May 1: "The Space Pirates" Episodes Three & Four

You get the impression, listening to these episodes, that they would have been reasonably exciting to watch.  There are space battles (well, a space chase, but there are copper needles involved) and laser shootouts in what were likely semi-gloomy tunnels.  But these come across as less exciting when all you can do is listen, sadly.  Still, there are some nice moments, such as Clancy getting the better of Major Warne via the aforementioned cloud of copper needles, which is oddly satisfying.  Although that might be because I've apparently taken an irrational dislike to Major Warne and thus overly enjoy hearing him receive his comeuppance (it might be the accent).

The Space Corps in general is rather thick, though.  Maybe it's because it's been fairly clearly signposted that Clancy is not in league with the pirates, but their continual efforts to catch him out and arrest him based on basically no evidence whatsoever is somewhat tedious, albeit occasionally laughably so.  Of course, when the Doctor briefly suspects Clancy as also being a pirate in episode four, you start to wonder if maybe Gordon Gostelow is doing such a good job of playing Milo as a harmless old coot that he's inadvertently sabotaging the script's intentions.

But we do get some actual pirate action in these two episodes, as Caven and his deputy Dervish scheme to implicate Clancy in the piracy by redirecting some of the stolen beacon pieces to Clancy's base on Lobos.  The pirates are actually based on Ta, the same planet as the Issigri Mining Corporation, and have been using the old mining tunnels to break down the station pieces.  And Clancy has also decided to lay low on Ta, reasoning that the Space Corps will never look for him on his rival's world.  Which means, conveniently, that the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe can become embroiled in the pirates' dealings.

So as I mentioned before, these seem like pretty visual episodes -- they're not completely devoid of interesting dialogue (in particular, Clancy's riff on Zoe's "Here's what I don't understand" comment is quite welcome), but one suspects they would have been better to see than to hear.