The Smugglers Episode 4

The one where we find out who Ringwood, Smallbeer and Gurney were...

I'd only ever really known George A Cooper as the interfering caretaker Mr Griffiths in BBC school drama Grange Hill before I found him in Doctor Who, so it's quite a surprise to find that he gives very good, convincing villain. He makes Cherub a thoroughly unpleasant character, and although he does sometimes stray a little too far over the top in his performance, he's certainly one of the best baddies of the Hartnell era. If he'd introduced a little more balance to his performance, toning it down at times to make him more quietly threatening, it would have been spot on.

If Cherub is a shouty, snarling bully, then Captain Pike is merely all these things in a frilly shirt. Michael Godfrey pleasingly does manage to bring light and shade to Pike, coming over as broodingly nasty one moment, and outrageously demented the other. It seems as soon as Pike uncovers Avery's hidden gold, he turns into a swivel-eyed monster, possessed by greed and obsessed with betrayal in the ranks. He seems hellbent on murdering the Doctor (aka Sawbones), and the energy Godfrey puts in to his final scenes is unsettling to hear!

The Smugglers Episode 3

The one where the Doctor, Ben and Polly explore a graveyard...

Episode 3 of The Smugglers is somewhat inconsequential, so I'll start off by addressing the whole dating issue that surrounds this story. It's stated a number of times that this is the 17th century (ie, somewhere between 1600-1700), but in order for the references to Henry Avery and his treasure to work, this has to be set in the 18th century. Avery went missing in 1696, and it is thought he died sometime in the next two or three years (it's not actually known where and when he died), so The Smugglers surely has to be set after that.

Henry Avery actually appears in The Curse of the Black Spot 45 years later, which is apparently set in 1699. He's still alive and well here, although he does "go missing" from history when he and his crew disappear into the stars aboard the Siren's spaceship. That's all bunkum though, and really does not help the dating dilemma in The Smugglers at all!

The Smugglers Episode 2

The one where Polly pretends to be possessed by the Doctor...

The Smugglers is a terribly violent story, which I suppose is inevitable given that we're dealing with criminals and cut-throats. But there are things which happen in this story which could never, ever happen in Doctor Who today, most notably the copious use of blades. At one point, the ironically-named Cherub mentions cutting off the Doctor's ears, and also refers to "what them Mexican Indians can do to a bloke's eyelids". Pretty gruesome stuff, and bearing in mind that we've already seen Cherub murder poor old Joseph Longfoot with a knife between the shoulder blades (cut out by Australian censors so that we can watch the brief sequence today!).

Incidentally, I was intrigued enough to look up what Cherub's talking about in relation to Mexican Indians and eyelids. Yeurgh! It seems the Comanche people used to cut off people's eyelids so that their eyes seared in the sun. There are countless other tortures attributed historically to the Comanche, involving pretty much any body part you wish to name, so Cherub has obviously done his homework (and maybe even some work experience!). "Let me give him a taste of Thomas Tickler!" Cherub threatens the Doctor at one point. I dread to think what that would have entailed...

The Smugglers Episode 1

The one where Ben gets his kit off...

Doctor Who had been off-air for a couple of months, and when Season 4 kicked off with The Smugglers, the production team was kind enough to put a quick recap at the start of episode 1 to remind viewers that new companions Ben and Polly had (forcibly) boarded the TARDIS.

Ben and Polly don't seem too put out by the fact there appears to be an entire futuristic control room inside a police box. Ben wonders where "all this came from", but that's pretty much it. The Doctor explains (very quickly and freely, it has to be said) that his TARDIS is a time and space ship, and although Ben in particular does not believe the Doctor, the architectural and scientific impossibility of the dimensionally transcendental police box just gets glossed over.