Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 137: The Smugglers, Episode Four

Dear diary,

At the end of all that, Polly has really settled into the idea that they're trapped on the TARDIS from now on. Having retreated back to the ship, she asks the Doctor wether they'll be going forwards or backwards in time next, and it serves as another opportunity for the Doctor to remind us that he has no control over where - or when - they land. Thankfully, Ben does chip in with the hope that it's 1966: I'd worried that we'd see that just swept under the carpet now that they've had a full adventure away from their own time.

Much like The Savages, this is a story that tends to be forgotten when I think about the early years of Doctor Who. It's the penultimate one of the Hartnell era, but it doesn't really have anything all that special about it to help make it stand out from the crowd. At lest The Savages has Steven departing from his life in the TARDIS. While I've enjoyed listening to the story more than I might have expected to, I think it's destined to sink back into that state of simply being forgotten as part of the overall picture.

There's nothing much in here to really latch onto. Most of this episode is spent with people simply talking at each other, and then there's the occasional fight to break things up a little. It doesn't help that by the time we'd reached this episode, I'd pretty much forgotten who most of the characters were, and I'd lost track of who was meant to be the bad guy, and who was the good one - especially by the end when the Doctor's newfound 'moral obligation' means that he's determined to help the Squire, who I think was being treated as something of an enemy a few days ago?

In the end, I turned to Jonathan Morris' handy guide in the recent tele snaps special, but even that didn't help, 'cos I'd forgotten some of the names! Ultimately, I think mush of The Smugglers will have become a blur by the end of this season, the space it currently occupies in my head being taken up by all the other stories to come.

It's a shame, really, because there is a lot to like in the story. Ben and Polly are used well for the most part, and we get a chance to see some of their skills in action. While Polly takes very quickly to the idea of travelling in time, it's good to see Ben being skeptical, and it's great that he still doesn't particularly want to be there at the end. Had this story survived in the archives (or were it to turn up at some stage), I think it would have a much better chance of holding my attention - the location work seen in the tele snaps and the surviving 8mm footage really does make it look like there's a scale on display that we don't often see in Who of this era.

And so, as the Doctor and his new companions look at the scanner, out over the 'coldest place on Earth', we head into the final story for the First Doctor. I'm really not sure how I feel about this…

6/10 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 136: The Smugglers, Episode Three

Dear diary,

As Polly's screams ring out into the closing theme, I realised that actually, the companions in Doctor Who at this stage don't really scream all that much, do they? Susan, Barbara, and Vicki have all had a couple of them, but they've not been a common part of the series in the way you'd expect, based on the number of jokes made about it. I'm so entrenched in this era of Who, now, that I can't even really remember if the later companions scream lots more than this, or if it's just a myth that's built up over the years.

Early on in this episode, I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for our two newest companions, as they find themselves confronted once again. 'We haven't done anything!', Ben protests. 'We haven't killed anyone, and we haven't smuggled anything!'. At this stage, they were still separated from the Doctor, and I realised how odd it was to see this.

I commented lots on it during the Dodo episodes, that she and Steven would be separated off to have the bulk of the adventure, while the Doctor went off elsewhere to reduce the strain on Hartnell. There, it felt perfectly natural: Steven had been travelling with him for quite some time before it started becoming a common occurrence in the series, so you felt as though he knew what to do. Here, Ben and Polly have only just arrived in their first new time period, and they're already left to fend for themselves.

When the Doctor swans in a few minutes later, it's with a kind of lofty carefreeness. Much like the way he followed after them upon first exiting the TARDIS in Episode One, he's watching his new friends with amusement more than concern. he knows what's going on, and he's enjoying their reactions to things. We've also reached another key point in the evolution of the Doctor's character here, which is important as we draw ever closer to the first regeneration.

During Season One, I found it fun to highlight the various steps in the Doctor's transformation from the insular, grumpy sod we see in An Unearthly Child through to the kind of character he becomes in all his subsequent incarnations. There's several key moments (mostly based around Barbara shouting at him) that lead to our first big revelation in The Dalek Invasion of Earth - that the Doctor will stay and fight the Daleks, because that's the right thing to do.

Here, we see again that he's fully completed his transformation into being 'The Doctor'. It's been there, without much of a song or dance for the most part, ever since that Dalek invasion, but this is the first time in a while that the Doctor has stopped to point out that this is the way he behaves. It plays into the idea of using this story to establish the programme for a new audience - he explains to Ben that they can't just leave for the TARDIS, because he has a 'moral obligation' to stay here and see that things are left safe.

We're close to the Troughton Doctor, now, with his speech about 'some corners of the universe', so it's important to see the First Doctor stepping up and reminding us of who he's become now, in time for his fall under the next story.

7/10 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 135: The Smugglers, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Before embarking on this episode, I popped in the William Hartnell disc of the Lost in Time collection, so that I could check out some of the surviving bits of The Smugglers on there, and have those in mind while listening through. Most of the clips like this that we have (and, I believe, all of the ones for this story in particular) are the result of censorship cuts in New Zealand when these serials were sold there in the late 1960s.

It would appear that the New Zealand broadcasters had a different view on what was acceptable in a children's series than we did in the UK, and so there's lots of moments from the programme that were cut out - usually only a few seconds here or there. I've seen several of these clips before when the DVD first came out and I savoured all these brief snippets of stories that I may never get the chance to see properly.

Some of the clips always struck me as being a bit odd: a few frames here, or the odd second or two from here, just to lessen the impact. Others seem far more fitting, and I think that might be the case with the clips for this story. The death of Longfoot in Episode One is quite brutal, as the knife lands squarely between his shoulder blades for example. It's ironic, in a way, that the only clips we have of The Smugglers, and of many other missing Doctor Who's only survive because someone once deemed them too much to be broadcast!

The compilation of these clips on the DVD also includes a few minutes of silent 8mm camera footage from the location shoot. It's obviously shot as behind-the-scenes footage either by a member of the crew or by a curious on-looker, as we move from shots of the Doctor being piled onto a cart, to others of pirates reading the day's newspaper, or shots of the BBC cars and vans parked around. This footage comes in handy, though, as another opportunity to see how this story might have looked - the locations really are gorgeous. I'm coupling all of this (and the tele snaps) with my own memories of Cornwall, where the other half and I spent a week last summer. I even keyed The Smugglers up on my phone ready to listen to while we were down there, but I never found the time to actually hear it.

As for the episode itself… well, the winning streak had to end sometime, I suppose. It's not that this is a bad episode, just that it hasn't grabbed me in the way that the last few have. Yesterday, I sang the praises of 'Doctor Who gets kidnapped by pirates' as a hook for a story, but today it seems to have already worn a bit thin. I'm not sure why that is, because there's plenty in here that I really did enjoy.

Ben and Polly, for instance, continue to entertain me, and they're great value when they play the part of witches to escape from imprisonment. They've both got very distinct personalities that work well against each other. There's also the opportunity for some great dialogue between the pair - I love Ben musing that he can't check himself back into the Navy in a 17th century barracks! They're still getting the hang of all this, and so don't settle into things quite as well as the Doctor has.

I don't know what's lacking at the moment, but I'm hoping it turns up tomorrow. I'm keen for the last Hartnell historical to go out with a bang!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 134: The Smugglers, Episode One

Dear diary,

At this point in its life, Doctor Who has very much dispensed with the idea of basing the historical stories around a particular event or person, in an attempt to be educational, and has instead switched to focus on a generic 'era' of history. A couple of weeks ago we had a tale set simply in 'The Wild West', in which events differed wildly from the real historical facts, and today we've simply been given a historical based around the idea of 'Doctor Who gets kidnapped by pirates'.

It sounds like I'm complaining about this, but that's not the case. While I found myself enjoying the stories that fulfilled the programme's original brief to educate as well as entertain, by the end of Season Two my interest in that type of tale had started to wane a little. Season Three then started out by giving us tales set in Ancient Greece and a period of French history that just wasn't of much interest to me. All in all, the historicals had started to lose any of the stuff that kept me interested, and I found myself looking far more forward to the futuristic tales.

Today, though, has proved that a good historical tale can still work well for the series - it just needs a broader appeal. 'Doctor Who gets kidnapped by pirates' is a perfect pitch to keep me interested at this point, and it allows for a great episode. One of the things that needs to be addressed is the location filming for this story. I'm listening to the soundtrack as usual, with the tele snaps on hand to follow along with.

Following in the footsteps of the last few stories, it once again looks completely unlike Doctor Who. There's scores of location filming for this story, starting with the TARDIS stood just inside a cave mouth on the beach. It's strange to think that we've only recently started having the TARDIS materialise on location as opposed to in the studio somewhere, as has been the norm for much of this marathon so far.

It looks fantastic stood on the shore, and so does the rest of the filming. A number of the early tele snaps for this episode show the action taking place outside, and it gives them a sense of scale that we're not used to in the show. It's odd that an image of a church sat the other side of a field should look so odd, but it's still rare to see such an open space in Doctor Who.

Elsewhere, it's all fairly standard pirate fair. There's some hidden gold stashed away nearby, and a group of ruthless pirates want to get their hands on it. They've got a pirate ship out in the bay, where the Doctor has been taken to meet the captain - who has a hook for a hand! It really works that all of this is so cliched, though. The fun here isn't telling a bold new pirate story, it's seeing what will happen when the TARDIS arrives in a traditional pirate tale. I'm surprised we've not had a talking parrot yet.

I'm pleased to say that the arrival of Ben and Polly to the ship is handled just as well as I was hoping for. I commented the other day that their initial suspicion about the police box was very reminiscent of Ian and Barbara, right back in the pilot episode, and that continues on into their early exchanges with the Doctor here. Indeed, it's so similar in places that I can't help but wonder if Brian Hayles was given the script to An Unearthly Child to work from.

They're astounded by the sheer size of this ship once they've barged their way in, and the Doctor angrily snaps at them. 'What are you doing in here? How dare you?' - Hartnell is even playing it in a way closer to his original style that we've seen since that first season. Much as I've grown to love his cuddlier side over the stories, it's great to see that he can still do the fierce Doctor when called upon.

Ben and Polly react in a similar way to our old schoolteacher friends, too. Polly is more willing to believe that they have travelled in time (she's genuinely disappointed when they see the church and assume that they're still in 1966. Quite how seeing a church is a sign of that I've no idea, though), whereas Ben is skeptical from the very start. There's a logical progression to his character here - in The War Machines he was very respectful to the Doctor because the man is his elder, and appeared to be in control of the situation. At the very least, he seemed to know what was going on. Here, though, he's talking about space/time travel, and telling the sailor he'll not be getting home any time soon. Ben's confidence has been shaken, and I'm looking forward to watching it build back up throughout the story.

As I'd hoped, too, the start of this episode takes the opportunity to remind us all about the premise of the programme (probably for the best - this episode was broadcast following the programme's longest break since the very start), but it does it in less of a heavy-handed way than The Massacre did. The Doctor tells his new companions that he can travel anywhere in time and space, but that he can't personally control where they go. He muses that he thought he was going to be alone again, but we don't get the roll-call of companions this time. Once that's out of the way, given just the right amount of time to breathe, we're off and into the adventure proper.

I'm pleased to see that the streak of strong episodes we've been having is being upheld by The Smugglers, too!