May 2: "The Space Pirates" Episodes Five & Six

Episode five sees things coming to a head: the Space Corps finally start to work out that Clancy has nothing to do with the space pirates and that the beacon sections found floating around Lobos were originally headed toward Ta, while our heroes are locked up in a disused office that used to belong to Dom Issigri, Madeline's father.  And Caven's getting ready to take some proactive action to frame Clancy for the piracy (in case the beacon pieces floating around Lobos aren't sufficient).  And Madeline Issigri starts to seriously doubt her alliance with Caven once the subject of murder comes up.

Cover of the 1990 Target novelization.
(From On Target - The Space Pirates)

And it turns out that Dom Issigri is alive and, well, not exactly well, as he's been Caven's prisoner for the last few years, but reasonably healthy.  So they all hatch a plan to escape (with a lovely interchange between Jamie and the Doctor: "It's not an audio lock, is it?" Jamie asks, referring to the lock on their door in episode four.  Once the Doctor tells him it isn't, Jamie replies, "Och, that's a relief," to which the Doctor responds rather drily, "Jamie, I don't think you appreciate all I do for you") and warn the Space Corps about the pirates (I think?  The motivation's a bit hazy here).  Only Caven has sabotaged LIZ 79...

Episode six, somewhat worryingly, may actually be as dull as this story's reputation claims the whole thing is.  "Worryingly" because this is the final episode and you'd think this would be where all the action is.  But what we get is some shenanigans with Milo and Dom in LIZ 79 while Caven tries to escape the clutches of the Space Corps.  (Spoiler: he dies in the attempt.)  And there's some stuff with Caven rigging up the atomic power plant to explode and destroy basically everything on Ta, which seems like it should be tense but just ends up being the Doctor working at a bunch of wiring for what feels like far too long.  And the whole thing weirdly⁴⁷ ends like an episode of Star Trek, with a lame joke and a bunch of laughter.

The Space Pirates has a reputation for being a deathly dull story, and that doesn't seem fair.  The primary issue is that's awfully dull to listen to -- but it was probably quite entertaining to actually watch.  There are a number of action sequences: we can't judge how they looked since the surviving episode doesn't have any (and Michael Hart never directed any other episodes of Doctor Who for us to make a comparison with -- he did do some other things, like Z-Cars⁴⁸, but I've never seen them), but there's no reason to believe they weren't at least competently done.  Certainly the model sequences we can see look pretty good.  The only worry is that some of the performances might let things down; I've already mentioned Donald Gee's uncomfortably self-conscious portrayal of Major Warne, but Gordon Gostelow's Milo Clancy is so broad that it might have come across as parody.  It's hard to tell.  This, much like The Celestial Toymaker or The Savages, is a story we really need to see in order to properly evaluate it; what we have simply isn't sufficient to get a good grasp on.







⁴⁷ It's weird because a) it's very much out of keeping with how Doctor Who typically ends -- especially with the somewhat forced laughter; and b) despite how much it resembles an ending to a Star Trek episode, no one in Britain will actually see that show for another three months, as Star Trek first aired as the summer replacement show for Doctor Who while it was between seasons 6 and 7.
⁴⁸ Remember, it's a British show, so it's pronounced "Zed-Cars".