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

Day 250: The Space Pirates, Episode Six

Dear diary,

And just like that, I've run out of missing Doctor Who episodes. It all seems so easy in retrospect, and actually 106 missing episodes doesn't feel like a massive amount when you think about just how many I've actually been able to watch. I sort of suspect that I should have a bit of a celebration or something to celebrate this key milestone, but it's The Space Pirates, so the era of missing episodes goes out with more of a whimper than a bang.

I think part of the problem I've had with the story is that I'm just not all that engaged with the situation. In The Seeds of Death, it felt as though the Doctor and his companions were willing to throw themselves into the line of danger in an attempt to help because they really wanted to do so. Here, the only reason that they're helping anyone is because they've been separated from the TARDIS, and have gotten swept along with events.

It means that when the situation is getting desperate and we're watching a (really long) countdown to an explosion, everything just feels a bit dull. I don't care about the situation, so I'm not that bothered by anything that's happening. It's an interesting feeling in some ways. I always know that the Doctor and his companions are going to get out of the danger (well, unless it's a regeneration story or something like Earthshock), but part of the fun is watching how they make their escape. It's about the Doctor being clever, or his companions being vital. Today, I know that they're not going to get blown up and I don't care how they get out of it, because it boils down to something as mundane (!) as diffusing a bomb.

As I've said before, I'm really disappointed by The Space Pirates. Based on the first couple of episodes, I was so looking forward to standing out from the crowd and proudly declaring a liking for the tale, but it's just not to be. I wonder if its reputation might be better had more episodes survived, or if more were to show up? The surviving Episode Two was rather good, and it gave me lots of little visual cues to enjoy. Because of the slower pacing throughout the rest of the tale, the audio just doesn't really help. Having something to look at (even if it is metal hair) would really benefit the tale.

It still doesn't deserve the title of the worst story of the 1960s, though, I don't think. The Dominators was much worse than this - and I could see all of that one!

Though I've joked about it above, this really is a pretty significant moment in the marathon for me. One of the things that's always been off putting about the idea of a Doctor Who marathon is the fact that such a large chunk of the early years is marred by huge gaps. I tiptoed into Season Three with a bit of a worry, because i genuinely didn't know how I'd cope with so many bits of the programme being missing, and getting stuck in a cycle of moving between the soundtracks, surviving episodes and back again.

As it is, I've really enjoyed it. The sheer quality of a lot of stories from this era has really helped to make the task more manageable, and in some ways it's gong to be a shame to leave behind the narration from the soundtracks. Season Six has been a nice way of easing back into actually sitting down to watch an episode properly again, which I have to confess has felt a bit alien so many days in a row!

Still, despite everything, I really do hold out hope that more will be returned to the archive at some point in the future - and I've absolutely no doubt that it will. These things always turn up in the strangest of places and just when you're not expecting it. Now that I'm ten episodes away from the end of the 1960s, it's sods law that some will be turning up any day now…

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

Day 249: The Space Pirates, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I can't seem to make my mind up with this story. Every so often, I think I've worked out what's going on, and then I change my mind and they do something different anyway. For much of Episode Two, I kept switching between believing that Milo Clancy was definitely not in league with the pirates, to deciding that he definitely was. Even now, when it seems pretty clear that he's on the side of the law (even if it's grudgingly), I keep expecting them to throw a curve ball and make him the leader of the pirates anyway.

Then you've got Madeleine Issigri and her metal hair (though, for some reason, as I listened through today's episode, I kept picturing her as Miss Kelly from The Seeds of Death). From the moment she first turned up in the story I'd decided that she must be working with the pirates, then I figured that was too easy so started to think otherwise. Now it would appear that she is working with them, but only because she's in too deep now to withdraw. I rather like that. I'd assume that she was in it simply for the money (we've been told several times that the old Argonite mines are all but dried up, meaning that she's head of a dying company), but it turns out that she entered this operation with the best of intentions, when it was a simple 'salvage mission'.

As if that wasn't enough, you've then got the reveal today that her father - a man we've been told is dead - is alive and… he isn't well, but he's a live at least, and locked up in his old study not all that far away. I have to confess that I knew he was going to be turning up at some point, because I read an article in Nothing at the End of the Lane a few days ago all about the costumes in this story, and there's an image of his in there. Still, it makes for a nice reveal, and adds yet another layer to everything.

The problem with all this is that I've sort of lost track of who's chasing who. I know that the pirates are planning to set Clancy, the Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, and Dom all free in the LIZ 79, with the intention of sending it up for the Space Corps to find, but I'm not now sure if the Space Corps are still after Clancy or not. They discuss it a lot today as they try to piece the puzzle all together, but I'm sorry to say that they left me behind somewhere along the route.

One of the things that I am really enjoying about The Space Pirates is that we've got Jack May in as General Hermack. May is often familiar for playing Simms the butler in Adam Adamant Lives!, a series that I've got a lot of love for (indeed, I watched an episode a few months ago during The Tenth Planet to see Patrick Troughton's last acting work before becoming the Doctor. How fitting that May should then turn up in Doctor Who so close to Troughton's departure!), and it's great to see him here. I also didn't realise until today that May was also the voice of Igor in Count Duckula, a series that I was only praising a few weeks ago during The Invasion! It's a small world, British telly, innit?

And I think that's one of the key things about this marathon for me. For man years, my interest in archive television only really stretched as far as Doctor Who. I'd make the occasional excursion into Green Acres, but in terms of British television, it was all about the TARDIS. When I watched an old episode of Doctor Who then, for the most part, the actors were only familiar to me from that story, and nothing else. In some ways, I rather liked that. I quite enjoyed the fact that all of the Doctors were simply the Doctor, for example. I didn't know them as anyone else (though it blew my mind when I realised that Partrick Troughton was the priest in The Omen).

Over the last few years, though, my tastes have changed and I've taken quite a liking to lots of archive telly. I'd say at least half of my shelf is made up of series made before the 1970s. It's meant that as we've gone along, there have been plenty of instances of people turning up in the series that I know better from somewhere else, and I've really enjoyed that. It's not simply confined to the actors, either. Verity Lambert was producer of the previously mentioned Adam Adamant Lives!. Sydney Newman was the creator of The Avengers. Many of the writers have turned up across a great many of these different programmes, and it's been fun to watch their style crop up in all these different formats.

In a little under two weeks, I'll be exploding into colour with Spearhead From Space, and moving onto the 1970s. It's an era of British TV than I'm far less familiar with. Of all the titles on my shelves only three were made in the 1970s - Whodunnit (hosted from Season Two by Jon Pertwee, so there is still at least one connection!), the 1970s volume of Coronation Street, and the Morcambe and Wise box set. I'm hoping to use the marathon as a chance to explore other television as I go along (though I'll probably not be keeping much of a track about it in this blog - you're here to read about my journey through Doctor Who, after all!), but I am going to miss being in an era which I have such a strong love for. It's been an interesting experience, and it's helped to make the marathon all the richer.

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

Day 248: The Space Pirates, Episode Four

Dear diary,

As anyone who's been reading these entries for a while will know, I'm really not the biggest fan of missing episode recons. For one reason or another, they usually fail to hold my attention, and the ticker-tape descriptions of the action move far too quickly for me to get me head around. With the odd exception for an animated instalment, or occasionally dipping my toe into the world of the recon (I couldn't actually get through Marco Polo without watching one - how times change!), I've experienced pretty much all the missing episodes in the form of the narrated soundtracks.

It's been a perfectly good way of going through the stories, and I really don't feel that I've missed out on my thing by going the purely audio route a lot of the time. They're all incredibly well produced, with fantastic linking narration (even if the script for The Space Pirates' narration really is going out in a blaze of glory. At one point today, Hines takes great delight in opening a scene with the words 'the Doctor is busily twanging his tuning fork…' Is he indeed!?), and they've been great to listen to on my way home from work each day, lasting just long enough to end as I step through the door, or thereabouts.

But last night, having not enjoyed Episode Three of The Space Pirates as much as I had Episode One, and realising that this really is the end of an important stage in the marathon, I felt all nostalgic. I decided that before I move on to the era in which everything exists in the archives, I needed to give reckons one last chance to prove themselves. I'll admit, there were one or two selfish reasons for it, too. The Space Pirates is one of the Doctor Who stories with the least surviving visual material, no tele snaps, and there's even a few characters we don't have any photos of. I wanted to see how a recon would cope with such a situation.

The answer, it seems, is 'pretty well'. I did have a moment, about three minutes in where I decided that it just wasn't going to work, so muted the recon and keyed up the right place in the soundtrack so that I could actually follow what on Earth was happening. I think I probably looked like a bit of an idiot sat in front of the computer screen with my headphones plugged into my phone, but there we go.

The reconstruction overcomes the lack of available images by creating plenty of its own, and pretty cleverly, too. There's several shots of the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe taken from the surviving second episode of the story, and some which I'm pretty sure are taken from elsewhere. One particular image of Milo Clancy came up so frequently that I worried the image may be burned onto the screen for good, but it did the job. For the actual space pirates themselves, the recon used CGI people. I have to confess that it's not a style of CGI that I've ever really liked, but it works pretty well in this instance.

Sadly, watching it in this form hasn't really helped me enjoy the story any better. I'm genuinely quite disappointed, because having enjoyed the first third after years of being told how rubbish the tale was, I was hoping to be all contradictory, stand proud and say how much I liked it. And there is an awful lot to like! Troughton is - of course - on fine form, and there's a wonderful moment after their fall in the cliffhanger resolution in which he moans in pain and produces a handful of drawing pins that he's landed on. When Zoe asks him what he's carrying the pins for, the Doctor replies simply; 'I like drawing pins!' If anything, it put me in mind of the Second Doctor we had back in Season Four, who is a little bit weird, a little bit 'kooky', but completely loveable, and totally 'the Doctor'.

It's a shame to see him using his tuning fork as a means to break out of their cell, as I was hoping the Sonic Screwdriver was here to stay after it had turned up for a second appearance in The Dominators. Maybe he still hasn't managed to work out all the kinks in the design, and it just won't work on locks yet? It's either that, or the door is made from wood (which, for all we know, it might have been).

Things seem to have gone off the rails a little, it's true, but The Space Pirates is still not as bad as everyone would have you believe. I'm hoping we can make it through the next two episodes relatively unscathed, and it might be able to redeem itself just a bit…

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

Day 247: The Space Pirates, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Something that I've always really enjoyed about the Troughton era is that it spends so much time looking at the future that's just within reach of the audience. Many of the adventures over the course of the last three seasons have taken us into the Twenty-First Century, which at the time must have felt remote and distant enough to really be 'out there'.

It's conceivable, though, that a ten year old watching in the late 1960s would be around to witness mankind's evolution into the type of world we see in these stories, in which the weather for the entire planet is controlled from the Moon, goods and people can be teleported across the globe in a split second, and we'd have all manner of high tech space stations in near-Earth orbit, just ripe for a Cyberman invasion.

Admittedly, it can be a bit tricky to tie everything together from time to time, and the dates given to these stories from years of 'fan wisdom' don't always make the task easier. The second volume of the About Time series makes a pretty good stab at it, and I've had their timeline in mind as I've moved through the last few months. It gives placements to stories such as The Enemy of the World, The Wheel in Space, The Moonbase, and stretching out beyond this era of the programme, Warriors of the Deep (placing them in that order, chronologically, starting from around 2030 and moving through the the 2084 stated on screen for Warriors).

It's in a more recent book - A History of the Universe in 100 Objects, by James Goss and Steve Tribe - that Milo Clancy and the era of Argonite mining is really slotted into the equation. It speculates that the political troubles of the 2080s are what gives rise to the era of lawless spacefaring we've heard spoken of in this story. Clancy likely left the Earth at about the same time the Silurians and the Sea Devils were teaming up to fight the Fifth Doctor, and then the Space Corps were set up far more recently, after the turn of the century.

While I'm not a fan who spends a great deal of time obsessing over making sure that everything 'fits' absolutely within the Doctor Who universe (for a programme that's lasted in some shape or form for half a century, with literally thousands of stories told in all different media it would be entirely impossible for everything to click), I'll admit that it's nice when there's a kind of internal consistency like this.

I'm sorry to report that this episode hasn't really grabbed me in the same way the first couple did, but there's still plenty to be going on with. I think the main thing I'm enjoying is the fact that Zoe is still being used as… well… Zoe. Back during The Wheel in Space, I considered that her character would probably have been washed down the TARDIS' waste system before long and we'd end up with Victoria in all but name.

Actually, though, she's faring pretty well on the whole. Her intelligence has been a key part of the plot in every story so far (with the possible exception of The Dominators, but you know what? That was weeks ago, and I can't actually remember anything other than the drilling scenes towards the end), wether it be in the form of blowing up an annoying computer or - as in today's episode - working out the best way to get the TARDIS back. It's great to see her coming across so well, and I'm finding myself really enjoying Wendy Padbury more and more. I'm so glad, as it's moments with her, Patrick Troughton, and Frazer Hines that really do help to perk up even the most lacklustre of episodes.

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

Day 246: The Space Pirates, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I believe that I'm going a little bit against the grain when I say that I really enjoyed today's episode! It turns out that the visuals to The Space Pirates really do help it. I'm eve so pleased, because when I put the Lost in Time disc into the drive today I had to really fight myself to not select The Web of Fear Episode One from the menu instead.

The first thing to note is that, despite my complaints about the effects shots of the beacons exploding yesterday (which are housed on the same DVD, as a special feature), the spaceship models on show here are actually rather good. I'm somewhat surprised by the clarity of the shots, too - I thought all the stuff on the Lost in Time sets was unrestored, but they look really sharp. The designs of the spaceships are nothing particularly unusual, they're your standard sci-fi fare, but they look fab and they're filmed very nicely indeed. My only real complaint is that the background to all these bits is just solid black. Would it have killed them to poke a few pins through the backdrop and create some stars? I think it would really add to the effect.

Elsewhere, we've got the introduction of Milo Clancy to proceedings. He comes in for a bit of stick amongst Doctor Who fans (as do many members of the cast from this story) because of the accent, but you know what? I love him, too! Haha! He comes across as totally normal amongst all the high tech spaceship stuff on display. It's highlighted in one very simple moment when he gets a call to his ship, and rather than moving his breakfast, standing up and walking over to receive it, he simply shuffles his chair closer to where he needs to be. It seems like such a ridiculous, insignificant thing (and it is, really), but it adds something very real to the character.

His dialogue is all tailored in such a way that you can't help but enjoy his presence in a scene, too. It must be the kind of thing people talk about when they discuss Robert Holmes' writing being so good. My personal favourite has to be when Clancy - mid conversation with his captors - asks if he can blow his nose, or if that's an offence, too. It's the kind of sarcasm that you'd expect to get in this type of situation, but which most science fiction takes itself too seriously to include.

I also love that they've dressed him simply as an old west prospector. In The Seeds of Death, they set out to show us that we're in the future by making everyone where the same style of 'futuristic' uniform, and then mark out the Professor as being a bit of a rebel by giving him a kind of futuristic cardigan to wear over the top. There's a shot in today's episode when Clancy is surrounded by the crew of the Space Corps, and he looks so out of place by being dressed so casually.

If anything, it puts you on his side at this stage; all the other characters look ridiculous, playing at space cowboys with their ridiculous collars and uniforms. Clancy looks like he's just milling along, trying to get by and enjoying himself. It's only in the cliffhanger that we really turn against him, even though by they stage we've had it more-or-less confirmed to us that he's working with the pirates. Thankfully it gives an already great cliffhanger even more impact, when he simply walks in to the beacon and shoots Jamie.

Yesterday, I made a reference to Revelation of the Daleks and mused that people often complained about how long it took the Doctor and Peri to actually get involved in the action of that story, meeting up with the rest of the cast and such like. I only brought it up because it took the TARDIS so long to arrive in this story, and it seemed an apt comparison. Truth be told, I almost didn't mention it, because I knew someone would pipe up and complain that in that story it took them until the second episode to actually interact with our main guest characters.

Well this one's an even slower burner! Although the Doctor and his friends find themselves shot at by members of the Space Corps in Episode One, and then encounter Clancy making his way inside the beacon at the conclusion of today's episode, they still haven't gotten caught up with the main characters here. It's going to be Episode Three now before our regulars are really caught up with events, making this surely one of the longest lead ins for the Doctor ever.

In short: this is brilliant stuff. There was even a point when I thought the episode might be heading for an 8/10, but I'm afraid that anything that includes a woman wearing a wig made of metal isn't going to reach quite that high. It had to be said, though, it's tricky looking at that costume without picturing the ivory headpiece from Community.

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

Day 245: The Space Pirates, Episode One

Dear diary,

I've often seen people complain about some of the Sixth Doctor stories, where it takes him a long time to actually get involved with the action. Revelation of the Daleks is the big one - the Doctor and Peri don't actually meet up with any of the guest cast until the second episode, having spent forty-five minutes roaming the snowy countryside and fighting zombies.

At least in that episode the Doctor is actually present, even if it is on the outskirts of the action! The TARDIS doesn't turn up in today's instalment until almost fifteen minutes in. I'm pretty sure that I'm right in saying this is the latest into a story that the Doctor ever arrives.

The time before the arrival of our heroes isn't all wasted, though, and you get the distinct impression that it may have been quite exciting. I know, that's not something that anyone has ever said about The Space Pirates. The thing is, if you're six years old and sitting down on a Saturday evening to watch Doctor Who, your disappointment at the lack of the Doctor is likely to be held off while you've got pirates roaming around in a space ship, blowing up all these beacons.

This is the point where I'd usually say 'and the tele snaps show us exactly how awesome/average/awful (delete as applicable) these sequences were', but by this stage, John Cura had finished providing his services due to failing health. Indeed, Cura died not long after this, between Episodes One and Two of The War Games. It means that The Space Pirates is one of very few stories for which we have absolutely no tele snaps, giving us little indication as to how things would have really looked.

Thankfully, we do have the destruction of one beacon preserved as a brief clip in the archives. It's not… well, it's not the best thing we've ever seen. There's something about the way that the station splits onto several nice, even chunks that puts me in mind of a wheel of cheese being cut, and that's probably not the effect they were aiming for…

Fittingly for our last story with missing episodes, the soundtrack feels like they're really going for it. Frazer Hines is back on narration duty and his opening line ('Far out in space, amongst the stars…') sets us up for a more richly detailed audio than usual. Not long afterwards, we get space described as a 'velvet, star-studded blackness', which sounds as much like a description of Hollywood than anything.

On the whole, though, it's a positive start. I'm not blown away, and the episode is little more than average for the programme at this point, but it's not the complete disaster that people always describe it. I imagine that things will go downhill before too long, but if it sticks like this all the way through, I think I can handle it!