The Space Pirates - Episode 1

So we all know that Robert Holmes is one of the best writers in Doctor Who history right? Well if we were trying to convince a newbie of this and got them to watch The Krotons they wouldn’t be convinced but think that it was a bumpy start, try getting them to watch this story and they would think that we are barking mad. I will admit from the start that as I embark on Troughton’s penultimate story as the Doctor, I am not looking forward to this story. It’s a story that sticks out in my mind for being more slapstick than most Doctor Who stories. This is the final story in my marathon that doesn’t exist on DVD which is a massive thing because of all those days where I was stuck listening to the CD but the difference between those stories and this one is that I had telesnaps to look at to at least get a flavour of what the episodes might have looked like. This time there are no telesnaps so episode two is the only opportunity we get to see just how bad this story might have looked.

There’s something that’s quite odd about this episode (I say odd, I mean usual). It’s 15 minutes before the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe appear. Now in ‘The Seeds of Death’ there was a far bit of time before the regulars but it was about half the time of this episode. During this period we are left in the company of people who sound like they’ve just come from a pantomime because some of them have a rather exaggerated way of delivering their lines. When the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe appear it takes less that two minutes for them to be hunted by the people on the spaceship. The episode concludes with fragments of the ship being broken up with the regulars being in one of them. It’s a good ending for the episode. Despite not interacting with anyone else and only being in it for half of the episodes running time, the regulars are all good and there even seems like there’s more of that Troughton/Hines co-production stuff littered through their lines.

As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t hate this episode. I’m not totally sold on it but I think that there is something fun to enjoy here. I think once the regulars get involved in the story then it will continue to make me reassess this story and whilst I continued to bang on about six parters, I think that there might be enough here to make me forget the running time and as you probably have thought of there is an even longer story about to come. The Space Pirates might just be one of the surprises of the season for me, I emphasis might.