The Space Pirates

It has its problems but I quite like The Space Pirates. At its heart is a decent Troughton four-parter, although these days it would fit nicely into a single episode for Eccleston or Tennant. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, it's a creakingly slow six-parter. Goodness knows where those extra televised episodes came from. I reckon they accidentally filmed a few rehearsal sessions and spliced them into the broadcast tapes to pad things out without telling anyone. It's worth noting that Robert Holmes's next story, Spearhead from Space, came only two stories later. That's regarded as a classic, but personally I think The Space Pirates if edited down to my imaginary four-part version would have the better script.

Spearhead from Space is a loose collection of set-pieces, but directed with style and guts by Derek Martinus. The Space Pirates is a painfully overextended but fundamentally sound story, lazily slapped together by Michael Hart. There's a reason you've only heard of one of those names. Derek Martinus directed six Doctor Who stories, including Evil of the Daleks, while Michael Hart directed precisely one (and one too many). The problem is that Robert Holmes puts lively comic characters (Milo Clancy and the TARDIS crew) alongside some pretty one-dimensional tough guys who have to be played completely straight. In the script, Caven is bloody scary! He's as menacing as the Graff Vynda K or anyone from the Caves of Androzani. In the hands of a production team who took it seriously, this could have been memorably brutal. It's like the Terry Nation problem. His seventies Dalek scripts are all practically identical in tone, but the Pertwee production team made them cosily forgettable while under Hinchcliffe and Holmes he turned out a masterpiece.

Admittedly it's hard to care about the Space Corps. Even the pirates themselves aren't too interesting. There's no wit or sparkle to them. Nevertheless the production does nothing to raise the temperature, plodding ahead with "there's something on the radar, Captain" acting. Similarly when it was decided to play Milo Clancy as a Wild West prospector, the Western frontier spirit he represents wasn't allowed to affect the stereotyped Space Corps.

The production team don't seem to have realised, but The Space Pirates has an interesting vision of the future. It's dangerous and unpredictable, with real-time space travel and no one really in control. It's Wild West stuff. Prospectors go about their business for years in open contempt of the authorities, while pirates blow up Earth's navigation beacons. It's even unconventional in little ways as well, as with Clancy's rickety spaceship. It's domestic. He boils an egg. Unfortunately all that gets steamrollered with a production that at times looks more Trekky than anything before or since in Doctor Who. Check out Dom Issigri's headquarters, and while you're there have a laugh at Madeleine's sci-fi headdress that looks like a penis.

The story isn't bad either. It's not just cut-and-pasted plot coupons, unlike say The Faceless Ones. Events progress. Obviously it's far too slow, with so little happening in the first two episodes that the TARDIS crew take a break until halfway through each one, but even in the broadcast version I like episode five. There's a nice twist which I hadn't expected. Interestingly that's not the first time I've been impressed by part five of a horribly overstretched Troughton-era six-parter. They hadn't yet invented the "four and two" formula of changing the villain halfway through, so part five tended to be where the story reached its peak before falling apart for the concluding anticlimax.

I also like Milo, who's a good idea for a character. His crap ship is fun too. It's not his fault that the story's glacial pace means that his scenes (like everyone else's) are liable to get dragged out too long. Similarly entertaining are the TARDIS crew, who get some nice scenes and witty banter. I get the impression that Robert Holmes enjoyed writing for Troughton.

The production feels reminiscent of the self-consciously international Troughton-era vision of the 21st century, complete with silly accents. The only difference is that this time we're talking British versus American. Come back The Gunfighters, all is forgiven! Saddle up, cowboy. I like Milo Clancy, but he's played as a comedy cliche straight from Blazing Saddles. Regarding Whoniverse history, if these people are human then this can't be too far in the future. "They were a wild breed, they learned to live without the law." Milo Clancy was among the first men to go into deep space and his ship is forty years old, so this surely can't be any later than the 22nd century. I suppose it depends on your definition of "deep space." Oh, and the Space Corps use Martian missiles, in the very next story after The Seeds of Death.

Overall, this is a lame and painfully slow production, especially in the first half, but it's certainly less stupid and formulaic than certain other Troughton-era stories. If I remember correctly, Robert Holmes's wife thought it was his best story! I almost wish the whole story existed just so that we could edit a cracking two-parter out of all the good stuff. Troughton gets a moment that's almost scary in the surviving episode, there's lots of painstaking spaceship model work and there's a decent story buried amid the padding. It even has no monsters! On the principle of "which stories had the most unrealised potential?", if I had to remake a Doctor Who story, I might choose this one.