The Smugglers - Episode 3

Ok so after a good start, the story has dipped somewhat in terms of quality. Here’s hoping that the story gets back on track. It does have a promising start as Ben and Polly are accused of being a smuggler and its clear that they are being framed. The Doctor starts the episode pretending to read cards. Sadly despite this good start it goes back to being a generic historical story with fairly generic characters. It’s another episode where I run out of interesting things to say as I don’t have anything to say about it except that it seems like there is something resembling a plot is working its way into it. Something that I didn’t notice before really in the previous two episodes is Anneke Wills’ narration. I have been so use to Peter Purves’ narration and think that whilst I think that Purves’ narration is better, there is something about the way that Anneke Wills delivers the links is rather charming and I could listen to more of it and I do when I listen to the Companion Chronicle adventures that she has done in the past.

The Squire is finally becoming a good villain and I’m sure he’s the same bloke who appears in The Mutants (1972) and I’m also sure he played a villain in that one. He’s a good piece of casting but sadly the rest of the characters are pretty much your typical characters from this period. The fact that this isn’t on video is really hampering my enjoyment as I think that one of the few saving graces of ‘The Gunfighters’ is that you can see what they are doing and so at least its fun to look at. Here there isn’t any of that which is a shame. It’s a better episode the number 2 buts that only because it starts quite well before calming down a lot. Don’t think that the final episode is going to be much to impress me.