6 episodes
Aired between 8th March 1969 and 12th April 1969
Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Peter Bryant
Directed by Michael Hart
Synopsis
Out in the depths of space, the Space Corps patrol the outer reaches of the galaxy, maintaining the peace with their V class capitol ships. One such craft: V-41 commanded by General Hermack, comes across the destruction of a deep space navigational beacon.
The General commands his subordinate, Major Warne to set the ship on a patrol of the other beacons, just in case it's the work of space pirates.
Sure enough, the culprit is a space pirate. His name is Maurice Caven, a disgruntled ex-civil servant, who has decided that it's a better life stripping apart space beacons as they are made from the incredibly precious ore: argonite.
As soon as they have finished with the first beacon, Caven and his crew travel to a second. He orders his lackey, Dervish, to set the demolition charges on the hull of the beacon.
Once they've done that, the pirates retreat to watch as the beacon blows apart and begin to be propelled through space by rocket motors planted on the sections to some unknown destination.
Deciding that they cannot reach every single beacon in a short space of time, General Hermack opts to leave some of his crew on the beacons, armed and with enough food for a six week stretch to hopefully catch the pirates in the act if they attack one of the relevant beacons. One such beacon - Alpha 4 is where the TARDIS materialises.
Captain Sorba, chief of the Space Corps detachment, mistakes the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe for pirates and sends his men after them, In the ensuing chaos, Caven and his pirates actually do arrive at beacon Alpha 4 and shoot the Space Corps guards in the back.
Dervish is worried that the V ship will arrive before the pirates can complete their work but Caven insists they plant the charges and leave. Begrudgingly, Dervish does as he's told and sets the charges which blows the space beacon apart, trapping the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe in a different section of the beacon to the TARDIS.
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are temporarily knocked unconscious.
When they recover, they realise that their oxygen levels are dropping. The Doctor begins working out a way to get back to the TARDIS. he soon discovers that the beacon separated so easily because the individual sections were held together by magnetism. He realises that each of the sections are relatively close together, heading to some unknown location. He comes up with a plan to use that same magnetism to attract their section to the next, and then switch the next section to attract a third and so on until they find the TARDIS.
Unfortunately for them, the Doctor gets his poles mixed up and instead of attracting their section to another, he repels them, sending them flying off into outer space.
Elsewhere in the depths of space, eccentric miner, Milo Clancey is minding his own business aboard his ship - LIZ-79. When the V-41 picks him up on their scanner, they decide to bring him in for questioning, suspecting that he might be involved.
The General questions him, but cannot find any hard evidence of his involvement in piracy so they let him go. Hermack is however convinced that Clancey is to blame and decides to send Major Warne out in a Minnow Space Fighter to follow him.
Hermack is so convinced of Clancey's guilt in fact, that he decides to visit the planet of Ta, an argonite mining world owned by the Issigri Mining Corporation, a firm once owned by Dom Issigri an old business partner of Milo Clancey. Although Dom died years ago and left the company to his daughter, Madeline, General Hermack decides that Clancey must have his eye on taking back the world and using the corporation to process the stolen argonite beacons. Hermack takes his V-Ship in and pays a visit to Madeline Issigri, ingratiating himself with her as he lays a trap for Clancey.
Back in space, Clancey discovers the Doctors rogue beacon section and decides to look into it for salvage. He opens the door and is surprised to see the TARDIS crew there. Jamie rushes Clancey and gets stunned for his efforts. At first, Clancey thinks the Doctor and co. are pirates, but soon realises that they're innocents, rescuing them from suffocation by allowing them onto his ship.
Clancey's actions have made Major Warne suspicious. Following orders from General Hermack, he warns Clancey to surrender and turn himself over.
Clancey chooses to run as he knows he'll be blamed for something he didn't do. Warne gives pursuit and fires missiles at the LIZ-79. Zoe panics, but Clancey laughs and releases a load of copper needles into space, confusing the missile guidance systems and immobilise Warne's ship, allowing them to escape.
Now safe, Zoe works out the trajectory the beacon segments were on, and determines that they were headed to the planet Ta.
Clancey begins to suspect Madeline Issigri for the piracy, and decides to hide in the mines of Ta, right under her nose until the heat from the Space Corps dies off. The Doctor asks if this is wise, but he insists seeing as he helped dig the tunnels out for decades and so, knows them like the back of his hand.
Elsewhere, Caven orders Dervish to divert the rockets on the space beacon segments to send them in orbit around the planet of Lobos instead. He does this because Lobos is owned by Milo Clancey if they are found, he wants the suspicion to lay on Clancey instead.
The LIZ-79 lands on Ta, and Clancey tells them to stay inside the ship whilst he resupplies it. Paying no attention to this, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe wander off to discover just what's happening. They come across the pirate operation deep inside the mines, cutting up and melting down the beacon for the argonite ore.
They are discovered and chased by the pirates until in desperation, they leap down a mine shaft to escape. They survive the fall, only to discover that they've dropped themselves into a prison cell that's inhabited by Captain Sorba, the Space Corps officer who survived the fight on Beacon Alpha-4.
General Hermack meanwhile comments on the fact that Madeline Issigri has a load of Beta-Dart class space fighters, the same ones reportedly used by the pirates. She manages to convince the General that she has to use them to protect her business, but they all have distinct stripy nose cones.
Hermack leaves the planet and goes to retrieve Major Warne. When they pick him up, they see Dervish flying around in a Beta-Dart. They pursue him but he gives them the slip, with the help of Madeline Issigri who provides them with a slip on stripy nose cone.
Back in the cell, the Doctor annoys everyone (especially Jamie) by using tuning forks to open the audio lock on the door. They find Clancey who has been looking for them and they escape from the pirates who give chase, eventually winding up in the office of Madeline Issigri. Clancey fills her in on the fact that she's got pirates crawling about in her mine tunnels. Clancey goes to radio the V-Ship but Madeline pulls a gun on him. Before they can act, Caven turns up and shoots Captain Sorba dead.
Caven orders his guards to take the prisoners back into the mines, where he locks them up in an old study. Clancey recognises it as Dom Issigri's old study. He says that Madeline locked it up on the day her father died, refusing to open it again. He's confused then, when the Doctor finds out that the clock is still wound up. Of course, they soon discover that Dom Issigri is not actually dead, but has being held prisoner by the Pirates for years.
Meanwhile, Madeline argues with Caven, stating that the operation was meant to be a simple salvage deal, not piracy and murder.
Knowing that the Space Corps will be back shortly, Caven comes up with a plan to send Clancey and the rest up in the LIZ-79 to get captured and framed for the crime. Madeline points out that Clancey will tell them everything, so Caven orders Dervish to sabotage the ship so that it runs out of oxygen five minutes after take off (via remote control).
When Caven's back is turned, Madeline betrays him and contacts the V-Ship, trying to warn General Hermack about what's going to happen. The message is cut short by Caven who confronts her. Madeline refuses to be part of it all, but Caven tells her she's in too deep and if she doesn't cooperate, he will kill her father. She is in the dark and is shocked when she discovers he's still alive.
The Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, Dom Issigri and Clancey escape from the study. They all race back to Clancey's ship, but the Doctor is delayed. Clancey rushes into his ship, not realising that the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe have all been captured. He hits the rockets realising too late that the Doctor is about to be caught in the blast.
Jamie and Zoe disable their guards and rush to the unconscious Doctor as Dom Issigri and Milo Clancey realise they are trapped on the ship with a dwindling oxygen supply.
Realising things are coming to a head, Caven coerces Dervish to plant a bomb in the atomic fuel store within the Issigri complex before they flee.
The Doctor recovers from his near death experience and reconnects the ships Oxygen supply. He then talks Clancey through how to disable the pirates remote control on the ship.
With the immediate threat over, they all rush back to find Madeline. They overhear Dervish arguing with Madeline, saying that he doesn't want to blow up the base, but he doesn't have a choice. Jamie catches him by surprise and knocks him out. Madeline tells them that Caven has rigged the base to blow up, and the Doctor takes it upon himself to suit up in a radiation suit and go after the detonator. With only minutes to spare, he diffuses the bomb.
Caven flees in one of the Beta-Darts, but Major Warne heads out in his Minnow and destroys his ship with a missile.
In the aftermath, Madeline says she is to be taken to Earth to stand trial, but will do so gladly. With all the loose ends tied up, Jamie asks about the TARDIS. The Doctor says its in one of the beacon segments floating around the planet Lobos, but not to worry because Milo Clancey will give them a lift to it. Jamie groans at the prospect and they all laugh.
Trivia
- As you probably saw from the last couple of stories the production team at this time were really struggling with getting workable scripts at this time. This is partially because Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant couldn't make up their minds and wanted lots of rewrites only to then pay the writer off and bin the scripts anyway. This was compounded by the fact that both of them were looking to move on from the show (more of that below). It is a saving grace then that Robert Holmes who gave them the Krotons, seemed to have a knack for developing ideas and getting them in on time. Given the nightmare situation going on with the final Jamie story "The Laird of McCrimmon" (see the Dominators), Robert Holmes was approached to get them out of a tight spot. This is what he came up with.
- As noted before, Sherwin and Bryant were looking to move on from the show. Taking more of a producer role in things, Sherwin had given Doctor Who a glimpse of the sort of thing he wanted to do (see The Invasion). Sherwin knew that moving forward, the ever constraining budgets would mean less possibilities for effective monsters and sets. Thus, between him and Bryant, they came up with the blueprint for where they saw Doctor Who moving (which just so happened to fit the style of show he wanted to make): an all new Earth based crew fighting nasties from space IN FULL COLOUR, all in the vein of Quatermass. The problem was, the Doctor in his TARDIS could come and go as he pleased across all of space and time. If the show was to head in this direction, they needed to find a way to keep him Earth bound. You will have to wait until the next story to find out how they did it.
- This was the story in which the show finally relocated to Television Centre on just about a permanent basis.
- This was the first story that John Nathan Turner was involved in at this point only a lowly Assistant Floor Manager. For those of you who don't know who he is, he would rise through the ranks until he became Producer in the 80's. Some would say he kept the show alive for decades after it should have ended; others would say he totally ruined the format for everyone until it was mercifully cancelled in the late 80's. You'll have to keep following the blog to find out what side of the fence I land on.
What worked
- The soundtrack is pretty cool and helps capture the feeling of space pretty well
- The imitation 2001 scenes with breathing inside spacesuits wasn't as bad as I expected and seemed to add to the tension nicely
- The ships are quite unusual and so are a welcome change
- The depth of the background information gives you a nice sense of the world that the Doctor has stumbled into
- It was nice to see that Dervish didn't go the way of the reformed villain like I expected him to.
- Caven was satisfyingly evil here. He commanded a good performance
What didn't work
Where do I begin?,,,
- The accents are enough to curdle milk. Gordon Gostelow (Milo Clancey) can only take some of the blame for this. General Hermack and Major Warne were both really, really bad.
- The decision for Madeline Issigri and her assistant to have a metal wig. My oh my
- Although the background detail is good, there's a downside in that each character has to turn into captain exposition whenever they mention something new.
- By the time we get to the third space scene watching people attaching detonators, it does get a bit boring
- The whole bit with Dom Issigri feels drawn out and unnecessary
Overall Feelings
Ok, I'll admit it. I sat down to watch this one with a feeling of absolute dread. I'd never watched it before, and the collective fan lore is that this is one of the worst Doctor Who's ever, certainly the worst one of Troughton's run. I even put it off a while before resigning myself to getting it over with.
The result...it's not all that bad.
Now, don't get me wrong. This story is pretty far from my top ten. The first thing you'll notice is that it's pretty dull. There's a lot of exposition in it, the action scenes are either realistic space walks or conversations to space fighters on comm. links. There's also about four separate scenes where people are imprisoned in some way and have to escape before the plot can continue. I'll be the first to say, yes, it is too drawn out, and this is one of the shows that should have been a four parter.
The good side of it all though is that it sort of played to what people wanted at the time and did a half decent job of it. The Moon landing took place only twelve weeks after this ended, so that whole space vibe will have been on kids minds constantly. On top of that, this story tries to effectively mimic the nuances of 2001, giving it a down to earth feel. The background leads to big chunks of explanation needed, but by allowing the time to do that, the world feels a lot more like it existed before the Doctor ever showed up. In fact, judging by the fact that the TARDIS doesn't even turn up until near the end of the first episode, the story could have probably stood on its own feet.
Accents aside, the acting isn't bad, and Holmes puts in enough motivations for characters to make them feel well rounded. It's worth a watch to dispel your beliefs about it, but it's not going to win any awards anytime soon.
Rating
7 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
4 out of 10
The in depth background and innovative style of directing make it worth a watch.....once.
Watch this if you liked...
- The Caves of Androzani
- Revelation of the Daleks
Consulting the Matrix
With the exception of Milo Clancey, what's the worst accent you've heard in Doctor Who?
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