Stewart. It will grate on you after a while but there was enough break that it never got to me. Also, unlike others, I didn't have any problem understanding what he was saying. I had worse problems understanding Caven due to audio fading at times.

The third thing that I think gets to fans is how little the Doctor is involved until the end. The Doctor and his friends are not even part of the action until Episode Three and even then they are more tag-a-longs as it is Clancy that still drives the action. It is not until Episode Five and the break out from Dom's study/prison that the Doctor begins to assert himself fully. That the Doctor controls nearly all the action and problem solving in Episode Six may not make up for it in some fan's eyes. I, on the other hand, didn't have a problem with it. I thought the story interesting enough that the Doctor's stance on the outside wasn't an issue. Episode One was a bit of a slog without the Doctor and some rather obvious padding, but things tightened up in Episode Two and went fine from there as far as I'm concerned.

As I said, the story was well written with Robert Holmes honing his skills. There were a couple of small instances of the traditional two-person sparing that Holmes would later do so well. I think if Clancy's voice had been done in a less odd fashion, the dialogue would be a bit more well received with this story.

My own faults lie in the same vein as those mentioned above, except that they didn't bother me quite as much as others. Tightening this to a five-parter, dropping Clancy's voice into a more normal range, and having actual action footage would shoot this story pretty high for me. But I have to say that despite these, I still really enjoyed this one on the whole. I'd happily sit down and watch it again if it were found.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5