The Space Pirates Episode Two

The one where we meet Milo Clancey, the ageing space prospector...

Oh my goodness, it's Tom Baker! It's remarkable just how uncannily like the Fourth Doctor Donald Gee (Major Warne) looked around this time, it's as if they were twin brothers! Gee would appear in Doctor Who again, in 1974's The Monster of Peladon, by which point he looked even more like Tom.

The modelwork just after the episode and credit titles shows the V41-LO gliding through space in a shot remarkably akin to what George Lucas would do in Star Wars eight years later, and actually, all of the modelwork seen in this story is so good that, had visual effects designer John Wood had as much time as Lucas's team to make the ships more detailed, it might have looked just as good as that big screen behemoth.

It does actually feel good to be able to see these characters after the barrage of dialogue and operetta of episode 1's audio. General Nicolai Hermack is played by the fruity Jack May, who has one of the plummiest accents ever committed to tape (I remember him best as the voice of Baron Greenback in Danger Mouse), and Hermack gets a bit unnecessarily chippy with poor Navigator Penn, played by the very handsome George Layton (sporting a fetching porn star moustache).

Ian Watson's set for the V-Ship bridge is pretty impressive, if a little sparse in parts, and the LIZ-79 is wonderfully detailed too. Our introduction to the LIZ-79 sees a boiled egg roll out of the control gubbins in a scene which puts me in mind of the marvelously eccentric breakfasting contraption invented by Caractacus Potts in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (released in cinemas in December 1968, the exact time when Robert Holmes was writing these episodes).

And oh how I love Milo Clancey! I can see how such a character might annoy some viewers, because he is something of a parody, but Gordon Gostelow does such a grand job of pumping character and personality into the part that he's instantly my favourite. Barely any of the other characters have a discernible personality, so Clancey's larger than life persona stands out even more, but I don't mind that. He's an intergalactic prospector who flies around space in a 40-year-old ship which is installed with a "new-fangled solar toaster" – what's not to love? Clancey is a character straight out of Seasons 17 or 24, and provides some much needed fun and levity in an otherwise very straight serial.

Clancey's introductory scene is a particular delight, with lots of physical business that wouldn't be out of place in a Buster Keaton film. All he wants to do is eat his breakfast, but Milo keeps getting interrupted by first his burning toaster, then the faulty lights, and finally a call from Hermack. It's just lovely.

It's not until 13 minutes into the episode that any of the regular team get to say anything of any value, and it's clear that the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie are not writer Holmes's priority. This is a real problem, because you know what, Bob? This show is called Doctor Who, and its star is Patrick bloody Troughton, so give him something to do, and something good! What must Troughton, Padbury and Hines have thought when they were given these scripts and they barely featured in them? And the scenes that they did have weren't directly connected to the main story at all!

Perhaps the best thing about any of the TARDIS team's scenes is that Padbury is wearing the shortest pair of hot pants Doctor Who has ever seen. Padbury fans probably want more episodes of The Space Pirates to turn up just so they can ogle her more!

Towards the end of the episode we get introduced to another new character, the glamorous Madeleine Issigri, head of one of the most successful mining corporations in the galaxy. She wears come-to-bed eyeliner and a ridiculous (yet kinda cool) silver hair-hat thing which wouldn't look out of place in the series UFO (but that hadn't been televised yet). Issigri is played by Lisa Daniely, who was actually something of a casting coup for Doctor Who at the time, having made her name in films such as Lilli Marlene and High Jump, as well as a long list of TV series. She was probably used to better scripts than this though, scripts where she isn't required to deliver leaden lines like "Clancey has a terrible temper, he's likely to explode like glycerol trinitrate", and sound like she means it.

The cliffhanger sees Milo Clancey bursting into the stray beacon section and gunning down Jamie, which leads Wendy Padbury to deliver a remarkably heartfelt "You MURDERER!" before the titles roll. Of course, we know Jamie isn't really dead because companions never die in Doctor Who, do they...?

First broadcast: March 15th, 1969

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Milo Clancey. I love him. What a fabulous, colourful, fresh character!
The Bad: The total uninvolvement of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe in the main piracy storyline is quite annoying, especially after the slow pace at which they got involved in the action in The Seeds of Death. It's as if the production team was desperate to make anything other than Doctor Who!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-space-pirates.html

The Space Pirates soundtrack is available on BBC CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Pirates-Frazier-Hines/dp/0563535059.